“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.”
Good listening skills are essential to be effective at communication. I believe that acquiring this skill requires great practice. Sharp listening skills enable us to work better in teams and increase productivity. So to improve upon my listening skills, I decided to listen to my friend from high school who is also a sophomore here at the U of I.
About the speaker-
‘Aman Kapur’ is a sophomore ECE major. He was a part of the very first iEFX class (he was in the EI team) and is now an iSA. In fact, he was the one who convinced me to join iEFX. I decided to hear him speak because he has some very fascinating and absorbing knowledge which most people reading this blog would find interesting. He talked about his passion for ‘User Oriented Collaborative Design’ which he came across in ENG298. A part of UOCD is studying and understanding ‘people systems’; everyone in this world is intertwined in a complex social web which is called a people system. Aman talked about how we design the system of developing as mere people in a large system.
The listening techniques that I used –
I equipped myself with a pencil and paper and tried not to concentrate on anything else. I even turned my cell phone to silent mode to focus on the speaker. Also, I planned to ask good, meaningful questions.
I became absolutely engrossed listening to Aman talking about ‘The Design’ (That’s what he calls it) because I found the topic to be very interesting. Here’s a brief summary of what he told me and what I learnt –
We engineers live in a realm of binary where there are only facts and no opinions. Unlike this, people systems are subjective and have opinions. People are ‘messy’, and in fact “people’s Brownian motion is definitive of their existence”. At the heart if this people system is irrationality. There is a constant battle between our hearts and minds. This explains why entrepreneurs make that leap or why we joined iEFX, etc. This irrationality leads to a constant frenzy and throwing of ideas and makes this system constantly interactive and dynamic. Another key characteristic of this system is intrinsic motivation (This is mentioned in Dan Pink’s book ‘Drive’). All of us have this drive to do something constantly and feel this need to go beyond what we have been confined to. Equality too plays an important role here. For example, an international student in a university has little understanding of foreign culture. Both the international and local students have to ignore their inhibitions to come to the same level and truly understand each other. Once this happens, there is this open fluent communication line that opens up between the people and system. Basically, people are quanta’s of energy in a sea of irrationality, motivation, dynamism and equality which leads to this constant interplay of overflowing energy. This gives rise to the growth and development of the people and the system as a whole. His advice to me was to try to engage in people systems more because it would help me grow, develop and question better and that’s when I would be able to stretch my boundaries.
I feel that I did pretty well listening to him but I could have asked better questions. I did not ask many questions mainly because I got really engaged in the subject. Also, noting down some key points also helped me to remember most of what he talked about. From this experience I learnt that listening well helps you to understand people better. Listening carefully to someone brings them closer to you. Also, people love to have their thoughts and ideas heard. Listening well enables you to learn a lot more than you usually would. I tried to be a better listener and it has also helped me do better in my ECE class. Moreover, I decided to take ENG 298 next semester because I found it to be very fascinating.
[PS: I decided I’d share this interesting info that I came across with everyone –
On author Dan Pink’s website, he says that an MBA degree is all about these four words: “Talk less, listen more”. Makes complete sense to me!
http://www.danpink.com/archives/2010/10/the-four-word-mba
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