Listening Difficulties: 5 Ways to make yourself heard

If you want people to listen to you:

1. Value the person – Treat them with respect: Zig Ziglar’s famous line “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” is true. Don’t expect people to listen and learn from you until they know you have their best interest at stake and that you care for them personally; not simply what they can do for you or the organization.
2. Paint a great vision – You have to give people something worth working towards and it needs to stretch them, while still being attainable through measurable risk and hard work. When they know there’s a definite chance of success, they’ll be more willing to learn what it takes to attain it.
3. Open up - Communicate freely and frequently – Even the best visions can fade over time. People get frustrated, bored, distracted, demotivated, etc. If you want to maintain your audience's attention, you have to keep reminding them why you are doing what you are doing and show them how far they've come already!
4. Tell positive compelling stories – People are motivated by example. They want to know that what they are doing makes a difference. People will be more likely to seek your input if they know you are leading them to something of value and importance.
5. Let them Share in the reward – People only feel valued when they get to celebrate equally, in the victory. If all the recognition goes to the leader, the follower feels taken advantage of and used. They will never trust you again. If you want people to keep listening then make sure you listen to them, share the credit, minimise the failures, don't point fingers, don't attach blame, and celebrate often.

Good Communication Quotes

1. "The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said." - Peter Drucker
2. "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." - George Bernard Shaw
3."Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people." - William Butler Yeats
4. "We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak." - Epictetus

5. "Speak when you are angry -- and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret." - Laurence Peters
6. "In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do." - Stephen Covey
7. "The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them." - Stephen King
8. "Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language." - Walt Disney
9. "Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after." - Anne Morrow Lindbergh
10. "The two words information and communication are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through." - Sydney Harris

11. "Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing." - Rollo May
12. "Humor is the affectionate communication of insight." - Leo Rosten
13. "Science may never come up with a better office communication system than the coffee break." - Earl Wilson
14. "Communication is everyone's panacea for everything." - Tom Peters
15. "Two monologues do not make a dialogue." - Jeff Daly
16. "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato
17. "Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot." - D.H. Lawrence
18. "Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn't listening." - Emma Thompson
19. "When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen." - Ernest Hemingway
20. "You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time." - Scott Peck
21. "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." - Mark Twain
22. "That which we are capable of feeling, we are capable of saying." - Cervantes
23. "I have an answering machine in my car. It says, 'I'm home right now. But leave a message and I'll call you when I'm out.'" - Steven Wright
24. "Give me the gift of a listening heart." - King Solomon

Language and Communications: Are Words the best Solution?

Why did language evolve? While the answer might seem obvious, as a way for individuals to exchange information, linguists and other students of communication have debated this question for years.

Many prominent linguists, including MIT’s Noam Chomsky, have argued that language is, in fact, poorly designed for communication. Such a use, they say, is merely a byproduct of a system that probably evolved for other reasons, perhaps for structuring our own private thoughts.

To provide evidence, these linguists point to the existence of ambiguity: In a system optimized for conveying information between a speaker and a listener, they argue, each word would have just one meaning, eliminating any chance of confusion or misunderstanding.

Now, a group of MIT cognitive scientists has turned this idea on its head. In a new theory, they claim that ambiguity actually makes language more efficient, by allowing for the reuse of short, efficient sounds that listeners can easily disambiguate with the help of context.

“Various people have said that ambiguity is a problem for communication,” says Ted Gibson, an MIT professor of cognitive science and senior author of a paper describing the research to appear in the journal Cognition. “But once we understand that context disambiguates, then ambiguity is not a problem, it’s something you can take advantage of, because you can reuse easy [words] in different contexts over and over again.”

Lead author of the paper is Steven Piantadosi PhD ’11; Harry Tily, a postdoc in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, is another co-author.

What do you ‘mean’?
For a somewhat ironic example of ambiguity, consider the word “mean.” It can mean, of course, to indicate or signify, but it can also refer to an intention or purpose (“I meant to go to the store”); something offensive or nasty; or the mathematical average of a set of numbers.

Adding an ‘s’ introduces even more potential definitions: an instrument or method (“a means to an end”), or financial resources (“to live within one’s means”).

But virtually no speaker of English gets confused when he or she hears the word “mean.” That’s because the different senses of the word occur in such different contexts as to allow listeners to infer its meaning nearly automatically.

Given the disambiguating power of context, the researchers hypothesized that languages might harness ambiguity to reuse words, most likely, the easiest words for language processing systems.

Building on observation and previous studies, they posited that words with fewer syllables, high frequency and the simplest pronunciations should have the most meanings.