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Episode 89: B3 Breaks: Active Listening

Amy Vetter

Distractions can be a problem when you are working remotely. Do you find it easy to get distracted? In today’s B3 Break, take two and a half minutes to find ways that you can be more present in your meetings by making eye contact and using active listening. Amy Vetter discusses workplace efficiency techniques that help cut distractions. You will find that by making this small shift, you will be more productive and get better results!

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B3 Breaks: Active Listening

This series is all about getting honest with ourselves and noticing the things that we carry with us. We each have our own life experiences to go from and sometimes it's hard to truly understand what it's like to be someone else. What we can do to create change is to start with us. If each of us took one action each day in our own lives, we could collectively change the world around us. What does it take? It takes work and practice. We have to be honest with ourselves as we get there. To do that, we have these B3 Breaks in order to pause and assess our thoughts before we speak. To take an honest look at our interactions in our day and the energy that we may be creating around us.

We ask other people questions, learn their stories and experiences. We create positive energy with the people around us and find peaceful ways to show our support to our friends, our family, acquaintances. We observe all of this without judgment. We are present with the people we are with and we show up in love. What can we do? We start with the little things. This series is all about short practices that you can put into your day. Practice this each day for 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or whatever it takes so that you can observe your energy and be intentional with the energy you create around you because if you believe you can, you will.

Active Listening: If we want to be as efficient as possible, it's important that we are still making eye contact.

For our B3 Break, we're going to talk about active listening. When we're working remotely, it gets easy to get distracted. Distraction happens even in the workplace but it really happens when we are working remotely because we get texts and instant messages. We get distracted by emails that are coming in when we need to be paying attention in our meetings. One of the most important things that we can do when we are on video calls is turn on the webcam. I know sometimes that isn't comfortable or we want to work on different things but the problem is then we aren't present with the people that we are with. We may miss some of the biggest business opportunities because we're not paying attention or ask people to repeat themselves, which is a time-waster.

If we want to be as efficient as possible, it's important we are still making eye contact. How we do that is by turning on the webcam and actively listening to the people that are in the meetings with us. That we are not just passively listening. Taking in the information they are saying, maybe doing emails on the side, multitasking and not paying attention but asking open-ended questions so that we can get even more information when we are on these meetings. Making sure that they are most productive and informational to get the actions that we need from those meetings. Make sure that you were asking questions that are like, "Why is that?" Open-ended, "Tell me more. Why do you think that might have happened? What could have been a different result if we had done it in a different way," and keep asking. What you'll start uncovering is not just the problem but get into the root of the problem where you can start problem-solving and innovating.

Active Listening: Actively listen by asking open-ended questions. When you do that, you will find that your meetings are so much more productive.

Take the time to turn off those notifications. Turn on Do Not Disturb on your computer, on your phone when you have those meetings. Turn on the webcam so that you are making eye contact with everybody and you're completely present with those meetings. Actively listen by asking open-ended questions. When you do that, you will find that your meetings are so much more productive and that you are creating actionable items from those meetings that should benefit you and everyone around you.

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Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read the show. I hope you will take a moment to pause before entering back into your day to reflect on this episode and note 1 to 2 actions you are inspired to do from this conversation that you could incorporate into your life. There are related videos on my YouTube Channel. For daily inspiration, follow me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn @AmyVetterCPA. I hope that you will choose to like this and subscribe to this show on iTunes, Spotify and more so that you can join us for more inspiration on our next episode.

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