Active Listening: Hear What People Are Really Saying (From MindTools)

❓QUIZ ⇒ How Good Are Your Listening Skills?

💡Infographic ⇒ View and Download Full-Size Infographic Here 

How well you listen has a major impact on the quality of your relationships with others. 

[…] Given all the listening that we do, you would think we'd be good at it! In fact, most of us are not, and research suggests that we only remember between 25 percent and 50 percent of what we hear, as described by Edgar Dale's Cone of Experience. That means that when you talk to your boss, colleagues, customers, or spouse for 10 minutes, they pay attention to less than half of the conversation.

Turn it around and it reveals that when you are receiving directions or being presented with information, you aren't hearing the whole message either. You hope the important parts are captured in your 25-50 percent, but what if they're not?

How Good Are Your Listening Skills? (From MindTools)

Understanding Someone's Entire Message

For many of us, listening is the communication skill we use the most. Yet, many people listen poorly, and they rarely think to improve this important skill.

They get distracted by their own thoughts or by what's going on around them, and they formulate their responses before the person who they're talking to has finished speaking. Because of this, they miss crucial information.

Good listeners, on the other hand, enjoy better relationships, because they fully understand what other people are saying. Their team members are also more productive, because they feel that they can discuss problems easily, and talk through solutions.

So, how good do you think your listening skills are? Test them HERE, and then find out how you can improve.

❓How Good Are Your Listening Skills?

How well do you know your phobias? (From Oxford Dictionaries Blog)

Spiders. Heights. The dark. Small, enclosed spaces. When we think of phobias, our minds usually jump to the commons ones – including the aforementioned claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces) and arachnophobia (fear of spiders). However, there’s a curious group of much rarer phobias out there as well. For example, how about iconophobia (fear of religious works of art)? Or apeirophobia (fear of infinity)?

From Oxford Dictionaries Blog

Etymologically, the names of these phobias are usually formed through two combining forms. The combining form -phobia comes (via Latin) from the Greek word 'phobos', meaning fear or dread. The combining forms that make up the first elements (claustro- or arachno-) come from Greek, Latin, or English origin. Some modern formations retain the elements separately, such as school phobia, and might be considered compound words.

Can you match the less common phobias in the quiz with their corresponding subjects? Take this 10-question quiz and find out!

💡You may also be interested in:

• Animal phobias, from apiphobia to musophobia
• Quiz: The facts about plastic pollution (From BBC Earth)

👉More QUIZZES:

• How Good Is Your Feedback?
• How Approachable Are You? (from Mind Tools)
• The Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale (from Mind Tools)
• HOW SELF-CONFIDENT ARE YOU? (from Mind Tools)
• Are You a Positive or Negative Thinker? (From Mind Tools)
• The Leadership Motivation Assessment (from Mind Tools)
• FREE PERSONALITY TEST: Which personality type are you?
• How Good Are Your Communication Skills? (from Mind Tools)
• How emotionally Intelligent Are You? (From Mind Tools)
• How Resilient Are You?

Quiz: The facts about plastic pollution (From BBC Earth)

Do you know your microplastics from your single-use? Test your knowledge in the plastics pollution quiz.

From BBC Earth

💡 You may also be interested in:

• Quiz: How sustainable are you?
• Quiz: How well do you know Earth's rivers?

How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?

Boosting Your People Skills

We all know people who are in full control of their emotions. They're calm in a crisis, and they make decisions sensitively, however stressful the situation.

We also know people who can read the emotions of others. They understand what to say to make people feel better, and they know how to inspire them to take action.

People like this have high emotional intelligence (or EI). They have strong relationships, and they manage difficult situations calmly and effectively. They're also likely to be resilient in the face of adversity.

So, how emotionally intelligent are you, and how can you develop further? Find out below.

❓ QUIZ ⇒ How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?

💡 You may also be interested in:

• FREE PERSONALITY TEST: Which personality type are you?

WEEKLY PICKS - 4

This post offers you a selection of recommended free online exercises, games, videos and resources so that you can improve your English language skills while having fun! ENJOY!

📜 READING PICKS – Articles, blog posts, quizzes and more:

Article from Mind Tools: 10 Common Time Management Mistakes
Avoiding Common Pitfalls - How well do you manage your time? If you're like many people, your answer may not be completely positive! Perhaps you feel overloaded, and you often have to work late to hit your deadlines. Or maybe your days seem to go from one crisis to another, and this is stressful and demoralizing. (Continue reading)

❓ QUIZ from Mind Tools ⇒ How Good Is Your Time Management?
Discover Time Management Tools That can Help you Excel

Article from BBC CULTURE: The writers who defied Soviet censors 

Underground publishers in the USSR broke rules in ingenious ways – such as hiding books in fake binding and making records on X-ray film, writes Benjamin Ramm.

In anticipation of the poet’s arrest, his creations were concealed by inventive means – sewn into the insides of cushions and shoes, or hidden in mattresses and saucepans. The police confiscated most of his papers, but others were smuggled out, or hidden surreptitiously in obscure locations. The most important poems were inscribed where even the wiliest investigator could not find them – in the memory of a devoted reader, who would pass them on.  (Continue reading)

🎬 VIDEO PICKS – Short and fun videos:

LESS-THAN-5-MINUTE VIDEOS

• Why Do We Blush? (1:46 minutes)
• Why Do We Get Nervous? (2:28 minutes)
• How Much Sleep Do You Actually Need? (3:23 minutes)
• The Science of Heartbreak (2:48 minutes)
• Introverts vs. Extroverts (4:17 minutes)
• Amazing Facts to Blow Your Mind Pt. 1 (2:08 minutes)

5-TO-10-MINUTE VIDEOS:

• Vocabulary - LIVE, LIFE, ALIVE, LIVING (7:53 minutes)
• Learn Vocabulary - look, look like, look alike, look as if... (6:43 minutes)
• English Grammar - comparing with LIKE & AS (9 minutes)
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery ► Animated Book Summary (5:35 minutes)
• ALL or WHOLE? (9:23 minutes.)

A LITTLE LONGER BUT WORTH IT!

• How to increase your vocabulary (It only takes 13:29 minutes!)

💬 VOCABULARY PICKS:

• Verb + Adverb Games (1) ⇒ Which adverb best goes with which verb? (When you finish, click on “Next Game” and get a full new set of pairs! There are 10 games.)
• Verb + Adverb Games (2) ⇒ Which adverb best goes with which verb? (When you finish, click on “Next Game” and get a full new set of pairs! There are 10 games.)
• Sustainable development 
• Bed / Home / Work / Town Exercise 1
• Feelings and Emotions

💡 GRAMMAR PICKS – Assorted exercises and games:

• Comparative and Superlative Quiz with Adverbs
• Question tags – Exercise 3
• Questions in Passive – Word order – Click Exercise 1 – MIX
• Questions in Passive – Word order – Click Exercise 2 – MIX
• Prepositions Exercise 7
• Prepositions Exercise 8
• If or Unless
• Conditional sentences type 2 exercise
• Conditional sentences type 3 exercise
• A Little / A Few Exercise 1
• Because or because of
• Although, even though, in spite of...
• Mixed Past Tenses Games 1-10 – Practise talking about time with past tense forms. These games practise 4 past tense forms from Past Simple to Past Perfect Continuous.

MORE PICKS NEXT WEEK!

The Leadership Motivation Assessment (from Mind Tools)

❓ QUIZ ⇒ The Leadership Motivation Assessment / Discover How Motivated You Are to Lead

The first and most basic prerequisite for leadership is the desire to lead.

After all, it takes hard work to become an effective leader and, if you are not prepared to put this work in or if, deep down, you're not sure whether you really want to lead, you'll struggle to convince people that you are worth following.

Leaders create the vision and set the direction for their organizations. But it is their ability to motivate and inspire people that allows them to deliver that vision.

So, how much do you want to lead? This quiz will help you find out.

💡 You may also be interested in the quizzes below: 

• How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?
• How Good Is Your Feedback?
• How Approachable Are You? (from Mind Tools)
• The Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale (from Mind Tools)
• HOW SELF-CONFIDENT ARE YOU? (from Mind Tools)
• Are You a Positive or Negative Thinker? (From Mind Tools) 
• FREE PERSONALITY TEST: Which personality type are you?
• How Good Are Your Communication Skills? (from Mind Tools)

FREE PERSONALITY TEST: Which personality type are you?

❓ Take the test ⇒ FREE PERSONALITY TEST: Which personality type are you?

“Often the first question people ask after completing our personality test is “What do these letters mean?” We are of course referring to those mysterious acronyms like INTJ-A, ENFP-T, or ESTJ-A. As you may have already read in the free Type Descriptions or additional articles available on our website, each letter refers to a specific trait, with an additional variant listed at the end. But before we discuss those traits, let’s first take a brief historical detour.

Since the dawn of time, we have tried to describe and categorize ourselves in many ways. From the four temperaments of the Ancient civilizations – sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic – to the latest advances in psychology, people have been restless in their pursuit of a good, reliable way to fit something as complex and fluid as human personality into a well-defined model. We are still some time away from being able to do that, although the current models account for the majority of our personality traits and can often predict with a high degree of confidence how we are likely to behave in specific circumstances… (More information HERE)”

💡 You may also be interested in the quizzes below:

• How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?
• How Good Is Your Feedback?
• How Approachable Are You? (from Mind Tools)
• The Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale (from Mind Tools)
• HOW SELF-CONFIDENT ARE YOU? (from Mind Tools)
• Are You a Positive or Negative Thinker? (From Mind Tools)
• The Leadership Motivation Assessment (from Mind Tools)
• How Good Are Your Communication Skills? (from Mind Tools)

How Good Are Your Communication Skills? (from Mind Tools)

Communication skills are some of the most important skills that you need to succeed in the workplace.

If you want to be an expert communicator, you need to be effective at all points in the communication process – from "sender" through to "receiver" – and you must be comfortable with the different channels of communication – face to face, voice to voice, written, and so on. Poor communicators usually struggle to develop their careers beyond a certain point.

❓ So, are you communicating effectively? Take this short quiz to find out!

💡 You may also be interested in the quizzes below:

• How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?
• How Good Is Your Feedback?
• How Approachable Are You? (from Mind Tools)
• The Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale (from Mind Tools)
• HOW SELF-CONFIDENT ARE YOU? (from Mind Tools)
• Are You a Positive or Negative Thinker? (From Mind Tools)
• The Leadership Motivation Assessment (from Mind Tools)
• FREE PERSONALITY TEST: Which personality type are you?

WEEKLY PICKS - 1

This post offers you a selection of recommended free online exercises, games, videos and resources so that you can improve your English language skills while having fun! ENJOY!

📜 READING PICKS – Articles, blog posts, quizzes and more:

Article from MindTools: What’s Empathy Got to Do with It?, by Bruna Martinuzzi
Indeed, empathy is valued currency. It allows us to create bonds of trust, it gives us insights into what others may be feeling or thinking; it helps us understand how or why others are reacting to situations, it sharpens our "people acumen" and it informs our decisions. (Continue reading)

❓QUIZ: Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire (Richard M. Felder and Barbara A. Soloman) North Carolina State University

🎬 VIDEO PICKS – Short and fun videos:

LESS-THAN-5-MINUTE VIDEOS

• Daniel Goleman: What makes a leader? (3:45 minutes)
• Create Slides People Will Remember (2:34 minutes)
• Discover Different Styles of Learning (3:34 minutes)
• Body Language at Work and in Business: Tips for Better Communication (2:08 minutes)
• Born to Learn (4:55 minutes)

5-TO-10-MINUTE VIDEOS:

• Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl ► Animated Book Summary (8:11 minutes)
• EITHER, NEITHER, SO, TOO - How to agree and disagree in English (7:39 minutes)
• Vocabulary - Talking about MOVIES in English (10:06 minutes)
• Grammar: How to use IF & WHETHER properly (6:57 minutes)
• Everyday or every day? (5:18 minutes.)

A LITTLE LONGER BUT WORTH IT!

• 6 tips for dealing with speaking anxiety (14 minutes)
• Phrasal Verbs for TRAVEL:"drop off", "get in", "check out"... (11:49 minutes)
• Learn English - OTHER, ANOTHER, OTHERS, THE OTHER, OTHERWISE (13:28 minutes. Please, notice that when he says: “Others / The other(s) / Another” may be used as “nouns” he means “pronouns”, which actually replace nouns)
• Who Moved My Cheese [Original] - Spencer Johnson (12:53 minutes)

💬 VOCAB PICKS – Confusing words:

• borrow or lend – Exercise
• bring or take – Exercise
• do, go or play – Exercise
• life, live or lives – Exercise
• life, live, lives or lived – Exercise
• make or do – Exercise 1
• make or do – Exercise 2
• say or tell – Exercise

💡 GRAMMAR PICKS – Assorted exercises and games:

• what or which – Exercise
• while or during– Exercise
• Time prepositions exercise 1 
• Time prepositions exercise 2
• Place prepositions exercise 1
• Place prepositions exercise 2
• Exercise on Prepositions – Buses
• Compound adjectives (1)
• Compound adjectives (2)

MORE PICKS NEXT WEEK!