Tomorrow UVI-PULSE presents another Webinar in the monthly series.  This one is about listening … actively.  It is about the state of being we need to have as human beings to involve ourselves in listening to others.  It is not about just showing up and being within earshot.  Listening with HEART is much, much more. It is about deliberately setting yourself the task of truly understanding the other persons position.  It asks you to understand their physical, mental, emotional, relational and spiritual well being.

HEART stands for Hush, Empathise, Attend, Reflect and Trust.  It is a neural address for a set of skills that demonstrate and strengthen Compassion.  HEART is about caring about the other person, about honouring them as a following human being with their own unique perspective on the world.  There is no judgement in this kind of listening.  Its purpose is to get over to the other person’s side and have a look at the world from there,  It is about creating understanding but not necessarily agreement.

Hush. Stop doing what ever you are doing.  Stop the chatter in your brain. Stop moving.  Stop talking.  Stop judging.  Stop editing the story.  Just stop.  Listen to what is being said NOW.  Watch what is happening NOW.  Turn off your own stuff.  Suspend what ever is going on for you so that you can feel and experience the other person’s world. Hush.

Empathise.  Imagine how it is to be in that person’s world.  Step in.  It is pretty much impossible for you to really completely understand how it is for them but if you can begin to see how or why they are thinking, talking and behaving the way they are that is a good first step.  Feel what they are feeling if you can. Sense the state they are in and emulate it as much as you can. Empathise.

Attend.  Listen with both ears.  Sit up straight.  Watch with both eyes.  Attend to the facial expressions, the body language, the tone and pace, the changes in intensity, the pauses and the words.  Put all of your attention with that person. Learn how it is for them.  Attend.

Reflect.  Let the emotional state that you see and experience reflect in your own face and body without saying anything.  This allows the speaker to continue to speak.  It also encourages expression of the emotional reality they are experiencing.  If your reflection is not true for them, they will adjust their communication to explain more clearly what is true for them until they get the right reflection back. Reflect.

Trust.  Everyone is doing the best they can with what they know.  We are social beings searching for connection with each other.  We want to believe in something bigger than ourselves.  We believe what we believe because of our own experiences.  We act the way we do because of our beliefs, expectations, assumptions, concerns and hopes.  All of this is informed by what we know to be true.  AND we can change what we know.  Trust.

Listening with HEART looks like any other kind of listening.  It is the deliberateness and purposefulness of it that makes the difference.  Put your HEART into it and listening will improve, conversations will improve and relationships will improve.

My stay at UVI this month has been enlightening for me.  I have had great opportunities to connect with people and to assess the role I will be playing here over the next few years.  I have had time to consider my own growth potential here and to examine how I can contribute in this environment.  

Although I have spent time here in the past, I realize now that I have been more of a tourist  … a guest invited to provide a service or some entertainment and then return from wence I had come.  Now I am looking to become part of the family. Now I have to find my own way around campus, do my own cooking and cleaning and fulfill the duties assigned to me.  I am expected to win support and influence people who are unfamiliar with the program.  It can be challenging.

That’s a good thing.  Although I was a little disappointed when some classes had to be canceled here, I am encouraged by the fact that we have regrouped and reorganized the learning experiences to better meet the needs of the local and international community served by UVI.  With great feedback from those who could not make it and our African Friends I believe we have come up with a plan that will bring us future success as we work to have Virgin Islanders “Check your PULSE.” (T-shirts to follow).

The month started out with challenges to overcome as power and internet connections wreaked havoc with our broadcast of the POWER webinar.  Ironic?  And later connections with UVI ST Croix created an echo on the radio program that went live and was recorded.  I had a chance to outline our UVI-PULSE plan of action and to give examples of the kinds of skills that could make a difference for people and their relationships here on the Islands.  It should be availabe on the ILOE.UVI.EDU website sometime soon.

With those issues behind us and an MOU with PULSE Africa and my friend Austin Gamey in place, we are well on our way to contributing in a meaningful way to  this “Historically American, Uniquely Caribbean, Globally Interactive” University.  Watch for news of exciting courses and an upcoming UVI-PULSE Conference planned for May 2016.  The plans include tours of St Thomas along with some Island Hospitality as well as guest speakers.  All PULSE Professionals and Practitioners will be invited to attend.

We are on our way….

I am still in the Virgin Islands, on St Thomas. It is beautiful here. I have had lots of opportunity to meet new people and work with them on settin gup UVI-PULSE. I have also been graced with the presence of my dear friend and colleague Austin Gamey who is visitng with his wife Gladys from Ghana. I have known him for a long time and he continues to influence my life decisions.

I remember vividly a conversation with Austin where he advice me in a very strong way not to continue in politics. I remember how determined he was to desuade me from a life where people “eat you up and spit you out” as he so vivdly put it. I took his advice then and I continue to rely on him as he and I meet with UVI staff to fashion the future of PULSE.

Austin has done very well in Ghana and in other parts of Africa as he uses PULSE as the platform for his courses and his consultancy work. He is a fan of all things PULSE and he walks the PULSE talk in a way that makes me very proud. His latest advice to me is to work with the leadership research I have done using portraiture and of course he is among those who are anxious to see the new book.

I am very grateful to have him here. He tells me that VI is very much like Africa. I guess I will be able to tell you about it when I go there in the spring to work with Austin’s graduates from the Gamey and Gamey ADR Masters program. A new adventure for me and one I am honoured to take.

I have spent the last two weeks with different groups of brave people doing important work on St Thomas and on St Croix. These people work everyday to help others have a better life and they are all anxious to have more skills to deal with the situations they find themselves in.  I continue to be impressed with them and the work they do.  They just want to help.  Sometimes the people they are dealing with don’t want to be helped or don’t know how to accept the help that is offered to them.  Other times deserving people get caught up in the bureaucracy and there is nothing that can be done to help.

These front line women KNOW what needs to happen to change things for everyone.  They know how to make everyone in society productive and contributing members.  They have seen where things go wrong and they understand how government money could actually be used to improve the lot of enough people to stop the cycles.  They don’t give up even though they have seen generations of families visit their agencies and yet they roll up their sleeves and help again. Experience has taught them what works to help people regain a footing and start again but no one asks them. And when they do have a chance to say a few words to politicians or other decision makers, it always seems that the budget has different priorities.  Funding gets cut but the number of people in need grows because money is being spent on the wrong things. And around we go.

I admire these tireless women who fight the unending battle and I am happy to do my very small part.  I know they are not alone.  There are goddess warriors like these in every community around the world.  They do what they can.  They understand the patterns, the ebb and flow of life in a way that it may be impossible for men to understand.  Deny it if you want to but for me I see that there is a women’s way of knowing.  As a species we would be wise to pay greater attention to  that wisdom and use it to inform our decisions about our future on this planet.

It doesn’t have the same ring as Back in the USSR.  But then again I am not the Beatles.

I am sitting and looking out at clear blue waters and clear blue skies.  I can’t really do that at home.  Here in the USVI there seems to be a party gong on.  At lunch today, at a restaurant in a hotel I have stayed at many times, there were lots of people and live music at the beach bar.  I have honestly never seen as many people at that place as I did today.  It might have something to do with the big cruise ship that crossed in front of my window as I was doing the webinar this morning.

Speaking of the webinar, there were some power issues and some internet issues near the beginning even though my computer was hard wired into the network.  As a result, the flustered me forgot to reset the record button and the whole event went live with no recording.  Not everyone who signed up was there and we know that many people rely on the recording to get the information at a time that works for them. SOOOO we are going to redo the webinar on Friday at 10;00 am EST and press record for sure this time.

If you missed the webinar, no worries.  I am doing a do-over. And it is still free.

It is on POWER Listening.  POWER represents a set of magic tools that help you listen deliberately and with purpose.  Paraphrase, Open Question, WAIT, Empathize and Reframe. Using these five simple tools will help you win friends and influence people …guaranteed.

Hope you can join us ….

PS.  This blog is coming from the newer  www.drnancylove.com site.  If you follow me on Linked in and or Facebook  or Twitter could you just let me know that you got it.  Thanks

I will attempt to upload a picture from the office where I am working.  It may or may not work….

What follows are thoughts I have gathered to inform the UVI webinar scheduled for next week.  September 8th at 10:00 EST.  It has been divided into four sections and will be made available as an ebook to those who attend the webinar.  You can register for the webinar at http://www.uvi.edu/administration/president/initiatives/ILOE/pulse/events.aspx

The POWER of PULSE: Deep Listening

Dr. Nancy Love

Listening is something we do every day.  It is what helps us find our way in the world.  It works with our other senses to help us interpret our world.  Even though listening is so essential to our well-being, we do not always do it well.  We are often told to pay attention, to listen.  We are reminded that it is possible to do two things at once as long as one of them isn’t listening.  Often we are hearing noises, background sounds that help us situate ourselves but we are not necessarily listening.  People may be telling us a story or asking us a question but we may be distracted, focused on something else and not near because we are not listening.  We may get bored and allow our mind to wander to our grocery list or our happy place.

Hearing and listening are different.  Listening is hearing with attention, even concentration.  When you listening with a purpose the act of listening becomes a deliberate attempt to understand the other person. Listening without distraction allows you to listen for the answer to a question or listen to the emotion of, in the case of someone offering an intervention, to listen on behalf of someone else to what is being said.

It becomes important to check your own listening skills.  Watch yourself listening and just notice the kinds of things that take you away from the listening.  Also notice how good it feels when you know that someone else has heard your concerns or your joy.  The purposes of deep listening using tools like the POWER set of tools include such things as listening for something new, to make a new friend, to find an answer, to get direction, to improve the quality of communication, conversations, and relationships.

People often ask me what makes PULSE work.  For me it is the whole Idea of honouring the other person by listening to them.  I like to move over into their world and see what’s going on there.  I know how important I feel when someone gives me a gift of time and attention and I am happy when I can pass that gift along.  As humans we have a deep desire to feel heard, to have evidence that someone else cares enough to hear our opinion, our perspective, our emotion.  It is really not necessary to have them agree.  It is only important that they hear and understand.  That feeling of being heard diffuses conflict and shifts people from fight, flight or freeze to release, relax and relate.  Sometimes it is all that is needed to resolve differences.

If you give someone the gift of appreciative and deliberate listening you will always be surprised by what comes back to you.  You will not only earn yourself a hearing with them but you will learn valuable information that may even change your perception of the situation and will definitely help you map a course through the conversation you are in.  Listening with your ears, with your eyes and with your body you will be gathering information that will increase the likelihood of reaching common ground with the other person.  Listen to understand. Listen for patterns, insights and deeper questions.  Listen for silence and what is it saying.  Listen for the space between the words.  Listen deeply and with HEART and with POWER.

I would like to thank those of you who attended yesterday’s webinar.  It was my first with UVI as a partner.  It was well attended and I think it went well.  I provided a review of PULSE the Frame and the Tetrahedron.  Here’s the link to the recording if you are interested ..PULSE 101 UVI PULSE.

There are so many people that have been following PULSE for a long time and many of those loyal PULSErs were present at the session yesterday.  A special thanks to all of you.

There were also new people attending.  For them the webinar was an introduction to a process that allows you to move with confidence into a difficult conversation.  I hope they got something out of it and that they want to learn more.  We are planning courses in the Virgin Islands for September and I am very excited to be back in that saddle … teaching and training trainers.

The Webinar is the first in a series.  The next on is on August 12th and you can register for it on the UVI Website.  The topic for the next one is GHOST, Gentle, Honest, Open, Specific Talk.  I will be talking about how this protocol sets the appreciative tone that make PULSE work.  There will be one webinar each month for the next year.

Sometimes you have to wait.  I have seen a couple of bill boards around Edmonton with a small boy looking forlorn.  The caption is just ‘WAITING’  I think I know how he feels.  Waiting for spring in Alberta …. waiting for the Oilers to final get the right combination of personnel to WIN …. waiting for the penny to drop … waiting for the PC’s to get defeated …. waiting for this cold or allergy attack I have suffered with for the past two weeks to leave me alone.

We have all spent time waiting.  The trick is to make that time count in other ways especially when you have no control over the speed of progress or lack of it that you are experiencing. I found myself speaking very forcefully to a couple of people this week to MOVE THINGS ALONG.  It worked on one and not on the other. So I go back to doing what I can when I can and setting the rest aside for another day.

The list of postponed due to others list is almost as long as the procrastination list for me.  Keeping it all in my head is always fun.  Sometimes I wait because I have to and sometimes I wait because I want to. So I guess waiting is not all bad.  I don’t want to keep others waiting.   I do my best to be a great ‘replier’ although this month the minutes of the board that I am secretary for were late because I was ‘down’ with what ever I have.

Sometimes it just can’t be helped.  i get that and I do my best to be patient with others …. until I am not.  Then look out. No telling what could happen next.  I may be little but I am not afraid of confrontation and sometimes that is what it takes to get over a hurdle.  I would say that is true especially when you are dealing with a bureaucracy or a passive aggressive personality.

In mediation patience and waiting for answers is considered a good thing.  It even has its own acrostic.  “Why Am I Talking”.  I’m usually quite a good waiter, not as in server but as in good at waiting.  MY rope is long but once I reach the end of it I tend to take no prisoners.  It’s a rare occasion when I am anything but calm and measured in my response to things. Everyone needs patience but when it gets in the way of getting important projects accomplished its time to consider alternatives to waiting … whatever they may be.

Any way I took my own advice.  While I am waiting I am writing about it so as not to completely waste this valuable time. Now I will go practice my new piano piece and get my costume ready for my dance competition next weekend. Distraction … it works for a while.  Try it the next time you find yourself waiting.