Listen Linda!
After participating in and reading about the importance of listening I can say that I haven’t been truly listening for most of my life. Hearing is usually what people are referring to when they talk about listening because we’ve made them synonymous. Hearing is the act of sound waves entering our ears, but listening is actually paying attention to what those vibrations in your ears mean. It is very easy to simply tune out and only hear a person speak, but when you want to having meaningful conversations or in our particular case give good advice, you need to not only hear, but listen. One of the most important things you can do to reassure some one that you are listening is to have eye contact. It shows that you are not distracted and giving your undivided attention to an individual, something I’ve always had problems with.
Of the 10 characteristics that are present in a helpful relationship I can say that I am best at communication and interaction, as well as designing to produce change. I feel that these characteristics come easy to me because I like talking to people and interacting with them in a way that makes our interactions meaningful as opposed to pointless. I feel that producing change comes easy to me because I like the idea of helping others to allow them to reach their full potential.
The characteristics I least felt comfortable with our showing clear structure and being a collaborative effort. The reason I feel I struggle in these areas are because I believe that relationships can lean to one side. I feel that relationships can sometimes become one sided and so it becomes difficult for them to be collaborative when one person is putting in more work. Similarly, because of this one sided nature of relationships it becomes hard for them to have a clear structure as one person might be saying or doing more than the other.
In order to better myself I need to remember that even though relationships can be one sided that I can balance them out and engage all involved. Once a relationship is balanced you can achieve a clear structure and both work together toward a common goal.
