Your journal assignment for this week has two parts. Part 1 is another skill-builder: sharpening your listening and attention skills. Part 2 is a reflection/self assessment exercise.
1. Effective Listening: Effective listening requires you suspend judgment and to focus attention on the speaker’s words such that you can accurately repeat them verbatim. This is actually quite difficult.
To practice:
First: find someone in your life – either at work, family or friend – who will agree to a short conversation. This must be in-person face-to-face so pick someone that you will be comfortable being in the same room with.
Second, find a topic that will allow them to speak for 3 minutes uninterrupted by you.
Third, when their 3 minutes is up, your task is to repeat as much as you can of what you heard the say. Stay as close to verbatim as possible (their words not your interpretation).
As you listen, do not make notes and do not speak during the three minutes. Pretend you are a video or audio recorder and push the replay button when your speaker is finished. Warning: it is hard for most people to talk for 3 minutes uninterrupted – we’re too used to being interrupted or feeling rude. So tell your speaker ahead of time that you need them to keep going for 3 min. If they pause because they run out of things to say – do not help them. Just maintain eye contact so they know you’re listening and allow them time to think of more to say. When 3 minutes is up start your own replay. At the end of this time ask them to give you feedback on how well you did at the replay.
For your journal entry reflect on this experience. Give a brief description of the interview – who did you choose and why ? How well did you do on the verbatim recall? What did you learn from the exercise? do not repeat the conversation here. The point here is the reflection.
Part 2: Write a brief paragraph responding to the the “Stop and Think” exercise contained on page 93 (5th edition) of your text: Belbin’s 9 roles.
Which of these roles are you able to play effectively? In addition to the questions contained in the text, think about the following: How can you expand your repertoire of roles that you can play depending on what the team needs? How does the data you gained from the personality and temperament assessments from week 3 relate to the Belbin roles?
