Listening Leaders Archived Edition

January 7, 2009

LISTENING LEADERS PRESERVE PRECIOUS PICTURES

As another holiday season has come and gone, serious Listening Leaders® reflect on the value of taking the special opportunity to preserve precious pictures of the past. From the wonderful pictures enclosed in cards of the season, to the Kodak Moments taken at the many celebratory parties and family events, to the precious word pictures captured in the multitude of special conversations and stored in listening memories, precious pictures deserve to be preserved. For, as Laura Swenson observed, “For some life lasts a short while, but the memories it holds last forever.”

Preserved precious pictures hold the power to transport listeners across generational time-lines and geographic datelines, moments of history, real or imagined experiences, special places visited and special people known. Whether pictures taken by famous photographers like: Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, Alfred Stieglitz; or any everyday photographer with a simple inexpensive camera; or, the camera of any listener’s mind, precious pictures serve a powerful purpose.

For Listening Leaders® pictures link the present to the past and provide a string of continuity upon which the pearls of life can be connected. Precious pictures provide the opportunity for capturing the full range of all listeners’ memories, both good and bad. Pictures capture a moment in time that is irretrievably lost, yet timeless, unchanging, and thus, never lost. In this experience, listener’s can enjoy the special emotional appeal of the past and provide fuel for the present and future. Or, as John M. Barrie reminds everyone, “God gave us memories that we might have roses in December.”

Thus, as we face the dawn of another new year, all listeners will profit from preserving important precious pictures of the past, while creating significant new precious pictures of the present. In the process, it is important to remember Henry Ward Beecher’s observation, “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” To that end, Listening Leaders® create precious pictures worth preserving.

LISTENING LEADER® KNOWLEDGE NUGGET: Listening Leaders® Preserve Precious Pictures.

In the opening Chapter of his 1865 novel, “Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland”, English author, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, writing under the pseudonym of Lewis Carroll, highlights the importance of pictures and conversations.

Carroll wrote, “Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting on the bank and having nothing to do. Once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a book’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversation?’” One hundred and forty-four years later, Listening Leaders® should still ask, “What is the use of a life without pictures and conversation?”

The importance and power of pictures is more important in the process of listening than ever. Time and technology has increased the importance and power of captured images. Consider the important 1939 observation of the French aviator and writer, Antoine De Saint-Exupéry, who wrote: “Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, and transport of flickering pictures in this century as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together.”

The imperative importance of preserving precious pictures is heightened with the repetition of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s immortal sentence: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” Of course, Berenice Abbott was correct when she observed, “Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.” Yet, “Photography helps people see.” For as the French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism, Henri Cartier Bresson, so aptly noted, “To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition in a fraction of a second of the significance of an event.”

In sum, the value of preserving precious pictures for listeners everywhere was perhaps best captured by Sarah Bernhardt’s simple utterance, “All the pictures that hung in my memory before I knew you have faded and given place to our radiant moments together. Now I cannot live apart from you. Your words are my food, your breath my wine.”

You What listener would not like to have those words engraved in their picture book of life?

LISTENING LEADER TIP OF THE WEEK: Make precious pictures.

GOLDEN CIRCLE LISTENING LEADERS QUOTES OF THE WEEK:

The one who tells the stories rules the world ~ American Indian Proverb
Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf ~ American Indian Proverb
A people without a history is like the wind over buffalo grass ~ American Indian Proverb
In charity there is no excess ~ Francis Bacon
We will be known forever by the tracks we leave ~ American Indian Proverb

A LISTENING LEADER GIGGLE:

Sue Strand is a registered Nurse who has served scores of thousands of patients in the health care world for more than fifty years. As a result, she understands the value of listening and a sense of humor. Sue shared the following picture about some elderly Nursing Home residents.

Picture this: Three old mischievous women were sitting on a bench outside their Nursing Home when another old male resident walked by. One woman yelled out, “We bet we can tell you exactly how old you are.”

The old man responded, “Ain’t any way you can know how old I am, because I am younger than I look.”

“Sure we can!” retorted one of the ladies. “Just drop your pants and we will tell you your exact age, to the day.”

Embarrassed, but challenged, the man dropped his pants.

“Sure we can!” retorted one of the ladies. “Just drop your pants and we will tell you your exact age, to the day.”

The three old ladies stared at him for a short while, asked him to turn around a couple of times, jump up and down, and then in unison yelled, “You are 91 years and a day old.”

Dumbfounded, the old coot asked, “How did you know?”

Together, the three old ladies snickered and laughed, slapped their knees, grinned from ear to ear, and happily yelled, “Because we were at your Birthday Party yesterday!”

Precious pictures demand to be preserved.

LISTENING LEADERS KUDOS

Kudos to Annie Griffiths Belt, a renowned National Geographic Photographer, for the recent publication of her very special book, “A Camera, Two Kids and a Camel: My Journey in Photographs.” For the past three decades, this award-winning photographer has circled the globe and captured stunning images. Her pictures capture the extraordinary colors and textures of the world and numerous human experiences. Along the way she married, had two children, and continued to take gorgeous pictures with her kids in tow. As she blazed a trail for others, Annie Griffiths Belt listened and allowed her camera to bridge the divide that sometimes exists between people of distant cultures and beliefs. As she observed in this remarkable book, “I have learned that even without a shared language, it’s easy to let people know that their children are beautiful, their homes are lovely, and their stories are worth sharing with the world.” We salute Annie Griffiths Belt and the National Geographic Society for sharing pictures and stories worth preserving.

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WE ARE LISTENING and invite your action

Together, we can change the listening attitudes, skills, and knowledge of leaders throughout the world. We appreciate and invite your assistance in expanding our listening leader’s connections. Eight simple steps in advancing this important movement include:

Take and make pictures worth preserving.

Forward this newsletter to your children, grand children, friends and colleagues. More important, invite them to Subscribe to the “complimentary and weekly” newsletter by going to www.listeningleaders.com

Send us your listening leader insights, examples and stories.

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Ask about our proven listening leader training programs and our customized in-house train-the-trainer strategies and our Certification program.

We can help, we are committed, and we are listening.

Listen, Lead On & Make Today Count! – Manny & Rick

__________________________________________________________________

LISTENING LEADERS: THE TEN GOLDEN RULES
TO LISTEN, LEAD & SUCCEED

By Dr. Lyman K. Steil
& Dr. Richard K. Bommelje

Publisher: Beaver’s Pond Press
(ISBN 1-59298-073-2)

A pioneering book that directly connects listening with leadership.Based on more than 50 collective years of work with listening leaders throughout the world, Dr. Steil and Dr. Bommelje have created 10 practical, proven, and priceless rules to enhance everyone's listening and leadership success. Although outstanding leaders are outstanding listeners, most leaders have neglected the development of their listening attitudes, skills and knowledge.

“This is the most significant book ever written on listening and leadership and will profit leaders at all levels in all types of organizations and enterprises.” Dr. Ralph Nichols, Father of the Field of Listening

ORDER YOUR COPY at www.ListeningLeaders.com or www.amazon.com

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Dr. Lyman K. (Manny) Steil
25 Robb Farm Road
St. Paul, MN 55127
651-483-3597
LKS@ListeningLeaders.com

Dr. Richard K. (Rick) Bommelje
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407-679-7280
RKB@ListeningLeaders.com

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