As a part of out “employee assistance program” we had a guest speaker come in and teach a seminar on “Active Listening”. While you would think a lesson on active listening would only include listening, there was also a lot of group participation.

To begin, we had to partner up and each individual was given a role as either the speaker or the listener. The sweet, quiet secretary and I partnered up, I was the listener, and was secretly instructed to not make eye contact, look around the room, and constantly interrupt. Which I hated. We both hated it and only ended up giggling the entire time.

Then we had the seminar. We were taught that active listening is more than hearing. It is making eye contact, asking questions, reading body language, etc, etc.

During the presentation, My Manager kept brown-nosing the speaker, while the Human Resources guy kept making jokes-

Speaker Lady: What are good ways to provide constructive criticism. (Still not sure what this had to do with active listening.)

Me (trying to show I was “actively listening”): The Sandwich Method, good-bad-good.

HR Guy: You mean the BUT METHOD! he he he. ‘This is great, but…”

Here is where all of my coworkers laughed. (Side note: I am the youngest in the office by at least ten years)

After the seminar, we closed with another exercise with the same partners, no roles, simply conversation. After it was finished…

Speaker Lady: So did that exercise go better than the first?

My Manager: Of course, after such a great seminar.

HR Guy (who the reason we had this presentation): WHAT A SUCK UP!!!!!!!

Again, everyone laughed.

At the end of the day, I don’t know that I learned anything but at there were free snacks.