Behavior #4 – Listen actively
Jan 22
From The Art of Effective Evaluation, an examination of the 10 behaviors of an Effective Evaluator.
The Coordinator Guide has a number of points for this behavior:
- Be physically and mentally alert
- Empathize with the speaker
- Find areas of interest
- Summarize
- Listen with your eyes as well as your ears
- Take notes
They are all good points, and well worth doing.
Take notes is a tricky one though. While taking notes, you are very likely to miss something in the speech. Your brain is involved in synthesizing and writing rather than listening. If you don’t take notes, then you are not likely to remember details very well. I think the key here is to exercise your memory rather than rely on your note taking. Memory is a muscle, and with time will improve such that you can be more in the moment with the speech rather than thinking about what to write.
Some of the other behaviors tie in well with this particular behavior. If you start early with your evaluation preparation (days before) then you will likely be curious about the speech from the point of view of content as well as delivery. If you care about helping the speaker, you will care enough to listen well.
