Read more about the article Appreciative Listening

Appreciative Listening

How well do you listen?

If you’re like most modern-day workers, you’re probably so torn between emails, smart phones, task lists, and deadlines that your human-listening skills aren’t what they should be. Think about the last conversation you had with a coworker. How much of that conversation do you remember? 50%? 20%?

Now put yourself in the speaker’s shoes. If you’re sharing with your boss, and your boss only remembers 20% of what you shared, then why even bother sharing at all?

At Ziksana, we believe that successful leaders move beyond listening to hear and instead build the skill of listening to appreciate. We call this Appreciative Listening. The goal of Appreciative Listening is to make the speaker feel valued, and truly understood without judgment. By combining active listening with positive psychology, our Appreciative Listening framework makes it simple and even fun to listen to those who we agree AND may disagree with.

What is Appreciative Listening?

Appreciative Listening is a type of listening where the speaker becomes the most important person in the room. All too often, when someone is speaking, the person or people listening are focused on themselves. Instead of focusing on what the speaker is saying, they begin mentally formulating their opinion and waiting for their turn to reply. With Appreciative Listening, the focus is entirely on the speaker. Instead of waiting for their turn to reply, the listener(s) put aside their perspective, opinions, and ideas for the purpose of fully understanding and appreciating what the speaker is saying. With this type of listening amongst team members, collaboration, connection, and motivation flourish.

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Read more about the article Ziksana @ TedX San Diego

Ziksana @ TedX San Diego

In case you missed us at TEDx San Diego, here is a quick recap.

Five members of the Ziksana Consulting Team– our fearless thought leader and visionary genius Akshay Sateesh, our Research and Development guru Hayden, our savvy and stupendous strategy boss Annie, our epicly awesome designer and get ‘er done champion Courtney, and our captain of content Abbey– hit the streets of San Diego to enliven the time between Ted presenters with playful challenges that identify how people prefer to play.

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