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What Great Listeners Actually Do

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Re: What Great Listeners Actually Do

#101

Post by TeMPOraL »

adrianN wrote: post #99
TeMPOraL wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which kind of describes a lot of discussions on the Internet - people pattern-matching what they see/hear to cached thoughts in their brains, and replying to those cached thoughts instead of to what was actually said.

Not only on the Internet, I'm afraid.

I believe so too, but I couldn't come up with an obvious example from meatspace when typing my comment, so I decided to mention only the on-line variation of this phenomenon, which should be familiar to everyone here.

Re: What Great Listeners Actually Do

#102

Post by ricksplat »

teawrecks wrote: post #83
TeMPOraL wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which kind of describes a lot of discussions on the Internet - people pattern-matching what they see/hear to cached thoughts in their brains, and replying to those cached thoughts instead of to what was actually said.

Yeah, in computing, a cache is a hardware or software component that stores data so future requests for that data can be served faster.

when referring to human mind these terms describe a similar phenomenon:

Salience: facts are more prominent from either highlighting or frequency.

Priming: Recently noted topics may be recalled with less effort.

Recency: Memories from more recent times are more readily accessible.

Re: What Great Listeners Actually Do

#103

Post by andrepd »

pizza wrote: post #41
solipsism wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brain is massively parallel, your analysis seems to assume 0 parallelism.

True; but one way I can get around this is that the strategies don't all require the same underlying brain architecture requirements. For instance number 1 doesn't even require a brain. Other than that, doesn't my analysis, concerning only the order of steps that must occur in aggregate per algorithm, sorta work out regardless of parallelism? Or do you mean that a multi-state computational brain could do a collection…

I think it's not even remotely productive to make these wild assumptions about how the brain works. We know very little about the workings of the brain. It's very probable that this sort of analysis has almost no correlation to what's actually happening in the brain.

Re: What Great Listeners Actually Do

#107

Post by PakG1 »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #89
PakG1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either you frequently deal with very not nice people, or you for some reason have negative assumptions about those around you. I'd like to assure you that there are many people out there who use repeating back what other people say (a critical component of active listening) to sincerely verify whether they've understood someone correctly, as well as validate the idea that they are indeed listening.

I repeat what people say all the time, especially if I am asked a complex question to make sure I understand. A lot of people get annoyed at me.

Honestly, I've found (only in my experience, not trying to make a blanket statement) that people who get easily annoyed aren't very easy to work with. The question then becomes whether their technical skills are good enough to disregard their lack of people skills. Sometimes, it's not worth it and you try to move on to a different situation if that person is a mainstay for the team. I've found that on really good teams, these types of people are mostly non-existent.

I don't doubt that there are teams out there filled with these types of people who magically understand each other and are always on the same page as if they had some sort of hive mind. I've heard of them, and it gets described as "good chemistry". I've just never experienced one of those teams myself where everyone can read the minds of other team members. For more average people, communication is a really important skill, and that includes not being annoyed by simple questions. Mind you, I can easily be annoyed by simple questions too. It's not like I'm good at this stuff either.

Re: What Great Listeners Actually Do

#108

Post by throwanem »

cammil wrote: post #93

My take on listening: https://letmeexplainyou.wordpress.com/2016/08/17/how-to-list... TL;DR / Summary: Listening is innate Listening is not an active skill. Practicing it as such diminishes your ability to truly listen. Listening is improved through improving your own peace of mind One’s peace of mind is improved by doing good things. E.g. completing chores, being nice to people, doing things that reduce your regrets…

I mean, I hear where you're coming from and I'm not going to say you're wrong, but this is like saying that endurance training is unnecessary because humans are innately able to run marathons.

Re: What Great Listeners Actually Do

#109

Post by kijin »

The six levels suggested in the article could also serve as a guide for speakers.

If you're trying to convey important information and the listener just doesn't seem to get it, ask yourself whether you are expecting them to engage in a higher, more demanding level of listening than they are currently able to.

For example, the article says that 80% of what most people try to communicate occur at Level 4: body language. But if you can convey at least some of that information verbally, you'll be able to achieve similar results even if the listener is only at Level 3. This is especially useful if the listener is on the other side of a phone call or an internet forum.

Re: What Great Listeners Actually Do

#110

Post by pizza »

amelius wrote: post #98
pizza wrote: post #35

The computational complexity varieties of listening: Let n be the number of things the other is talking about (tricky to define a "thing" but, whatever?, use a consistent thing metric) - O(1) listening: ignoring/may as well not be there - reading your phone while the other talks to you - O(n) listening: loading their information into your brain while they talk - e.g. repeating back to them, nodding to salient points…

I find it a bit odd you categorize methods of listening by computational complexity, rather than by the method itself. Also, the brain is not a sequential machine. And different algorithms can be used to achieve the same effect. For example: - O(n^2) listening: cross-comparing all the things they've said for informational pairings Who says this can't be done in O(n log n)?

I guess I used complexity as a proxy for involvement. And of course the brain isn't a sequential machine - reaction times, voxel fMRI analysis, and lesion or connector studies show that consciousness is a network phenomenon. That said holding in one's mind the illusion (value as determined by observer..) of a list of instructions isn't so far off from how I imagine many would choose to describe the mind-feel of their particular process when it comes to listening? And if the illusion breaks down because the brain has lower lower bounds than whatever non-materialist a priori wishful thinking one might expect from mental algorithms, then, that's nice I guess or something?

I think I just wrote it to induce my intuition in others, but you're right in saying that there's no proof that a brain operates with the same atomic instructions or architecture as I've pulled out of thin air above..

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