Effective Speakers are GREAT Listeners!

Do you know how sharks find their prey? They do this using sensory receptors found along the sides of their bodies. These receptors perform much like our ears. They can feel vibrations or movement in the water around them with these receptors and respond to the message received.

SpeechSharks (that is you) also use sensory receptors to navigate communication waters to detect and gather information from what we hear. We listen! Some of us are better listeners than others. You will also find that at times, you may be a better listener than you are at other times. What we hear often is determined by the amount of distractions that interfere with content being delivered. Instead of hearing a full sentence spoken to us, we might only hear bits and pieces of that sentence and decode the message into something that is not what the speaker intended. It happens all of the time. Business deals, marriages, and friendships are often broken because of this breakdown in communication. Become a better listener and you will be a more effective employee, a better marriage partner, and a more reliable friend.

Listening is quite different from hearing. Without any effort, you can hear something; however, it takes a conscious effort to listen. Hearing is a physical process that occurs as sound waves vibrate against eardrums and then that sound moves to our brain where it is decoded into a message or response. Effective speakers are great listeners! They must listen to find out what is needed by their potential audience and then they go the extra mile to research the main points within the content to provide their audience with credible information.

Are you a good Listener? Then, YOU must be a SpeechShark!