One of Sinclair’s very own professors has become president of the International Listening Association.
Kent Zimmerman is a professor of Communication at Sinclair and will also spend one year as the president of the ILA.
The International Listening Association promotes the study, development and teaching of listening and the practice of effective listening skills and techniques.
“We’re trying to help people understand how listening works and give them the skills to do it and then apply it in teaching, research and in business,” Zimmerman said.
According to Zimmerman, listening is a hard skill to master and requires a lot of work and effort.
“I think really listening is probably the most essential communication skill that we have. People take it for granted. If they don’t really know that they need it, then they think they can do it by themselves,” he said.
On average, most people, while they may think they are listening well, are actually becoming distracted and are failing to retain most of the information they are being given.
“The average individual only retains about 25 percent of what he or she hears, 24 hours later,” Zimmerman said.
The reason for this, according to Zimmerman, is that life can get in the way of people’s listening abilities.
“That’s because we’re pretty busy people. We’re distracted, we have issues that we’re confronted with. And we have priorities in our life and sometimes we think we’re listening and actually what we’re trying to do is multitask,” he said.
According to Zimmerman, the first step in improving people’s listening skills is recognizing that listening requires hard work and effort.
“Help people recognize that it is an activity that takes effort—you have to get people through that door first. It’s not a passive activity, it’s not something that just occurs naturally, but it’s an activity that really requires attention and focus,” he said.
According to Zimmerman, learning how listen well and doing it properly can help to strengthen relationships and can be ultimately life changing.
“We’re doing a lot of listening, but we’re actually listening less to people today than what we were 40 years ago,” Zimmerman said.
As president of ILA, Zimmerman hopes to reach out to a new base and connect with people who may not know about the International Listening Association and what they are here to do.
“One [goal] would be that we would enhance our website and connect our website to the social media platforms because what I’ve noticed is that we’re behind the curb on connecting with the people who are digital natives,” he said.
He hopes to advance the technology of ILA and bring their message and mission to people.
“We’re stuck in the year 1990 and we think that people are going to seek us out and then when they find the good stuff we can do then they’ll join us, but I’m amazed continuously at how few people even know we exist,” he said.
People, according to Zimmerman, may know all the right expressions to make to have the appearance of listening, but really their mind has wandered off on to a different topic.
“When we multitask, we only partially listen and sometimes we get a head nod and smile and our brain has already checked out and we’ve already moved on the next idea,” he said. “Sometimes people forget that listening is a conscious choice and if we don’t make it, other things will start to crop into our priority list.”
Not only will being president of the ILA give Zimmerman opportunity to help people with their listening skills, it will also give recognition to Sinclair.
“I think it gives great visibility to Sinclair and community colleges. Out of 37 previous presidents, only three of them were from the community college. And I think it puts community college programs on the map,” he said.
He is using his experience and skills at Sinclair and taking them to International Listening Association to help them advance further.
“I have tried to institute the different things we do at Sinclair with the ILA,” he said.
Zimmerman has spent three years training in different positions so that he could be prepared for the responsibilities as president. He will complete one year as president before becoming a “Past President” who guides the next president through their year.
“I’m really kind of excited about what we’re going to do,” he said
Zimmerman, while being president of the International Listening Association, will carry on his duties as a professor of Communication as well.
Laina Yost
Intern