Why is Listening Important

Listening as Julian Treasure defines it is making meaning from sound. He also said we retain about 25% of what we hear.

How does this impact you

As a coach or personal trainer a large part of your job is listening. Retention is important in these communications with athletes or exercisers in order for them to feel respected and supported. I am not suggesting that you are friends with everyone you work with but if you want them to be successful then listening is an important part of the equation.

Julian Treasure suggests that we are losing our listening. We have other tools that we rely on to help us remember information: writing, voice recording and video recording. These things not only take away our ability to listen but our ability to build relationships with people and this is not something Julian Treasure said, this is coming from me.

Mr. Treasure went on to say that we are inundated with verbal & visual nose. I agree that there is seemingly always a LOT going on that needs our attention (and doesn’t need our attention). It’s hard to be selective but again part of your job is to focus and tune into the right verbal & visuals in conversations with your athletes or exercisers.

We ask athletes (in particular) to ‘focus’ during training and competition and there is as much ‘noise’ going on for them during that time as there is at any other time of the day for any of us.

Intention

Julian Treasure talks about how intention in listening is important. Listening is automated but we only listen to whats familiar and we tune out (filter) most everything else.

What further invokes the need for intention is that we are becoming desensitized to things around us because there is so much. This not only makes it hard for us to figure out what to pay attention to outside the familiar but it makes it hard to appreciate the quiet and subtle.

Conscious listening creates understanding

In this video Julian Treasure shares 5 ideas to create quality (conscious) listening: silence, mixer, savoring, listening positions and RASA. For more information on these 5 ideas listen to Julian Treasures video.

Conscious listening is the basis of any good relationship: parent-child, friend-friend, coach-athlete and personal trainer-exerciser. When I talk to my interns about building relationships with their clients I have them to define a ‘good’ relationship and then think about the principles of good relationships. Although we have different relationships in our lives that doesn’t always mean we need to deal with people (completely) differently. If you are building a relationship with a good friend the questions will be different than with your athlete or exerciser the basic principle is similar and if you want people to feel successful then it’s becoming more and more imperative that we become not only conscious listeners but good communicators.

Do you wonder why athletes and exercisers don’t do what you ask them to do?

As I mentioned earlier, if people don’t feel respected, supported and understood they are less likely to do what you are asking them to do. In your role as coach or personal trainer it used to be OK to just give information or direction and not ask many questions. We don’t any longer live in that world!

If you want athletes and exercisers to listen to you then it’s important for you to listen to them.

Next week I am going to discuss some principles of ‘good communication’.

Happy Wednesday!

Dr. Michelle