"It's so hard to be a good listener and so very important," says Harvard professor. "Ex expressing your attentive listening with your words is what makes someone such a compelling communicator." Follow up questions, call backs to earlier topics are ways to repair any misunderstandings or rifts in the shared reality that may have been caused by talking too much at one time.
As a communication expert, Alison Wood Brooks spends a lot of time talking about talking. But, as she says, listening is just as important.
“My course is called TALK,” says Wood Brooks, who is the O'Brien Associate Professor of Business Administration and Hellman Faculty Fellow at Harvard Business School. “The great irony is that it should really be called LISTEN. It’s hard to be a good listener yet so very important.”
In the latest episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Wood Brooks covers conversation strategies for active listening, turning anxiety into excitement, and knowing when it’s time to change the subject.
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