Listening: The Forgotten Skill: A Self-Teaching Guide, Second Edition

A proven program for turning effective listening into a powerful business tool.

Managers and other employees spend more than 40 percent of their time listening to other people but often do it so poorly that the result is misunderstood instructions, misdirected projects, and erroneous actions—millions of dollars’ worth of mistakes just because most people don’t know how to listen. In this new edition of her classic guide to the art of effective listening, Madelyn Burley-Allen shows you how to acquire active, productive listening skills and put them to work for you—professionally, socially, and personally. With her time-tested techniques, you’ll learn how to:

• Eliminate distractions and improve your concentration on what is being said
• Locate key words, phrases, and ideas while listening
• Cut through your own listening biases
• Interpret body language clues
• Ask constructive, nonthreatening questions that elicit real information
• Get others to listen to you
• Master a whole range of listening skills that you can use on the job and in your personal life

Listening: The Forgotten Skill uses an interactive learning approach with work-sheets, charts, graphs, and self-tests that help you pace and monitor your own progress.

About the Author

Madelyn Burley-Allen, the founder and president of Dynamics of Human Behavior, has conducted over 2,000 seminars on listening and management for organizations around the world. A frequent speaker at state and national conferences, she has consulted for such companies as AT&T, DuPont, IBM, and LeviStrauss. Her work has been covered in numerous magazines and newspapers, including Glamour and Working Woman, and she has appeared on several national television and radio shows. She is the author of three books, including Managing Assertively: How to Improve Your People Skills, also available from Wiley.