Oh, He's Talking

After reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey and The Young Traveler's Gift by Andy Andrews, I have found nine areas where typical teens are different from productive young adults. In these nine posts, I'll be explaining them and asking you to decide where you are right now and where you would like to be in the future.

Typical teenagers aren't good listeners because they are very busy comparing or preparing what they'll say next. Productive young adults have learned that listening is important to communication. Covey's fifth habit is “seek first to understand, then to be understood” (164). If you want someone to hear your opinion, you first need to listen to them. I sometimes think that most people don't really know how to listen. They're always to busy getting a response ready, judging, or filtering the words they are hearing. Covey points out the five different kinds of poor listening styles:

1. Spacing out is when you're in another universe when someone's trying to talk to you.
2. Pretend listening is like spacing out, but you occasionally throw in a “cool,” “yeah,” or “uh-huh.”
3. Selective listening happens when you only hear the part that you want to hear, and then just talk about that.
4. Word listening is when we only listen to the words, and not the body language and feeling of what the person is saying.
5. Self-centered listening comes when instead of standing in their shoes, you want them to stand in your shoes. You say things like, “I know exactly how you feel.” It's trying to one-up each other.

Young adults strive to listen to others before stating their own opinions and thoughts because it's important if you want to be able to communicate well and get along with others.

• Are you a good listener? Have a conversation with someone doing your very best listening. What did you learn about them or about yourself?
  
  

Coming up...Birds of a feather fly better together.

Sources:

Andrews, Andy. The Young Traveler's Gift. Nashville, Tenn.: Tommy Nelson, 2004. Print.

 Covey, Sean, and Inc OverDrive. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. S.I.: Touchstone, 2014. Print.