ProDev-5wk Professional Development: Listening Skills

This program explains the importance of active listening and how to use it in a healthcare setting. Copyright 2021, Elsevier Inc., Clinical Skills Essentials Collection, All Rights Reserved

This video illustrates assertive communication skills with clients in a health care setting, presenting strategies for effective communication. It highlights the importance of being able to communicate effectively to the quality of care and explains how aging, disease processes, and other chronic conditions may lead to behavior changes.

This video allows viewers to improve listening ability and capitalize on the benefits of better listening skills. Topics include both the causes and the costs of poor listening habits; an exploration of appreciative, empathic, comprehensive, and critical listening; and specific suggestions to improve listening. Lecture-launching, discussion-provoking, and ideal for in-class showing. (25 minutes)

This important lesson discusses habits and traits that keep us from being good listeners and teaches improved listening skills with the D.R.I.V.E. process. Students learn the benefits of listening and master the skill by Deciding to listen, Reading all stimuli, Investing spare time wisely, Verifying what they hear, and Expending energy. Teach your students how to process the information that goes in one ear, and that information won’t have a chance to escape through the other!. One 42-minute video.

Three listening exercises help students determine how closely they listen to details about a restaurant check, a teacher's instructions, and an appointment time.

A towering figure in the development of experimental and post-war electronic art music, Pauline Oliveros explores the origin of sound with neuroscientist Seth Horowitz. Oliveros is the founder of "Deep Listening," which comes from her childhood fascination with sounds and from her works in concert music with composition, improvisation, and electro-acoustics. She describes “Deep Listening” as a way of listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one's own thoughts as well as musical sounds. Seth S. Horowitz, Ph.D. is a neuroscientist whose work in comparative and human hearing, balance and sleep research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and NASA. He has taught classes in animal behavior, neuroethology, brain development, the biology of hearing, and the musical mind. As chief neuroscientist at NeuroPop, Inc., he applies basic research to real-world auditory applications and works extensively on educational outreach with The Engine Institute, a non-profit devoted to exploring the intersection between science and the arts.

We can process language at 300 to 500 words per minute; however, most people speak around 100 words per minute. The extra brain capacity makes it difficult to manage our attention: Listening is difficult. It's a discipline and a skill and those who have it are more likely to conduct influence, to persuade, and negotiate successfully. Here's why you need to, and how you can: gain influence by listening.

Working in a group can be an extremely helpful and satisfying way of learning. Psychologists have shown how talking about a topic, or working through a problem orally, can help our learning.

“Although interpersonal communication is humanity's greatest accomplishment, the average person does not communicate well. Low-level communication leads to loneliness and distance from friends, lovers, spouses, and children—as well as ineffectiveness at work.”

“Communication skills, no matter how finely structured, cannot be a substitute for authenticity, caring, and understanding. But they can help us express these qualities more effectively than many of us have been able to do in the past.”

Effective leaders create organizational climates that foster superior performance.

Creating climates for performance requires leaders to demonstrate high levels of emotional intelligence (EI)—the capacity to manage one's own emotions and the emotions of others.

Developing EI is a journey demanding a commitment to personal growth and development.