Excellent post from Scott Adams today that talks about active listening:

Prior to the Dale Carnegie course I believed that conversation was a process by which I could demonstrate my cleverness, complain about what was bugging me, and argue with people in order to teach them how dumb they were. To me, listening was the same thing as being bored.  I figured it was the other person’s responsibility to find some entertainment in the conversation. That wasn’t my job. Yes, I was that asshole. But I didn’t know it. The good news is that once I learned the rules of conversation, I was socially reborn. It turns out that active listening is more fun than talking, although sometimes you need to guide the conversation toward common interests.

Where else can you learn about and practice active listening than at Toastmasters?

Update:

Scott has an additional post on active listening.  I find it useful to think of it this way.  If you talk, you only learn what you are saying.  If you listen, you learn what someone else is saying.

From a fortune cookie:

The eyes believe themselves, the ears believe other people.

Develop your listening skills to be as good as your observation skills.

Question 9: How do you develop good listening skills?

By keeping your mouth closed!

There are a number of ways you can develop listening skills related to speech evaluations.  The first and foremost way is to join Toastmasters and start doing speech evaluations.  Let’s assume though that you are already a member of Toastmasters.  How can you further develop your evaluation skills?

The best way is to do speech evaluations – when you are not that speakers evaluator.  Why pass up opportunities to evaluate?  You actually get more feedback this way.  If you have no role, then you need to be evaluating all of the speakers.  Then, once you have done that, evaluate each of the assigned evaluators.  Finally, evaluate the general evaluator too!  Don’t just sit there twiddling your thumbs!!!  For a 3-speaker meeting that is 7 extra roles you just took care of.  For 6 of these roles you can compare what you wrote against what the assigned evaluator said.

If you do have a role, then I suggest the same thing.  Doing two roles such as grammarian and evaluator will seem hard to begin with, but as you do it more, you will develop your listening muscles to the point where you can do it with ease.  Your listening skills improve and as a result, your evaluation skills improve too.

You can also evaluate other speeches.  There are plenty on YouTube.  There are also many available from Toastmasters on DVD.  Finally, you can evaluate speeches on TV – both formal speeches and also from regular TV shows.

Take all the opportunities available to you to really develop one of the best skills available to you.

There have been a number of critiques of Steve Jobs’ presentations.  He is indeed a master presenter.  The critiques focus on how to emulate his style.

If you dig a little deeper, these critiques also provide information to help an evaluator deliver more powerful evaluations.

I will use this article by Carmine Gallo as an illustration.

When a speaker uses meaningless words such as “maybe”, “I think”, “well, you know”, “kinda”, etc. – point these out to the speaker.  Note what aspect of the speech the speaker talked about when they used these words and suggest that they might need more conviction around those areas.  Suggest words to use such as “awesome”, “incredible”, “exciting”, etc.

If you become lost in the speech you are evaluating, don’t just tell the speaker you were confused.  Instead, suggest some ways they can add structure to the speech.  There’s an excellent example in Carmine’s article.

See if the speaker is illustrating a problem and selling the solution.  Even an informative speech can illustrate the price of ignorance and the benefit of knowledge.

Lastly, Carmine lists 4 (ironically) ways to paint a picture in a speech:

1. Stick to the rule of three
2. Use personal stories
3. Keep it visual
4. Rehearse

Each of these ways of painting a picture can be used as the basis of an evaluation.  These ways take a speech and make it 3-dimensional.  A speech that comes alive will be one that will be remembered.  Highlight this advantage to your speaker and then suggest some concrete ways they can paint their picture.

Look deeper into the articles discussing speaking or presentations skills.  Don’t assume that they are just for people wanting to be the next head of Apple Inc.  A lot of effort went into these articles.  Spend some time looking over them to see what you can learn.

To obtain an insightful understanding of protégés, mentors need to have a personal relationship with them. [...] This means that excellent mentors are accessible and available.  But they also need to exhibit the human skills of listening, caring, communicating openly, and giving constructive feedback.  To conclude, taking the time to truly know protégés is arguably the most important of the mentoring virtues.

- Elements of Mentoring by W. Brad Johnson & Charles R. Ridley.