In this week’s episode Kellie and Claire discuss whether they are good or bad listeners. They share some real life instances when they could have listened better. They deep dive one particular active listening technique, Active Constructive Responding (ACR) and its framework as well as take a look at a listening assessment put out by Psychology Today.

Advice Not Given

• Claire tells about a discussion where Ryan called her out on her poor listening strategy. He even went so far as to use some of his Army Master Resiliency Training curriculum on her. It’s called  ACR.
• There are four basic ways to listen and respond when someone is talking to you: Active Constructive, Active Destructive, Passive Constructive, and Passive Destructive. 
• Marriage can be a safe space but Kellie suggests that we need to be more aware and also try harder to give our partner’s the same attention and focus we give others.
• We get uncomfortable with silence. 
• How do you gauge how a conversation will go? When you are listening, are you picking up clues on how deep or close you may get with the person talking? Or do those clues help you make judgements about writing these people off as close friends? 
• A good preface to deeper conversations might be “Do you simply need to vent or are you seeking advice and feedback?”
• Claire and Kellie deep dive “The Art of Listening: How Open Are Your Ears?” (Psychology Today) where they rate their own listening skills as well as some tendencies of each of the nine enneagram types based on these nine statements: 

1. I prefer talking to listening to what others may say.
2. It mostly doesn't occur to me to ask questions.
3. When others are talking, I'm often thinking about what I'll say next.
4. The main point of talking is to impress people, or at least to entertain them.
5. My perspective is right, so if others disagree, I convince them to see it my way. 
6. It bothers me when people get their facts wrong.
7. It's important to point out when people are wrong about something.
8. Most people are boring, so I usually do most of the talking.
9. When my body tries to talk to me with pain or other discomforts, I tune it out. 

• Finally, Claire and Kellie discuss three negative listening habits (non-responsive listening, listening like a goalie, and rebound listening). They conclude with five positive listening habits (hungry listening, hunting, gathering, clarifying, and porous listening).
• Claire’s advice to herself is to simply stop and listen and take a moment before responding.
• Kellie refers to Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead and challenges herself to stop doing the head nod.

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