Listening for Personal Development

The International Listening Association, cited by Hybels and Weaver (2001:64), defines listening as “the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken and/or non-verbal messages”. Listening goes beyond being an important communication skill, it is a way of life. Most of our conscious and unconscious communication efforts are geared toward listening. A research reveals that listening takes 53% of our communication activities, reading 17%, while speaking and writing constitute 16% and 14% respectively (Hybels and Weaver, 2001:70).

However, this statistics notwithstanding, it is rather pathetic that most people have a poor listening habit. They listen without really listening. Lamenting on this anomaly, Benson (undated:155) says:

The art of listening is an essential but oft overlooked element of good communication. Genuine listening has become one of the endangered species. God gave each of us two ears and one mouth – perhaps he intended that we use them proportionally.

 The tendency common to most people is to egospeak, a term which communication experts coined to describe people’s desire to listen to themselves more than anyone else:

Egospeak is thinking of what you’re going to say next while another person is trying to talk to you.  Jumping in before, or on, the other person’s last word. Constantly trying to top the other person’s story (Benson, undated:155).

In similar vein, Beck et al (2002:12) distinguish between hearing (which is what most people really do) and listening. They note that:        

It is useful to make a distinction between hearing and listening.  Most people can hear, in that they can receive and distinguish sound within a specific frequency range. Hearing, however, is a passive activity. It is something that happens to us, rather than something that we do.  On the other hand, listening is active… ‘People hear but do not listen’. In a class or lecture it is very likely you will hear the words being spoken. You may not necessarily listen to them.

With this background on listening, let us now proceed to see how it can be utilized for personal development at different levels.

Listening for Mental and Emotional Development

A good listening habit is one of the indications of good breeding. Since the mental faculty, the Central Processing Unit (CPU) of the body can only retain and process the message or information inputted into it - as well as be enriched by it – it behoves every individual to cultivate a good listening habit by:

§  Paying attention and showing interest in the message being transmitted

§  Indicate to the speaker if he is understanding the message or not, and

§  Showing how he is reacting to the message by non-verbal cues (Beck et al, 2002).

The first way to use the listening skill to enhance your mental faculty and ensure a wholesome being is by being selective about what you listen to.  There is no better way to keep your mind healthy than to choose what you listen to. Knowledge is the food of the soul, just as the body thrives on viands and adornments.  However, it is not all the information that one is exposed to that he should listen to, for as the saying goes, ‘garbage in, garbage out’.  What you feed your brain is what you will express in speech or behaviour.

So, the first rule for using listening to achieve mental and emotional development is to choose what you listen to.  Platitudes and other forms of debased communication do nothing good to the soul.  They must therefore not be entertained, otherwise, the mind will process them, deposit them in the mental and emotion realm, and the man will live them eventually.

Capturing this phenomenon in another words, Allen (1902:4-5), in his timeless classic, says:

‘Men themselves are makers of themselves’ by virtue of the thoughts which they choose and encourage…(The) mind is the master weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance...

As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them. This applies equally to those acts called “spontaneous” and “unpremeditated” as to those which are deliberately executed

Another way to enhance your mental and emotional capacity through listening is by attending seminars, lectures, workshops, conferences, and other intellect-simulating fora. By so doing, you will continually cultivate your mind, widen your horizon, and school your emotion, which is at best erratic.

What is Personal Development?

We cannot attempt a definition of the term Personal Development without first taking a look at the key word “development”. So what is development? Adesanoye (1995:4) citing Mabogunje, describes development as ‘a many sided process. At the level of the individual, it implies increased skill and capacity, greater freedom, creativity, self-discipline, responsibility and material well-being’.

Taking a cue from this, we can then define personal development as a conscious, disciplined and sustained series of investment in the self through the acquisition of knowledge and skills, as well as applying the acquired knowledge and skills for enhanced lifestyle. 

Areas of Personal Development

The development of the self is as composite an entity as the nature of man himself. It consists of various interdependent forms of human, which all work together to produce a better person when cultivated, or result in a debased existence when ignored. These different aspects of man that need cultivation for development are his:

§  Spiritual state

§  Mental state

§  Emotional state

§  Physical state

§  Social status, and his

§  Profession or vocation

Before we go ahead to consider how communication skills can be used to develop these different aspects of man, it will be appropriate to examine them briefly.

 

The Spiritual State of Man

Man is a tripartite being. He is mainly made up of a spirit, a soul, and a body. The spiritual side of man has to do with the state of his spirit in relation to God, his Maker. However, it is appropriate to state at this point that due to my subscription to the Christian faith, all my discourse on the spiritual state of man will be treated from the Christian perspective and the Christian scriptures, the Holy Bible.

 

The Mental State of Man

The Mental state of man is one of the two components of his soul. The soul, which is said to be the real man, comprises the mental faculty and the emotions. The mental faculty involves the mind (thoughts bank) as well as the intellectual state of man.

 

The Emotional State of Man

This is the second side of man’s soul. The emotion, according to Hargie (1997:38) has three main components; “the direct conscious experiences or feeling of emotion, the physiological processes that accompany emotions, and the observable behavioural actions used to express emotion”. In simple terms, emotion comprises the feelings and desires of man in their expressed and unexpressed form.

The Social State of Man

This is the aspect of man that describes his relationship with people. Hargie (1997:10), citing Combs and Slaby, defines social skill as ‘the ability to interact with others in a given social context in specific ways that are socially acceptable or valued and at the same time personally beneficial mutually beneficial or beneficial primarily to others’.

 

The Professional/Vocational Aspect of Man

This is usually an offshoot of all the other sides of man as they affect his job or career. The professional state of man has to do with his competence and performance at work. In other words, this can be described by his competence and performance in relation to his job or tasks.

Having thus established the foregoing, let us now go on to consider how the four communication skills can be used to enhance these aspects of man to attain a maximized life style.

What is Communication?

Different scholars have proffered various definitions to describe communication. However, for the purpose of this study we will make do with Hybels’ and Weaver’s (2001:6) proposition that “Communication is any process in which people share information, ideas and feelings. It involves not only the spoken and written word but also body language, personal mannerisms, and style - anything that adds meaning to a message”.

Going ahead to stress the importance of communication in daily existence, they also say that:    

It is vital in all areas of life. You use it to persuade; to influence relationships, to inform and to share, to discover and uncover information... Communication, and how to communicate, is so important to daily life that it spawned [sic] an entire industry of books, articles, and seminar explaining how to do it better.

To live…is to communicate. To communicate effectively is to enjoy life more (2001:5-6).

Communication Skills

There are a number of skills involved in the art of communicating. Beck, Bennet and Wall (2002:125) highlight a general list of communication skills as:

§  Speaking, listening, empathizing

§  Reading and observing

§  Identifying and using sources of information

§  Planning and structuring a presentation

§  Oral presentation skills

§  Dealing with questions

§  Reviewing own performance

§  Using IT to communicate

However, in this discourse we shall focus only on the four major communication skills, which are also known as the four language arts. They are: 

§  Listening

§  Speaking

§  Reading, and

§  Writing

Getting and Becoming By Babatunde Oladele

Man is innately selfish in varying degrees, depending on the extent of\; hence, the focus on what I am getting as opposed to what I am giving.

should The This is an anomaly, Rohn (2005a) notes that:

What you become is far more important than what you get. The important question to ask on the job is not, “What am I getting?” Instead, you should ask, “What am I becoming?“ Getting and becoming are like Siamese twins: what you have today you have attracted by becoming the person you are today.

…. Income rarely exceeds personal development. Sometimes income takes a Iucky jump, but unless you learn to handle the responsibilities that come with it, it will usually shrink back to the amount you can handle….

It is hard to keep that which has not been obtained through personal development.

With this background on the importance of personal development as an essential requisite to enhance one’s lot in life, let us proceed to examine the inherent potentials there are in communication skills to achieve personal development; and how we as communication scholars can utilize these skills to develop ourselves and ultimately build a life worth celebrating.  The objectives of this paper therefore are:

§  The draw our attention to the sacrosanct and utilitarian nature of communication.

§  To acquaint us with the different areas of personal development there are

§  To examine how we can use communication skills to explore the various forms of personal development training to enhance ourselves.

Meanwhile, it will be apposite at this point to define some key terms that we will come across in this paper to aid our understanding.

The Importance of Self Development By Babatunde Oladele

Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound. - James Allen.

The desire to become great and a celebrity is common to all human right from the time they become conscious of self. Dale Carnegie, in his best-selling classic, describes this as the “deepest urge in human nature.”

While the majority of humankind nurse this, usually unexpressed, craving to become larger than life and be revered by fellow men, only a few individuals really choose to advance beyond desiring to pay the price required to build a great life.

The price for greatness is a disciplined and sustained investment in oneself, otherwise called personal development. Jim Rohn, a renowned business philosopher and self-development guru, once quotes his former employer and mentor to have advised him thus: “if you want to be wealthy and happy... learn to work harder on yourself than on your job.” While this may sound absurd, it is good counsel. The general practice is that most people expend their time and energy the other way round; working more and often on the job - in order to earn so much - while devoting little or no attention to improving themselves.

As normal as this may look, it is a misnomer. While it is important to be dedicated to your work and put in a good shift above the average mark, it is equally essential not to neglect the regular cultivation of your mind. Every individual who has a sense of self should have a self-development programme he or she is observing to unleash his/her potential, sharpen latent skills and bring out the champion within.

Not all of us are destined for the stage. Therefore, drawing out the champion within you does not necessarily mean that you will become a maestro with millions of followers. Your own niche may be to a few dozens of people, it doesn’t make you lesser than someone with a global fan base. The important thing is to develop yourself such that you are both useful and relevant to your world.

A personal development programme is nothing complex or far-fetched. It can be as simple as following a schedule of conscious reading, listening, speaking, and/or writing, as well as putting to practice what you are learning in the process of those exercises. It is important you are aware about your objectives for embarking on these exercises so that you can be able to track the results. You should also have a schedule for what you do, rather than merely follow your whims by doing them when you feel like it.

To Your Success!

13 Tips on How to be a Star Performer (Part 10)

13. The God Factor

Star performers know the place of God. You remember the story of Herod in the Bible, he talked and people started hailing him as God; then, suddenly, he was snuffed out. You have to know your source; star performers know their sources. They know where they recharge their batteries and receive inspiration. Where do you unwind, where do you get inspiration from? What makes you gel? These can be answered by knowing yourself (discussed in the first tip) and knowing your source.

Life is full of ups and downs; so there are many instances when both productive and idle people will experience highsor lows. It is the way each individual responds to these varying situations in life that usually separates them. When productive people face issues that are beyond them, they know where to turn because they know they must deliver results. The loafers, on the other hand, will merely cave in and turn back saying it is difficult because they do not think that they have to deliver. So, even as the loafer also has a source, he/she doesn’t draw much from there because it doesn’t seem to matter.

Star performers know their source and they draw strength and inspiration from there to carry on because they are committed to optimising their performance.

13 Tips on How to be a Star Performer (Part 9)

12. Self-discipline

All the highlighted pointers that make a star performer are a matter of discipline.After you have taken note of all the points, if you are not disciplined enough to put them into practice, they will all filter away. Self-discipline is what gets you started and keeps you going even when you don’t feel like it. In fact, one constant principle from all the books I have read on success is self-discipline.

Star performers are self-disciplined people, they don’t take nonsense from themselves, and they don’t take it from people either. They are harder on themselves than they are on people. They are driven by results; they don’t like stories and excuses. There can be a million and one reasons why things cannot or should not be done. Star performers only look for one reason why it should be done and they go ahead to do it despite the odds.

The workplace is about results and not reasons why things should not or cannot be done. People desire to associate with success, but it is not easy to be successful; there is no overnight success, the person who becomes successful has been paying prices that others have not been paying. That is why you just see him soaring above others, it is not by magic. Yes, God’s favour is key; and God will indeed favour you, as He has promised to bless the work of your hands. But if your hand is not doing much, what will be available for God to bless? It’s what you are doing that God blesses, He will not bless what has not been done.

We have passed that stage when the earth was void and it was without form, we are now in the realm of tangibles. He says,‘I will bless the works of your hands’, but if your hand is not doing something and He blesses nothing; nothing will start to multiply into more nothing.

Achievements come by self-discipline.You know we don’t like to be disciplined and we don’t like to discipline ourselves, but we have to be hard on ourselves to make any impact. Internet is a major distraction these days; for us to be focused, we have to limit our use of the internet. For the purpose of clarification, the internet can be a great tool for success, but it depends on what you are doing there. You have to be self-disciplined in your usage and activities on the internet. Star performers are disciplined people.

You usually know disciplined people from the way they talk and conduct themselves. While everyone can give excuses, it is the person that produces results that is celebrated, not story tellers. How many excuse-makers do you know that are successful? Nobody claps for what you plan or intend to do. You only get applauded for what you have done, and it takes discipline to get difficult things done because you have to take tough decisions and be rigorous in your thinking. It is not even easy to think through a process, it takes discipline.