Listening tips

Listening tips

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The way education is done is changing

I came across this eye-opening 7½ minute video via this blog posting.

About 1½ minute into the video, I noticed the following question: What do your students create? In this regard, I’d like to ask you the following 2 questions:

Question # 1
What is more important to promote in education: Analytic thinking or creative thinking?

Question # 2
To which degree are collaborative technologies / Web 2.0 / social media used in the types of education you know about?

9 traps of growing big and dominant

9 traps of growing big and dominant

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Interactive Advertising

Here are 11 examples of interactive advertising:

Interactive Advertising

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Nike treadmill for charity

Via a Twitter update by Jorge Barba I came across this posting through which I learned, for example, that Nike encouraged people passing by to stop and walk or run a while on an interactive, ground level billboard with a built-in treadmill, located in Mexico. For every kilometer run, Nike donated a certain amount of money to UNICEF.

For more reasons, I think the initiative is interesting. Examples:
- The initiative is an extra motivation for people to get some exercise.
- The initiative supports UNICEF and thereby helps build a world where the rights of every child are realized.
- The initiative is effective marketing for the company.

Floating hotel

Via this posting about unusual and creative hotels, I came across this floating hotel in Sweden. An interesting contribution to the experience economy.

Play the piano

Via this Mashable posting, I came across this remarkable innovation. An interesting contribution to the experience economy. Reflecting on this innovation, I ask whether future pianos will be touch screens? What's your view on that?

10 tips to become a great listener

Listening is important – not least because it shows people that you care. Watching / listening to the very interesting slidecast embedded below, that I came across via a Twitter update by Alex Osterwalder, I learned about these 10 tips to become a great listener:

1. Learn to say “not right now”
When you’re busy, tired, or distracted, and don’t have the energy to listen fully, say to the person, who wants to talks to you, that you’ll get back to him/her when you can give him/her your full attention.

2. Eliminate distractions
For example, turn off your mobile phone when you’re having a conversation with another person face-to-face or using another communication tool.

3. Be present in the moment

4. Take notes
It’s a good idea to ask for permission to take notes from the person, you’re listening to.

5. Ask questions
In this regard, ask clarifying questions to better understand what the person has said. Example: “Have I understood you correctly that…” A clarifying question gives the speaker the opportunity to elaborate on what he/she has just said.
Also, try asking open questions such as “What…?” or “How…?”

6. Look for non-verbal cues
As the importance of not least body-language but also tone is crucial for communication, keep an eye out for what the body of the person, you’re listening to, is saying.

7. Stop talking
To be a good listener, try to discipline yourself to stop talking. Make sure, for example, that you don’t interrupt the person who is speaking.

8. Resist the urge to give advice
Try working on avoiding offering solutions for the person who is speaking, i.e. try to fix the problem the speaker is facing. Instead, ask, for example, “What…?” questions to invite the person to come up with his/her own thoughts, ideas, actions.

9. Reserve judgments. Start fresh
Not least because people change, it’s a good idea to treat all conversations like they were the first. In other words, each time you talk to a person, listen to him/her like it was the first time you listed to that person. That way you’ll put away your preconceptions, which may be wrong.

10. Practice
For example, ask for feedback from people, you´re listening to, to find out to what degree they think you’re listening well.

The Art Of Listening

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Proritize prevention higher

Listening to this 1 hour talk by Dr. Walter Bortz, I noted, not least the following remarks:

- ”What we have now is a disease industry, an illness industry. We spend almost 20% of GDP on sickness, less than 2% on prevention.”
- “We have to get out of the repair business and into the prevention business”.
- ”Nobody is out there trying to prevent cancer. They are all so busy treating it, because you get paid for it.”
- “Doctors were originally teachers. So I’m a teacher first, and a repair person second. I would much rather you don’t get sick, but you don’t get paid for that.”
- “A study found that nurses, who take 2 hours of walking every day, have 40% less breast cancer”.



You'll find a 3½ minute extract of the Mr. Bortz' talk here:

Partners in healthcare

Partners in healthcare

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Think as a gardener when building a culture of innovation

At the start of this interesting blog posting by Mitch Ditkoff, I came across this quote from Peter Senge:

"Companies are actually living organisms, not machines. We keep bringing in mechanics, when what we need are gardeners."

My initial thought, as I read this quote, was on Gareth Morgan’s book Images of Organizations, a book that I can highly recommend. In the book, Mr. Morgan writes, for example, about organizations as machines and about organizations as organisms. On page 66 of the book, I read, for example this: “It would be an exaggeration to suggest, that mechanistic organizations do not innovate, but the point contains an important kernel of truth.” Find some more inspiration ways to organize here.

At Triemli hospital in Zürich, which is being renewed in these months, I came across this really great sign in the construction zone. Reflecting on the message on the sign, I’d like to ask you the following question: When nature builds on change, to which degree do you participate in shaping it? For example, to which degree do you try out something new every day, which Paul Sloane suggests in his new years greeting to innovators?

5 practical tips to help you become a happier person

In this 4½ minute video, which is # 3 on the ten most watched Big Think videos of 2009, Tal Ben-Shahar mentions the following 5 practical tips to help you become a happier person:

# 1: Accept painful emotions
When you give yourself the permission to be human, you open yourself up to positive emotions as well.

# 2: Spend quality time with people you care about

# 3: Get physical exercise regularly
We were made to be physically active. Get exercise 3 times a week of 30-40 minutes.

# 4: Cultivate the habit of gratitude
For example, appreciate that you’re healthy.

# 5: Simplify
Do less rather than more.