Dear Friend

In this week’s Letter I would like to invite you to do some honest self-evaluation. It relates to your communication skills.

Since we can easily, albeit unintentionally, overestimate our abilities and skills, I will ask you to rate yourself now, at the outset of this Letter, and then to do so again at the end.

I might add, coming to think about it, that we are also prone to under-valuing ourselves.

It will be interesting, then, for you to see if you wish to increase or downgrade your original ratings when you get to the end of the Letter!

In the middle will be some of my own thoughts as a language skills educator, and a short 5-minute video for you to watch two times, each time with a different task.

I used this video and tasks in my big training group recently (from memory there were 70 participants, and I’ll be doing the same session two more times this coming weekend), and, judging by the extensive feedback, they found this video informative, thought-provoking and really important for their own role as spiritual leaders, as well as in their own personal relationships.

I think it’s essential viewing for all adults, most especially for parents, teachers and all kinds of leaders.

But I also ask you to do the tasks as I present them to you with the video itself. Please do not just watch the video without doing the tasks. The tasks are designed to enhance your viewing and listening experience, to help you engage strategically.

The video comes shortly.

First, evaluate yourself with a score between 0 and 10 for each of the following skills, where zero is utterly useless and 10 is optimally and masterfully brilliant!

As usual, if you are on your own, write your thoughts and answers down to all the upcoming tasks, to utilise the greater clarity of thinking and the power of reflection that writing affords us. But, even better, find a friend or two to do this whole activity with. Especially children!

Okay, so rate yourself now before you read my commentary and watch the video. Give yourself as honest a score out of 10 as you can, for the following aspects of communication:

1. the skill of listening

2. giving and maintaining your full attention to the speaker

3. expressing yourself and your thoughts to others

4. articulating your understandings

5. having strong, healthy, open relationships with others.

We shall return to this self-evaluation at the end.

Once you have rated yourself in the five skills, read on.

Spoken Communication Skills

So first, what are communication skills?

In simple terms, it is two or more human beings connecting with each other through the use of language.

Yes, we can be in communication with ourselves, and yes, we can communicate in non-language ways, but we are concerning ourselves with ordinary communication that forms the basis and bedrock of all communal life in the human world.

We can communicate in writing, as writers and readers, and we can communicate orally, as speakers and listeners. As you will see from the self-rating task, we are focused here on spoken communication. But the principles remain the same in the written form.

A Commentary on Communication Skills

We human beings were created as social animals, social creatures. It means that having relationships with our fellow human beings is an integral aspect of being human.

I go as far to say (generally speaking) that however you experience your life—positively or negatively—is directly related to your skills in initiating, building and maintaining relationships with others.

The ‘others’ may be your family members by birth or by in-laws, friends, neighbours, work colleagues, bosses, underlings, fellow members of a group you are in, compatriots, foreigners, strangers, adults, children, and so on. Anybody at all.

It’s not our focus today, but this very much includes your relationship with your own self. This is clear, for example, when we keep journals or diaries, for we are both writer and reader.

Now, while the bedrock of human life is having relationships with our fellow human beings, the bedrock of these relationships is communication.

For me as a language teacher and an educator of language teachers, and as a much-travelled human being, and as a bookworm since I was a young boy, and as a keen writer since my mid-20s, I will say this as a truism of life:

those who have good communication skills will have the strongest and healthiest relationships with all other human beings, whether they are strangers or people we know; furthermore, skilled communicators lead more harmonious and less stressed lives.

Literally, from my perspective, communication skills are the #1 life skill we need, which underscore all other skills we may need in our life time.

Having good communication skills are essential for us if we wish to

• actually enjoy our life

• feel self-confident and have self-belief

• make friends easily and effortlessly

• navigate the work place without conflict

• face and overcome challenges

• solve problems

• repair conflicts

• prevent conflicts

• do our own learning and researching

• and to engage in a whole host of other aspects of human life.

I will say that good communication skills mean you are i) an attentive, interested, curious listener ii) a confident and articulate speaker, and iii) a compassionate human being who cares about life.

And I will flip that and say that, to the degree that you find you struggle in your relationships, where conflict and argument is rather common, and where avoiding confrontation is common, is the degree to which you are not skilled in listening and speaking.

I will also say this, and it’s super important to dwell upon the meaning I’m conveying to you:

unless, as an adult, you have taken time out to learn a second language in a group setting, with a skilled second language teacher, it’s most unlikely you’ve had any training in the listening skill or in the speaking skill.

Why do I say that?

Because 99% or more of adults experienced a schooling which not only didn’t develop our listening and speaking skills, but actively blocked us all from mastering these two essential life skills. Some say to me that’s the parents’ job, but they didn’t get any training either…

Our schooling has literally trained (conditioned) us all to unnecessarily struggle in our relationships, in our health and wellbeing and in our whole life.

It’s as if Mother Eagle has clipped the wings of Baby Eagle, and now the young eagle cannot fly. Humankind is destroying its own innate intelligence and abilities that the universe gave us to enable and empower us to navigate life with skill and enjoyment.

Learning the Art of Listening and Speaking

Speaking from my own experience, when I accidentally became an English teacher of adults in Bangkok, it quickly became apparent I had to learn my own native language all over again, in order to be able to teach it to my students.

Most of all, I had to enable and empower them to become skilled in understanding others speaking to them in English, and to be understood by others when speaking themselves.

I had to train them to become skilled listeners and skilled speakers by first training myself to be skilled in listening to them and speaking to them such that they could understand me.

Understanding and being understood are the primary purposes of communicating with others.

On my regular trips back to England and down to Australia to catch up with family and friends, and in my new role as an effective and aware listener and speaker, I increasingly came to realise that most native English people’s listening and speaking skills were rather poor!

This, not unnaturally, is not something native speakers will want to attribute to themselves! It is assumed that because it’s our first language we are automatically able to listen and speak. But are we doing so effectively and skilfully, with compassion and connection?

Here is my definition of true communication I present to my language teacher students:

when the listener’s interpreted meaning matches the speaker’s intended meaning, then effective and successful communication has occurred.

Agreement, disagreement, liking what we hear or hating it… this is irrelevant to the art of communication; what matters is that both speaker and listener are focused on the right understanding of the shared message.

At that point, from full understanding and clarity thus far, the co-communicators can then explore each other’s perspectives and understandings further if there is some kind of disagreement, or if they seek to learn more about something or other.

Of course, in a normal conversation, the role of speaker and listener is constantly alternating.

I have noticed a subconscious trait of human beings: we ‘assume’ that our perspective of the world IS the world, and is the way the world is. So when we hear a different perspective, and, lacking effective learning skills (another disastrous fall-out from our inept, anti-human ‘education’), we find that conflict and division and hatred and resentment and all other kinds of negative energies come into our consciousness, resulting in stressful relationships.

The reality is that with 8 billion people there are 8 billion unique perspectives of our world, not one perspective! If we wish to live meaningful, enjoyable and largely conflict-free lives, then the first thing for us to do is realise each person has their own perspective and to hear theirs and share ours in an environment of mutual respect.

To conclude my commentary thus far: wherever we see war, terrorism, violence, conflict, division, hatred, resentment the cause is always a lack of proper communication skills.

In particular the listening skill…

Being a Skilled Listener is the Foundation for Mastering all Communication Skills

We come to the video.

And I really hope you’re not going to give this a miss! It is just five minutes long, and minute for minute, pound for pound, dollar for dollar, it’s extremely valuable and impactful.

Clicking on it on a computer should open it up in a separate tab.

Here are the instructions and tasks for listening to the video, which is called The Art of Listening, and features Simon Sinek, a renowned motivator in the business and entrepreneurship world.

1) Pre-Listening Task

Write down your answers if on your own, or have a discussion with your friend/s before watching the video. This goes for all the subsequent tasks too.

1. Should parents, teachers and leaders of all kinds spend more time speaking or more time listening? Why?

2. What makes for a ‘good’ listener?

3. What do you think the difference between the act of listening and the art of listening is?

2) Listening Tasks

I invite you to watch the video two times. For the first viewing, just give it your maximum attentive listening, no writing or pausing of the video. The second time you can make notes during the video if you wish to, pausing as you choose.

Each listening/viewing has a different task:

Listening 1 Task

What most resonates with you in what Simon talks about, and why?

After the video is finished, write down your answer. Then watch again.

Listening 2 Task

What factors does Simon mention that make up the art of listening?

The purpose of this second listening is to get a more detailed understanding from Simon’s message. You are of course welcome to play it any number of extra times!

Here is the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpnNsSyDw-g&t=1s

3) Post-Listening Task

1. Recount a time you observed somebody showing poor listening skills, whether in person or in media. How did it make you feel at the time? Recount a time you experienced good listening skills in action, which benefitted both listener and speaker. How did it make you feel at the time?

2. Here are some comments under the video, what do you think?!

‘When we talk, we only say what we already know. But when we listen, we learn new things we don't know before.’

‘Valuing a person is ensuring they feel heard, seen, supported, connected and rewarded. From the thousands we've surveyed in workplaces they are desired in that order. Ironically, workplaces offer them in the opposite order.’

‘Listening is the key to a healthy life. This process varies because some humans have been talking over others for far too long, while some other humans need encouragement to listen to their beautiful inner voice and speak.’

4) Reflection Task

1. In what ways did you benefit from doing the various tasks to go with the video?

2. How did watching the video two (or more) times help you access a greater understanding of the content than the more usual single viewing that is the norm?

3. What specific actions will you take to improve your own listening skills?

Reevaluating your Communication Skills!

I hope you gained a lot from my listening skills activity, which is a full example of Task-Based Learning in action, which engages learners and asks them for their own thoughts and input by raising their awareness of what is to be learned. I have used TBL in my classrooms all my teaching life. With my teacher students I teach them about it, while doing it and embodying it! It’s a full immersive learning experience.

There are many differences between TBL and the usual school experience. One of the main differences is that TBL is skills-focused; it develops students’ learning, language and communication skills, which is truly transformational and empowering.

So let’s get back to the five skills I asked you to give yourself a rating for at the outset of this Letter.

Have a look at the scores you gave yourself, and having now heard what Simon Sinek had to say about the ‘art of listening’ and done the accompanying tasks, decide if you’d like to keep the same scores or adjust them up or down accordingly.

You are most welcome to let me know what you thought of this Task-Based Learning Letter on the art of listening!

Cheerio

Philip