{"id":32403,"date":"2023-04-18T18:51:43","date_gmt":"2023-04-19T01:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=32403"},"modified":"2023-04-18T18:53:51","modified_gmt":"2023-04-19T01:53:51","slug":"be-present-to-be-useful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/be-present-to-be-useful\/","title":{"rendered":"Be Present to be Useful"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cEveryone should be quick to listen, slow to speak<\/em>…\u201d James 1:19<\/p>\n

A big part of what I do every week is prepare for and deliver sermons and other public talks. So, all semester I was looking forward to reading Julian Treasure\u2019s book How to be Heard: Secrets for Powerful Speaking and Listening[1]<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>to pick up tips and tricks that could help me hone that craft (especially after having quickly peeked at the end to see there was advice on things like developing content, developing your vocal toolbox, and stagecraft).<\/em> I was anticipating an easy read during a week of heavy writing and editing in both of my classes.<\/p>\n

That opening paragraph reveals my cognitive bias: I only saw the word \u201cSpeaking\u201d and missed the word \u201cListening\u201d. While I\u2019m always ready to get better at speaking, Treasure\u2019s primary message is that \u201cin order to be a good speaker… you must also be a good listener\u201d, and that \u201ca balance between the two is necessary.\u201d[2]<\/a> That statement was written as he transitioned the book\u2019s focus from listening to speaking, a full 188 pages into a 300-page book.<\/p>\n

Though the book was not a difficult read, I found myself reading it more slowly than I had many other books that I had \u2018inspected\u2019 this semester. Because while I want to be a better speaker, I recognize that I\u2019m not always the greatest listener. And though I know listening is an important skill, I\u2019ve been known to use it more like a tool\u2014useful for wielding in the right moment, but not something that\u2019s a vital and well-known part of my work, and life.<\/p>\n

I guess I wasn\u2019t listening very well as a kid when my dad would say that God gave us two ears and one mouth so we would listen twice as much as we speak (and I\u2019m certain my dad didn\u2019t know that he cribbed the saying from Epictetus.) [3]<\/a><\/p>\n

It would be easy to separate this book into the 2\/3 listening section and the 1\/3 speaking section. \u00a0The last third of the book gave some good technical advice about speaking (some of which I\u2019ll use as early as tomorrow morning at church), and the first 2\/3 of the book challenged me at many points to listen. I could easily fill the rest of this blog post with connect-the-dots observations to Tom Camacho\u2019s[4]<\/a> \u00a0mining for gold when managing other\u2019s failure (page 183), or Eve Poole\u2019s[5]<\/a> templating when learning how to speak (page 291) or Campbell\u2019s[6]<\/a> Heroes Journey to talk about using story architypes to build speeches (page 221).<\/p>\n

However, what I found more helpful than the individual parts, was the whole of the message that \u201cit\u2019s hard to be a great, powerful speaker if you don\u2019t listen, or to be a great listener if you can\u2019t articulate your own thoughts.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

Over, and over again, whether Treasure was giving advice on listening or speaking, I couldn\u2019t shake this concept from my mind: Be present.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure that the book ever explicitly expressed those two words \u2014 \u201cbe present\u201d \u2014 but the idea of being fully present as others speak was vital, throughout. Treasure believes that \u201ctruly listening to someone requires all of your attention\u201d, and \u201cthat there are literally billions of people on this planet who have never known what it is to be truly listened to, so scarce is that experience.\u201d[8]<\/a> If people are going to know we care about them, we must learn to put our distractions away, and truly listen.<\/p>\n

Being present is also vital when we are speaking. When we learn to \u201clisten\u201d to an individual, a group, or a crowd, we become much better communicators who are deeply and undistractedly paying attention to the context in which we speak. Furthermore, when we are being present to ourselves as we speak, we can make intentional decisions that help us communicate our message more effectively.<\/p>\n

I once heard Bono say that before U2 takes the stage, they circle up and pray \u201cLord, make us useful\u201d. \u00a0Treasure writes \u201cwhenever you are on a stage or a platform, or speaking to a group, remember, it\u2019s not about you… you are there to give something to your listeners or your audience.\u201d[9]<\/a> Being present helps us to do that best.<\/p>\n

As a speaker I\u2019ve always prayerfully submitted my sermons and public talks to the Lord, but recently before I speak, I\u2019ve started to stop, get on my knees, get present to the Lord as I seek to listen to Him, and pray this specific, simple prayer: \u201cLord, somehow, make me, and this, useful.\u201d<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Julian Treasure, How to be Heard: Secrets for Powerful Speaking and Listening <\/em>(Coral Gables, FL: Mango Publishing Group, 2017).<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Treasure, How to be Heard<\/em>, 188.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., 105.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Tom Camacho,\u00a0Mining for Gold: Developing Kingdom Leaders through Coaching<\/em> (Nottingham: IVP, 2019).<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Eve Poole,\u00a0Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership<\/em>\u00a0(London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2017).<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Joseph Campbell,\u00a0The Hero with a Thousand Faces<\/em>, (Novato, CA: New World Library, 1949).<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Treasure, How to be Heard<\/em>, 10.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Ibid., 38.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Ibid., 203.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cEveryone should be quick to listen, slow to speak…\u201d James 1:19 A big part of what I do every week is prepare for and deliver sermons and other public talks. So, all semester I was looking forward to reading Julian Treasure\u2019s book How to be Heard: Secrets for Powerful Speaking and Listening[1] to pick up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":169,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2489,2713],"class_list":["post-32403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp02","tag-treasure","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32403"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32406,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32403\/revisions\/32406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}