Here's the last exercise I'd like you to take on in the pursuit of becoming a brilliant conscious listener. It's called rasa, which is the Sanskrit word for juice, but in this context, it stands for receive, appreciate, summarize, ask. These are, I think, enormously important stages of any conversation. So this is kind of reciprocal. And this is very powerful for making sure that you leave somebody feeling heard and understood in a conversation. And it will help them to listen to you remember, the better you listen to somebody else, the better they will listen to you.

I think russer is a really strong way of making that happen. So the art of rasa receive what do I mean by that? Well, that's about body language, partly facing the person Speaking, making eye contact with them. The dance of the eyes, at least in most Western cultures, is that the speaker will be looking around as they speak and just check back from time to time to make sure that the listener is listening, while the listener will tend to be absolutely looking at the speaker throughout the whole thing. Now, that's not always the case. But we do all know the frustration of when we're speaking checking back and seeing that the listener is not looking at us indeed is looking at something else, which tends to give rise to the are you listening question?

So, if we want to give somebody the respect the grace of really listening to them and letting them know we are icontact is very important as is your body facing them. Ideally leaning slightly forward, especially if you're sitting down, lolling back in the chair tends to indicate at best, disinterested, not uninterested. All together. Eye contact body language facial expression also can help with receiving looking open, interested as opposed to grumpy, negative eye rolling or any other indications of disconnection. The first day of rasa is appreciate making those little noises. Oh, really?

Ah, those are the noises which really oil conversation, especially if you're not face to face. I mean, I'm terrible at that on the telephone. I tend to sit in silence listening and people sometimes say you still there. And I am listening attentively. But I have forgotten to make the little noises showing that I am not so easy if you're doing interviews, for example, on the radio where it's customary not to do that. If you're face to face, then you can add facial expressions.

Again, eyebrow raises or nods or smiles or head bobbing or whatever it might be. That absolutely shows the person that you're with them. you're responding to what they're saying and you appreciating it. The essence of roster is a wonderful word I think. So I actually want to form a society for the preservation of the word. So because it's a very significant word in a conversation, if you use so judiciously, it's like closing doors in the corridor of the conversation behind you.

You can say, so, what you've said, is this, is that right? Yep. Okay, let's go on to the next one. If you're in a meeting, and you have a CIO person, it's very useful. So what we've all agreed is that now we can move on to this. If you don't have a CIO person in the meeting, it can go round and round and take a very, very long time.

You know, what they say about meetings, places where we take minutes and waste hours. Meetings can be like that without a summarizer. So person, you can do that throughout a conversation, checking in on facts. So do I I understand that you've said this, and this is your theory or this is your proposition. You can also check in on feelings. So how did that make you feel?

So how are you feeling now? The word so incidentally means therefore, or that it's a synonym for those things. And the reason I want to form a society for its preservation is it has become gratuitously misused as an opening gambit. And you get conversations like What's your name? So i'm john. I'm sorry, you're john, because I just asked you, or were you john, before?

I've even seen TED Talks where the person walks on stage and the very first word they said, so what so what what? It's not following anything. So means therefore, and it is a crucial word in making conversations go well, please use it wisely. The a of rasa is asked, asking open questions which are what how, when who which Why? Why I've said take care in this slide simply because it can be quite intimidating to go, why did you do that? or Why didn't you do this?

Those can be taken as judgments or criticisms. Just take a little care when you're doing the way, although motivation is very fundamental, and it's important to understand it, asking clean questions, and we will come back to Clean Language is a very powerful tool as well, as long as you know what you're doing. leading questions can be very effective in selling, for example, where you want to steer people in a particular direction. A clean question would be What did you have for breakfast? a leading question would be Did you have the extra breakfast? So you're steering people in certain directions.

You might give an alternative clothes for example, would you like product A or product B? That's a very leading question. Be conscious of the questions you're using. When you're asking, ask questions at the beginning and the middle at the end everywhere because they really show interest and engagement. So my exercise for you with rasa is to take it on for a week. Not with all the other exercises.

I do recommend you do these one at a time and get good at them and then move on to the next one. Try rasa for a week and just see the difference it makes in the people that you're speaking with. If you receive appreciate, summarize and ask in those conversations,