Listening for peace

In this TED Talk, the presenter tells us how important listening is. In our world we are not listening enough to our pairs. We are focused, concentrated, deconcetrated, multi-tasking all the time. But the consequence of that is misunderstanding, which can lead to violence and pain.
Recently I felt frustrated because I wanted to tell someone what I was thinking about something he did. My aim was to help him to improve but he was not really listening … even if he was saying « yes, yes, yes ». I felt bad afterwards and in the end I was almost angry of not being listened to. So in this little life experience, I felt how it is important to give your attention to others.
In the following talk, you’ll receive 5 little exercises to improve your ability to listen. Starting from now, I’ll try to apply them ! If you wish to join the effort, I added the list of exercises on the bottom of this articles.

5 exercises :

  • Silence : 3 minutes of silence a day to recalibrate and be able to listen to silence again
  • The Mixer : listen to how many channels of noise you can hear in a noisy environment
  • Savouring : listen to everyday sounds to find out the hidden choir
  • Listening positions : adapt your listening position according to what you are listening to and playing with those filters :
    • Active / Passive
    • Reductive / Expansive
    • Critical / Empathic
  • RASA : if you are leader, spouse, friend, parent, teacher :
    • Recieve : pay attention to the person
    • Appreciate : making little noises like « hmm », « ah », « ok »
    • Summarize : Using the word « so, you said that … », « if I’m right you think that … »
    • Ask : To make sure you understood well

Good listening 😉

Being agile at work

The agile methodology is used as a project management methodology. It comes from the software development world and it aims to work in a « release soon and release often » style. The idea is to work constantly in perfect communication with the stakeholders of the project even though they are not developers themselves.
I’m working in an agile style for several years now and I keep thinking this is a good way of working. The development team keeps focused on the main features and the project owner have always a good vision of where the development goes and how fast it can go.
This is a short video explaining the main concepts of the agile methodology for software development.

13^3-13^2-13^1-13^0=2014

As every 365 days we are incrementing the year number. And the as the tradition says, we have to whish each other a happy new year and take some good resolution for the coming year. I like this tradiction allthough I always forget to whish happy new year to some friends, and I know that resolution will have hard times.
If at first you don't succeed, that's one data point.
A couple of month ago I saw a TED video about the time we have to keep doing someting new to get used to it and make it a habit. I think it is a good time to share it.