Can You Hear Me At All?

Johnny LaLonde — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 20:01:49 +0000

Yesterday, I spoke at UPC for a Life Group Leader Training event. My time was devoted to an overview of listening skills. I think listening is one of the most overlooked skills a person can have. It is far too rare to find someone who really listens to you. It is funny to me how we take such an interest in our kids listening to us. We check to make sure they heard what we said. We make them look at us when we are talking. We sometimes even have them repeat what we say back to us. And yet, throw an adult into a situation when they need to listen and all of these fundamental skills seem lost. Going into the talk I felt self conscious. Who wants to listen to a talk on listening? Isn’t this a basic thing? And yet I and the people there seemed to get a lot out of it.

There have been days when I have come home from counseling frustrated and told my wife, ” counseling exists because people don’t listen.” Far too many of my clients really just need someone to listen to them. And I mean really listen. Not just hear the words. But hear their heart and their story coming through in the circumstances of their life. Sometime down the road I will expand my material and post it on here.

Thanks for listening.

theVERSOgroup » Listening

Can You Hear Me At All?