Welcome to Becoming a Professional Listener®

Becoming a Professional Listener® is a self-directed program designed to help you ... well, become a professional listener (I am for simple titles I suppose). The program helps you to build a skill base for actively attending to and understanding others - friends, family, co-workers, all those with whom establishing and maintaining healthy relationships is important.  

As of January 2017, the program is divided into two parts. Part 1 is meant to last 4 weeks and focuses on self-assessment of your listening tendencies. The lessons focus on providing motivation to better sense, process, and respond to other people. 

For those who have already signed up for Part 1, here is the page where you can find extra worksheets and resources.

As a summary of the contents ... During Week 1 you are asked to journal about your listening using guided forms. Then, during Week 2, you spend 6 days focusing on specific listening barriers as well as your personal strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Week 3 is all about mindful listening - Mindfulness is the practice of being fully attuned and engaged in the present moment. Mindful listeners are attentive and focused on the task at hand, able to resist distractions and limit mind wandering. These behaviors can be practiced at home with your friends and family as well as work with customers and co-workers.  Practice wherever there is a person to whom you can listen in an active manner.

In the final week, Week 4, we focus on what I think is a primary rule of listening - The 80/20 Rule: you should listen 80% of the time and speak 20%. Part 1 concludes by asking you to return to self-analysis and reflect on how to continue improving.

Part 2 is primarily about emotions - how to understand, recognize, validate, affirm, acknowledge, and respond to them (both your experience and others' expression of them). In this four week program, you learn about The 5% Rule (you can always find something, even as little as 5%, that your partner says to validate and The Rule of Available Space (people are like gasses, they will fill up the space you provide).

I have written these books (workbooks, really) as self-directed guides, but I am a coach at heart and invite you to also let me help you work through the material. Be in touch!