Active Listening Standards

Over the course of the semester I have learned and grown remarkably in my listening and leaderships skills. EDPS 315 has been an extremely beneficial course over the semester and one of the most important classes that I have taken thus far in my educational career. Going into the course I did not think that it would have made this much of an impact on my life but I have seen myself grown as a person more in this class than any of my other courses. Unlike my other classes that are specifically directed to my major, like chemistry and biology classes, that teach you book smarts, this class has taught me important street smart skills that are applicable in my professional and personal relationships. Over the course of the semester I have seen
EDPS has shaped me into being a compassionate, thoughtful, and honest active listener to my friends, family, and coworkers. I thought that I knew what it meant to be an active listener but until I learned to skills and practiced it, I learned how much room I had for improvement. The book that taught me the most about active listening throughout this course is, “The Lost Art of Listening,” by Michael Nichols. What I took away, and use most from the entire book is that the heart of listening is the suspend your own needs (Nichols 2009). Genuine listening demands taking an interest in the speaker and what he or she has to say and not thinking about what your next comeback is going to be (Nichols 2009). Doing so really opens your ears and mind up to fully listen to what the underlying message that the speaker is trying to get across because most of the time there is a deeper meaning to what they are saying. I also realized that even when you do have the opportunity to talk, still holding back your feeling to dive deeper into the other person thought process can be more beneficial to the conversation to make it more effective because you are showing to that person that you value what they are saying and want to learn more. That then in turn can lead to them valuing your opinion and create a safe environment to not hold back your thoughts and feelings. I have practiced this skill
I think that hardest part of difficult conversations for me is not so much the conversation in itself it is the anticipation of the conversation. Whenever I need to have a difficult conversation I get so nervous about how the conversation is going to go or scared how the other person is going to react that I usually do not even have the conversation. I make preconceptions about the situation and usually scare myself off. I either just ignore the problem or just submerge it and try to forget about it which both are probably worse off than just having the conversation in itself. From the book, “Difficult Conversation,” by Stone, Patton, and Heen, I learned the stages of going about a difficult conversation of order for it to be effective. The stages of a difficult conversation include: to prepare by walking through the three conversations, checking my purposes and deciding whether to raise an issue, to start the conversation from the third story, exploring their story and yours, and then finish with problem solving (Stone, Patton, & Heen 2010). I still need to fine tune and work on my effective use of all these stages but it is helpful in my growth to now know these stages to approach and better deal with a difficult conversation. Since learning these skills I have not had too many difficult conversations in my life in order to practice these but I am confident that when the