In his powerful leadership book, The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge describes a skillful discussion as one where team members balance advocating one’s point of view with inquiring, understanding, and incorporating other perspectives. This requires both confidence in self-expression and the sincere belief that our best solutions come from collaborative understanding and decision making. Unfortunately, we often approach listening in a passive mode, like a spectator sport, just waiting for the other person to quit talking so we can say what we want to say. In fact, most of our interpersonal conflict with others can be traced to the fact that we tend to work harder at speaking then we do at listening.
In this course we will look at eight different listening skills that improve understanding among team members and also help team members to jointly design solutions. Participants will develop not only the skills of effective listening but also the mindset of collaborative intention.
Learning Objectives: