Active Listening

Hear What People Are Really Saying Listening is one of the most important skills you can have. How well you listen has a major impact on your job effectiveness, and on the quality of your relationships with others. We listen to obtain information. We listen to understand. We listen for enjoyment. We listen to learn. Given all this listening we do, you would think we’d be good at it! In fact we’re not. Depending on the study being quoted, we remember a dismal 25-50% of what we hear. That means that when you talk to your boss, colleagues, customers or spouse for 10 minutes, they only really hear 2½-5 minutes of the conversation. Turn it around and it reveals that when you are receiving directions or being presented with information, you aren’t hearing the whole message either. You hope the important parts are captured in your

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Moving Forward Together: Leadership Spotlight

How will the Studio enrich and transform the educational experience of our students? What will they able to do there? The Noel Studio will provide a unique opportunity for EKU students to improve their communication skills. Students frequently encounter assignments that require them to write a paper or to give an individual or group presentation. Most of these assignments require incorporating good information. Rather than go to individual centers that focus on one aspect of the assignment, students will be able to work in the creative environment of the Studio to develop, refine, support, organize, and articulate their ideas. There will be spaces to creatively and tactilely envision and revision their ideas; to video themselves as they practice their presentations; and to find credible and relevant information for their projects. Trained Studio staff will be available to guide students through all of these activities.

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Think what No-one Else Thinks

The Thinker How can you think of things that no-one else thinks of? The answer is by deliberately taking a different approach to the issue from everyone else. There are dominant ideas in every field. The brilliant thinker purposefully challenges those dominant ideas in order to think innovatively. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, who discovered Vitamin C, said, ‘Genius is seeing what everyone else sees and thinking what no-one else has thought.’ If you can identify the standard viewpoint then survey the situation from a different viewpoint you have an excellent chance of gaining a new insight. When Jonas Salk was asked how he invented the vaccine for polio he replied, ‘I imagined myself as a cancer cell and tried to sense what it would be like.’ Ford Motor Corporation asked Edward de Bono, who originated the concept of lateral thinking for some advice on how they could clearly differentiate themselves from their many competitors in car manufacturing. De Bono gave them a very innovative idea. Ford had approached the problem of competing from the point of view of a car manufacturer and asked the question, “How can we make our cars more attractive to consumers?” De Bono approached the problem from another direction and asked the question, “How can we make the whole driving experience better for Ford customers?” His advice was that Ford should buy up car parks in all the major city centers and make them available for Ford cars only. His remarkable idea was too radical for Ford who saw themselves as an automobile manufacturer with no interest in the car parks business.

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Vikram Pandit on risk management

Vikram Pandit is the CEO of Citigroup Source

The Right Brain vs Left Brain test

The Right Brain vs Left Brain test ... do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise? If clockwise, then you use more of the left side of the brain and vice versa. Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.