Now let's take a look at listening filters. When we're processing information, our brains process each new piece of information through filters that have developed since childhood. Typically, we're not aware of the influences that personal filters can have unintended messages. In other words, your subconscious is affecting how you process information. Take a look at the following list. Any and all of these things can affect how you process new information, memories, beliefs, attitudes, strong feeling, expectations, assumptions, values, interests, past experiences, images, both past and present images, fiscal environment and prejudices, to improve your communication skills recognize your own filters and their effect on your listening Be aware of the filters of others also and aware of the impact that that that those filters have on messages.

Let's look at a lack of interest. lack of interest by the listener is interpreted by the speaker as a lack of interest in them as a person. Listening is committing suicide, you will get something of value out of every conversation. Once you determine why you are not interested, you can correct the problem. So think about a few things. Are you feeling ill or tired?

Are you distracted by unrelated personal or work problems? Are you hungry? Those things can make you feel not interested right? They can be dragging your attention away and have you focused on other things. preconceived ideas and thoughts. preconceived ideas and thoughts are almost always present.

When you're dealing with a familiar topic or person. Think of anything that is familiar to you, you will not be able to not Have a preconceived idea about it right? If you already have familiarity with it, or experience with it, you're going to have preconceived ideas about it. So the tendency is to selectively listen for what you expect to hear. We naturally screen out things that don't meet our expectations. So we don't even realize that we're not hearing it because we're filtering it out without even knowing it.

So prior topic, knowledge can have some benefits. And those benefits are things like, it helps you to formulate intelligent questions on the subject. And it also may facilitate the communication if you understand the language of the communicator. However, there are some hindrances to prior topic knowledge as well. And that's that you may not reconfirm specifics that you believe You understand, right if you're the listener, and you're already familiar with the topic, there may be some things that you're thinking, yeah, I know how this works, right? Know this or I know that and because you think you know it, you don't ask about it.

And then you may not probe define differences between this specific situation and the one in which you're familiar with, right. So there could be some variables, but you won't even be looking for them. keeping an open mind is critical to eliciting requirements that are clear and complete. You can't let that prior knowledge hinder you from asking questions and being open to new ideas. Thinking of responses during the conversation. An accurate response to a speaker's message is a response to his or her total communication.

A shared or common topic of a discussion may trigger thinking of a response during the conversation. The formulation of that response in your mind causes you to lose the rest of the discussion because you're no longer focused on it. So try to stay open until you hear the entire thought that's coming from that person. And then paraphrase back to them what they said to be sure you heard it all. And if you think that you're having trouble with that, if you know that you're having issues with thinking about responses during conversations, try taking notes whenever you can do that, because taking notes helps to keep you focused on what's being said, rather than starting to think of responses. Finishing statements for others will diminish their desire to communicate.

They don't want to continue to talk to you if you're going to consistently interrupt them and try to answer or try to finish their statements for them. So try these things for breaking that habit. Listen for periods and question marks. Every verbal message contains what we call audible punctuation. So wait for those pauses to compose an appropriate response rather than interrupting them mid sentence. Drink water if your mouth is If you're drinking something, then you can't talk right?

That will help you to not speak up. If you find yourself getting ready to do that, take a drink of water. So always keep a bottle or a glass of water with you count to three. So yeah, and you find yourself getting ready to interrupt somebody, count to three, and even after they finish talking count to three. That gives you a chance to make sure that the person is actually finished talking, and will allow you to gather your thoughts to formulate a better response as well. use gestures eye contact and nodding of your head to help the speaker get to conclusion right let them know that you are listening that you do understand by using those gestures.

Are you a good listener? analysts that are good listeners should demonstrate great flexibility in resolving disagreements and conflicts. make decisions based on a solid foundation of facts and data and avoid reactionary shoot from the hip conclusions. They should part Pay intelligently and effectively in conversations, be motivated to learn, practice and reinforce their active listening skills. Display high self confidence and self assurance by listening effectively be as focused on their communication partners message as they are on their own. So again, really paying attention and listening to what the other person is saying.

And you should be able to successfully control those listening barriers that affect your reception of the message that's being told. You also want to make sure that you use first names of people in meetings when you're talking to them and make sure that you maintain eye contact. maintaining eye contact does not mean staring at somebody, right? It's you have eye contact, you look away, you look back again, but also using their name is really powerful and keeping their attention as well.