Friday, February 25, 2011
ambitious people - coaching, mentoring, training for finance professionals: Read Coach Chris Latest Article - Do you fear publ...
ambitious people - coaching, mentoring, training for finance professionals: Read Coach Chris Latest Article - Do you fear publ...: "Do you fear public speaking? Find out the 3 area's that you must know to be a competent speaker, and learn Coach Chris top 7 tips for contro..."
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
5 tips for effective listening
As a child we all learn to talk but we only learn to listen when our parents tell us that they won’t buy us a particular toy and then…….. what happens?
Most of the children start crying!
Do we learn how to listen effectively?
During my professional career, one of the things I have learnt is to listen. I would like to add that listening is not hearing or if you remain silent and wait for your turn to speak, it is also not effective listening. One of the ways in which effective listening may be explained is the way in which we listen to the other person fully, analyze what is being said, ask gentle question to get full picture and then frame our response or utterance.
5 tips which we may consider to develop effective listening skills include:
1. Get comfortable with silence
Why silence?
Silence mean not to think about shooting the answer when the other person stops speaking but silence is a state which enables a person to think, analyze and re-think before speaking.
Silence has its own language!.
Once a person is silent and let his / her thoughts focus on an issue and start analyzing with open mind, better solutions come into consideration – try practicing silence and enjoy the comfort!
2. Listen for differences
At time we don’t want to listen to someone who is saying something which we don’t want to listen. Lets try to listen to differences with patience. People have their opinions and we have ours. Believes take shape over the period of time and are influenced by the nature of education, environment and experience. The way we think is different from the way other people may think about the same situation or event.
Therefore, differences must be tolerated and understood.
3. Listen between the words
At times, people might not be saying what they are saying! Their body language may be sending some signals which are not consistent with their speck. Therefore, we should try to listen between the words. Context and content – both are required to be taken into consideration.
4. Ask smart questions
We may try to listen better by asking smart questions and gather more information before proposing any solution. Instead of giving opinion, one of the ways to listen effectively is to get clarifications and develop better understanding of the issue at hand.
5. Break the ‘I’ habit and ‘shoulding’
At times, we try to explain our position to the person who is speaking to us. We may also tend to advice people instead of asking questions and leading the person towards solution by asking the right questions again and again and getting the person to think and analyze. This may sound to be difficult first but once we try practicing it, we will see wonders!
Happy listening! (By Malik Mirza)
Most of the children start crying!
Do we learn how to listen effectively?
During my professional career, one of the things I have learnt is to listen. I would like to add that listening is not hearing or if you remain silent and wait for your turn to speak, it is also not effective listening. One of the ways in which effective listening may be explained is the way in which we listen to the other person fully, analyze what is being said, ask gentle question to get full picture and then frame our response or utterance.
5 tips which we may consider to develop effective listening skills include:
1. Get comfortable with silence
Why silence?
Silence mean not to think about shooting the answer when the other person stops speaking but silence is a state which enables a person to think, analyze and re-think before speaking.
Silence has its own language!.
Once a person is silent and let his / her thoughts focus on an issue and start analyzing with open mind, better solutions come into consideration – try practicing silence and enjoy the comfort!
2. Listen for differences
At time we don’t want to listen to someone who is saying something which we don’t want to listen. Lets try to listen to differences with patience. People have their opinions and we have ours. Believes take shape over the period of time and are influenced by the nature of education, environment and experience. The way we think is different from the way other people may think about the same situation or event.
Therefore, differences must be tolerated and understood.
3. Listen between the words
At times, people might not be saying what they are saying! Their body language may be sending some signals which are not consistent with their speck. Therefore, we should try to listen between the words. Context and content – both are required to be taken into consideration.
4. Ask smart questions
We may try to listen better by asking smart questions and gather more information before proposing any solution. Instead of giving opinion, one of the ways to listen effectively is to get clarifications and develop better understanding of the issue at hand.
5. Break the ‘I’ habit and ‘shoulding’
At times, we try to explain our position to the person who is speaking to us. We may also tend to advice people instead of asking questions and leading the person towards solution by asking the right questions again and again and getting the person to think and analyze. This may sound to be difficult first but once we try practicing it, we will see wonders!
Happy listening! (By Malik Mirza)
How to pass exams? 7 useful tips
7 tips to pass exams (By Malik Mirza).
Being a qualified Chartered Accountant (CA), Certified Accountant (ACCA, UK), Management Accountant (CIMA, UK) and Certified Internal Auditor (CIA, USA), I consider that passing exams require a particular skill set which is easy to learn.
One of our teachers told us: You have whole life to study but only six months to pass this paper. So, concentrate on understanding what examiner wants.
Here are 7 tips to help every student pass exams, based on my personal experience:
1. No limiting belief please
- Remove the limiting belief that you can’t pass.
- If you believe you can pass or you believe you cannot pass, you are right.
- I have seen students under the impression that examiner is their enemy. Please don’t think so. Pass percentage might be low, but students do pass their exams. So, don’t think that you will be in a failure category ever.
2. Understand the structure of paper
- First of all, understand the structure of paper – is there any marks allocation for a particular topic?
- Secondly, if there is marks allocation, is examiner following it? The best thing to do is to review the past five papers.
- What is the key topic i.e. examiner’s favorite? Is there any article by examiner in the Students’ Accountant or any other relevant student magazine? Study that topic and prepare for it, even if you don’t like it!
3. Taking notes
- Prepare for exams by way of ‘notes’ which you can recall quickly at the time of taking exam. This will help in two manner. First, when you write, you are in better picture of giving your mind instruction through written letters. Secondly, you can revise from your notes instead of opening the book when exam day is near. Here is my strategy for taking notes:
- Take a paper and turn it in landscape format.
- Put three columns in landscape form.
- Once done, take synopsis of a chapter in smaller fonts and the language which you can easily understand.
- Write bullet points, important concepts and key ideas which you need to remember.
- These notes should be used at the time when paper is on head and you need to revise whole subject in two to three hours.
4. Remembering / memorizing key ideas and formulae
- One of the key ideas to memorize ideas e.g. formulae, is to write them in small charts and hang it in front of your bed.
- See those formulae daily before going to bed and rising up.
- Use different colours and markers.
- Believe me, in my statistics paper, I was recalling the formulae in the exact colours which I wrote on charts.
5. Exam practice
- Practice mock exam – be your own examiner.
- Take any past paper and solve it as a mock exam.
- Solve past paper in the time allocated in exam. Think you are in exam hall and solve the paper accordingly.
- Check your paper and give yourself marks.
- See how are you performing in mock exam and be sincere to yourself.
6. Time your paper
- Here is technique to time your paper: Take total marks and total time. Subtract 10 minutes from the total minutes. Divide the remainder with the marks and you get time per marks
- example: If there are 100 marks for a paper and you have 180 minutes. Subtract 10 minutes. This means you have 170 minutes altogether or 1.7 minutes per mark.
- make sure that you don’t spend more that 1.7 minutes per mark e.g. if a question is of 10 marks, maximum time you should spend should be 17 minutes.
- It happens that students try to focus on one particular question and if they are unable to solve it, they get confused. Don’t panic. Start next question. If student has time, he / she can take up that particular question later on.
- Try to allocate 10 minutes at the end of exam to review the paper thoroughly.
7. Don’t annoy examiner
See for spelling errors and writing style. Writing needs to be legible and understandable. As a teacher to many students, I have noticed that spelling errors and the way students write, at times, is not understandable. Examiner has very less time to check paper. If your paper is examiner friendly, you are going to attract good marks.
Being a qualified Chartered Accountant (CA), Certified Accountant (ACCA, UK), Management Accountant (CIMA, UK) and Certified Internal Auditor (CIA, USA), I consider that passing exams require a particular skill set which is easy to learn.
One of our teachers told us: You have whole life to study but only six months to pass this paper. So, concentrate on understanding what examiner wants.
Here are 7 tips to help every student pass exams, based on my personal experience:
1. No limiting belief please
- Remove the limiting belief that you can’t pass.
- If you believe you can pass or you believe you cannot pass, you are right.
- I have seen students under the impression that examiner is their enemy. Please don’t think so. Pass percentage might be low, but students do pass their exams. So, don’t think that you will be in a failure category ever.
2. Understand the structure of paper
- First of all, understand the structure of paper – is there any marks allocation for a particular topic?
- Secondly, if there is marks allocation, is examiner following it? The best thing to do is to review the past five papers.
- What is the key topic i.e. examiner’s favorite? Is there any article by examiner in the Students’ Accountant or any other relevant student magazine? Study that topic and prepare for it, even if you don’t like it!
3. Taking notes
- Prepare for exams by way of ‘notes’ which you can recall quickly at the time of taking exam. This will help in two manner. First, when you write, you are in better picture of giving your mind instruction through written letters. Secondly, you can revise from your notes instead of opening the book when exam day is near. Here is my strategy for taking notes:
- Take a paper and turn it in landscape format.
- Put three columns in landscape form.
- Once done, take synopsis of a chapter in smaller fonts and the language which you can easily understand.
- Write bullet points, important concepts and key ideas which you need to remember.
- These notes should be used at the time when paper is on head and you need to revise whole subject in two to three hours.
4. Remembering / memorizing key ideas and formulae
- One of the key ideas to memorize ideas e.g. formulae, is to write them in small charts and hang it in front of your bed.
- See those formulae daily before going to bed and rising up.
- Use different colours and markers.
- Believe me, in my statistics paper, I was recalling the formulae in the exact colours which I wrote on charts.
5. Exam practice
- Practice mock exam – be your own examiner.
- Take any past paper and solve it as a mock exam.
- Solve past paper in the time allocated in exam. Think you are in exam hall and solve the paper accordingly.
- Check your paper and give yourself marks.
- See how are you performing in mock exam and be sincere to yourself.
6. Time your paper
- Here is technique to time your paper: Take total marks and total time. Subtract 10 minutes from the total minutes. Divide the remainder with the marks and you get time per marks
- example: If there are 100 marks for a paper and you have 180 minutes. Subtract 10 minutes. This means you have 170 minutes altogether or 1.7 minutes per mark.
- make sure that you don’t spend more that 1.7 minutes per mark e.g. if a question is of 10 marks, maximum time you should spend should be 17 minutes.
- It happens that students try to focus on one particular question and if they are unable to solve it, they get confused. Don’t panic. Start next question. If student has time, he / she can take up that particular question later on.
- Try to allocate 10 minutes at the end of exam to review the paper thoroughly.
7. Don’t annoy examiner
See for spelling errors and writing style. Writing needs to be legible and understandable. As a teacher to many students, I have noticed that spelling errors and the way students write, at times, is not understandable. Examiner has very less time to check paper. If your paper is examiner friendly, you are going to attract good marks.
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