Learning How to Listen
IT'S a terrible admission for a journalist, but it took me 43 years to learn how to listen. Until I went on the Core mediation course, I don't think I had ever truly switched off and listened without computing what to say next in my head.
The Core course is not just an exercise in mediation training; it's about figuring out what makes people tick, finding out what matters. These are skills of mediation, skills of journalism, and most of all, skills of life.
On the first couple of days, I thought I could never do it as I consulted my mental checklist and made a clumsy and stilted effort at bringing the parties together. Yet by the third day, everyone was starting to get it. By the fourth and fifth, there was a massive difference. How did it happen? Was it something in the coffee? I'm not sure, but it worked.
David Lee is a media and events consultant and former Senior Assistant Editor of The Scotsman