Listening Skills

To receive the communicated message loud and clear,we have to be an active participant in the communication process. In the case of listening, this requires to understand and evaluate every spoken message, and to follow this with the appropriateaction – a response that confirms the spoken message. Unfortunately, what can happen is that, as listeners, we do the wrong thing, which is to actively work while the speaker is talking to us. Our thought speed is much faster than our speech speed, which can prompt ourr brain to start working ahead of the speaker. Perhaps we are simply considering the speaker’s next comments, or the answer to a question we feel certain will come up. Regardless of the cause,the outcome is the same: a miscomm -unicated message, which can lead to an inappropriate response or a wrong action - both of which can lead to serious trouble. Clearly, this also leaves the door open for unexpected delays setbacks even undesirable outcomes
The difference between hearing and listening comes down to semantics and listening is just the first part of the equation when it comes to customer service.Listening, if we will, is the preparation for hearing. Listening means we’re giving our attention – an excellent start. Listening means we’ve set up your modes of operation, and we’re receiving feedback. Hearing on the other hand implies a more deeper understanding – hearing is indeed processing that which we’ve just listened to.Anyone can listen. Many companies listen to their customers. They set up an “info@” email address, they invite comments on their blogs, they welcome letters sent through the mail and they provide toll free numbers where customers can leave messages. Technically, if we do all this as a company, you’re doing a good job of listening. But how’s our hearing?

Ok, so we’re listening. Great! But what are we doing with the comments our customers are making? Hearing involves giving true consideration to the conversation – regardless of who initiated it – we or our customer. we may know our product and our business inside and out, but our users, they are the ones we have to satisfy that everything is working right. Why? Because if they find a better product, they’re gone. If they love what you got they’ll shout it from the rooftops. But if they have issues, big enough that they’ve bothered to let you know about one way or they other and you don’t hear them…they’ll shout that from the mountaintops.I’m not saying we have to change our offering based on what our customers say. But if we don’t hear what they say, how will we know what may need some improvement? Opening lines of communication in the listening phase invites all kind of feedback – some worthwhile and some worthless. Part of hearing is weeding through it and picking out in a thoughtful way what is valid and what is not.Take away – listening is great. But really hearing what our customers have to say is what we should strive for, and more than that, making sure they know we’ve heard them is the key.

Two Great Philosophers

Plato and Aristotle are both great philosophers in their own regard. Both agree that the world has a purpose, and that it’s not just an accident. Both also hate materialists since in their (materialists’) interpretation of the world, value, choice, and freedom are not plausible outcomes, and so morality and rationality do not make sense. And both ask the same question, what does it take to be a good, moral person? Yet, even though Aristotle was a student of Plato, each philosopher develops his own view on things and a specific way of solving a particular problem. For example, Plato and Aristotle have quite different views regarding life. Plato is dissatisfied with sense and desire, which are nothing to him except a shadow of reality – his aim of philosophy is to die away from these things. The real, on the other hand, is unchanging, static, eternal. He aims to grasp the Forms and to contemplate the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, and to remain caught up in contemplation of these things. Aristotle has no such discontents, however. He likes life in this world, even though it is not perfect. He does develop his own view of the divine and how it is related to the world, but sees no reason why one would be driven to flee from life in the world. The various animals he studies are real things; philosophy to him is not to run away from them, but a way of comprehending them.

  Plato is committed to the idea that reality is ultimately rational. His Forms are definite realities made up and bonded together in perfectly rational ways, and together they make a perfectly systematic whole. For him, mathematics seems to embody the ideal of knowledge and reason is the only way to discover truth. But not even reason is sufficient – far enough up the hierarchy of Forms one has to “see” the truth with the “mind’s eye.” Plato is unable to describe what must be seen, so he explains what we cannot see through language using Myths of the Sun and the Cave. Aristotle has no problem expressing himself through language, however. He believes language is capable of expressing the truth of things, since that truth concerns the sensible world, and our view of it (the world) begins with our senses, hearing, touching, seeing, etc. Although the senses themselves are not sufficient to lead to knowledge, they are the only reliable entities through which we can pursue it.  The two philosophers also differ on what human nature is. Plato is convinced that the real person is the soul, not the body. Souls that inhabit our bodies are there, but are not dependent on us for their existence. They have knowledge of the Forms before we are even born and by being virtuous we can enjoy unity with the Forms after death. Aristotle’s main theme on humans is simple – man is a rational animal. There is no separate soul from man; a person has a soul that is special, but a person is still one unified creature.

 Plato seems to be very concerned about relativism and skepticism and devotes a lot of writing to proving those beliefs wrong. He thinks that skepticism and relativism killed Socrates, not the members of the Athenian jury. The views they have come to hold – that every opinion is as good as another’s, and that if one thinks something is good for them really is good for them – makes the case of Athens thinking it is right to condemn Socrates right for Athens. Plato knows condemning Socrates is wrong; so he knows that there must be standards that are more conventional. The Forms, the dialectic about Justice, and the subordination of everything else to the Form of the Good all reflect his view against relativism and skepticism. For Aristotle, though, such a problem never existed. One reason why could be because Plato did such a good job in proving the relativists and skeptics incorrect, so there is no reason for it to be done again. He sees the foolishness in believing that anyone’s opinion is equally accepted. So as a biologist he performs research and writes up the results, which constitutes knowledge in the sensory world. His only problem is to analyze the processes by which we attain knowledge and to set out the basic features of the realities disclosed.  On ethics Plato thinks that we are able to obtain the same kind of certainty in rules of behavior as with mathematics. According to him the ultimate vision of the Form of the Good will provide a single standard for deciding practical questions. Unfortunately only the few individuals who can make the hard journey through the Cave will be able to give a solution for all questions of value. Aristotle does not have the same view – according to him, we should not ask for more certainty than the subject matter allows. A normal person is able to make good decisions and to live a good life; one need not be an expert in ethical knowledge to practice it.