How have the communication skills made an impact with youth? Why is it important to listen with empathy, especially to our children?
Join Adam J. Salgat and Sarah Weisbarth as they talk with two life long educators, Teresa Vineyard of St. Louis, Missouri, and Julie Zumach of Port Washington, Wisconsin about how these skills have made an impact in their careers and personal lives. Their stories and statistics reiterate the importance of listening and trying to understand the behavior of our kids.
To read a little more about both of our guests, check out their bios below –
Teresa Vineyard is a veteran public school educator. She worked within a large school district outside of St. Louis for 31 years. Teresa served many different roles during those 31 years. She was a 4th grade teacher, a middle school counselor, District Coordinator for Early Childhood Special Education, District Coordinator for Career and Technical Education, and a school psychologist. Following her retirement, she joined the team at the state level and worked for the Missouri Department of Education, specifically in the College and Career Readiness Department. Finally, she worked with teacher candidates at Lindenwood University and taught Educational Psychology, Psychology of the Exceptional Child, and Introduction to Teacher Education.
Teresa took the three-day Communication Skills Training in 2016 and quickly realized how meaningful the concepts were to both education and at home. She most enjoys practicing empathy, reflective listening, and crafting effective confrontative messages.
Julie Zumach is a teacher, facilitator, mentor, and leader. The majority of her career in education was spent teaching 5th graders in northern Wisconsin for 33 years. During this time, she earned her Master’s degree in education and national board certification, mentored aspiring National Board candidates, created staff development learning opportunities, participated in history consortiums, and was a leader in her small-town church. For the past three years, she has been the Chapter Leader of Our Community Listens – Wisconsin. Julie now enjoys the privilege of working with adults by facilitating communication skills training and inspiring them to become more reflective listeners. A life-long learner, Julie brings her passion for knowledge, as well as her love of working with people, to inspire growth and change to improve the fabric of society through better communication skills. Julie married her high school sweetheart, Todd, and they have been happily married 37 years. Together they raised two beautiful daughters who gave them wonderful sons-in-law. The newest addition to the family is the first grandchild, Anderson Jack, who just turned six-months-old. He is an absolute joy and the light of the family’s life!
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Adam:
Hey listener, we would love it if you could take a quick moment to give our podcast a review on iTunes, Spotify, or leave us a message on our Facebook or LinkedIn pages.
Hello and welcome to the Our Community Listens podcast. My name is Adam and with me today is Sarah Weisbarth. Sarah, how are you doing today?
Sarah:
I’m doing well, Adam, and I am super excited for our guest today.
Adam:
Yep. As Sarah mentioned right there, we have two guests on today’s podcast. The first is Teresa Vineyard, who has a background in school counseling and psychology. Teresa, tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit more about your background and where are you from?
Teresa Vineyard:
Hi there, Adam and Sarah. Nice to be here today. I’m now retired as a school psychologist, but I spent 31 years in public education at a large school district in the suburbs about 20 miles outside of St. Louis, Missouri. And within those 31 years, I was a teacher, I was a school counselor, I was program coordinator for early childhood, program coordinator for career and technical education for the district. And about 10 to 12 years, I spent as a school psychologist. My background includes a degree in clinical psychology, but I didn’t go the clinical route because at that point they changed the requirements from a Masters to a PhD for clinical psychology. So I went ahead and just decided to go the school psychology route and stayed with schools.
Adam:
Thanks so much for that. I’m excited to hear what you have to say about all these skills have made a difference in the way you were working with kids and what you’ve seen and how those, everything you learned in school and in all your experience in work or how they correlate with our community lessons skills.
Teresa Vineyard:
Good. Thank you. Our other guest is Julie Zumach from our Wisconsin chapter. She is a retired elementary school teacher. Julie, do the same, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your experience?
Julie Zumach:
Well, before I became the chapter leader and the facilitator for Our Community Listens in Wisconsin, I taught fifth graders for 33 years up in the tiny town of Phillips, which is about 70 miles South of Lake Superior in Northern Wisconsin. Always fifth grade but never the same. And really, I love it, fifth graders are wonderful, wonderful individuals. Just on the verge of independence, but yet have that sweet quality that really endears them to their teacher, mainly me. So it was fun. We had a great time. I was very much a hands-on teacher. American history and reading where my focus, language arts. So my great passions I was able to teach as well. What’s really kind of fun is that it was during the last two years of my teaching career because I retired back in 2016 that I really used my skills and I’m really excited about being able to talk about how that really made an impact on my relationships in those last two years.
Adam:
I’m excited to hear some of those stories as we get into our conversation today. Sarah, why don’t you take the first question here? And we get started learning a little bit more about how these skills have made a difference with them.
Sarah:
Absolutely. Before I do that, I have a fun fact for our listeners. Our Community Listens was actually born in Phillips Wisconsin. So as Julie describes it as this small little town, I think sometimes we forget that even though our reach is so large and so broad now, and that we have so much support coming out of our St. Louis, Missouri headquarters, that the idea, the heart of it, was born and impacting a small community up in Phillips, Wisconsin. And Julie’s nodding right now, so she doesn’t know I’m going to do this to her, but I’m going to ask her to maybe elaborate a little bit, it being born in Phillips, Wisconsin.
Julie Zumach:
Right. Well, back in the early 2000s, a company by the name of Markquip was having some financial difficulties, went into bankruptcy and Barry-Wehmiller purchased them in 2001. I like to say they saved Phillips because I really truly believe that they did with that purchase because at that time, there were 500 people in the surrounding area who worked at the company. And because of the strong beliefs in people-centric leadership, Mr. Chapman then decided that we needed to bring more leadership and a responsible freedom into the workplace and began leadership fundamental classes. And that rolled into the beginning of communications skills training, which we all know was the brainchild of David VanderMolen, his ability to put together this amazing curriculum that we use in Our Community Listens was course used throughout, it is used throughout the Barry-Wehmiller industries, but it got its legs, its sea legs, so to speak, in Phillips and Green Bay as well, both towns in Wisconsin, but Phillips really is known as the birthplace.
And it was through listening sessions that Mr. and Mrs. Chapman attended where they found out that it wasn’t just affecting their lives as people working within the company, but it was really affecting their home lives as well. So it has personal and professional, really positive ramifications. And that’s where they looked at one another and said, “We need to take this to the world.” And they did. And the very first pilot class was held in the spring or late winter, early spring of 2011 in Phillips. And from then it went forward to what we have today.
Sarah:
And having the opportunity to have visited Philips in this past year, it’s really striking to recognize the impact of a company on a small town. And I know I have that same feeling for our community here in Midland, we have a major chemical international chemical corporation, and they are very supportive to our community and our town. But it’s really in those personal connections, right? It’s really in the recognizing that it’s not just being philanthropic into a community, it’s not just being the major employer, but it’s also supporting all of the constructs within a community. And one of our questions that we really want to get started with today is really asking the both of you, what are those impacts that Our Community Listens has had on you personally and professionally? And Julie, I know that you being so rooted in Phillips and then seeing that impact in the school system of your teaching, the importance of teaching, but then the importance of connecting with youth. Can you kind of start us off with your thoughts around OCL affecting and impacting personally and professionally?
Julie Zumach:
Well, I will go back professionally first, and to those last two years of teaching when I really was able to use my skills. And I’m going to tell you personally that it made the biggest impact in my relationships with families. Oftentimes, I’d say I had some very positive, positive relationships with our families, I really tried to always focus on the positive. But there are times when there are parents who come in, they’re upset. They’re upset about what’s going on, and for me to be able to have the ability to use my reflective listening skills and truly deeply listen with empathy, and I think that’s what really, really made the difference. To truly put myself in their place, especially for people who are uncomfortable coming into a school situation. They didn’t like school growing up. This is not coming to conferences, one-on-one with a teacher, not their favorite place to be.
So for me to be able to sit there and, in that emotional space that they’re having that logic and emotion that imbalanced to be able to allow them to decompress, to listen without interrupting, keeping my silence inside and outside, very, very important. To reflectively respond to let them know that I hear them and I understand what they’re saying. So that, I would say my relationships with my families really, really improved. And of course, that has that residual effect of also the way the parents hopefully respond to the children and the way I responded to the children, as well. As an aside, as a teammate, I felt that I became a better teammate as a result of Our Community Listens using DISC behavioral tendencies. It was like I had this gigantic aha moment like, “Oh, that’s why he gets upset when we don’t start a meeting right away and I’m visiting. He wants to get the task done. I get it. And then if we get done, then we can talk, but not before.” And I’m like, “Julie, let it go. Let it go. It’s all right.”
And then my teammate also, he’s a very strong ID, but the point being that when it was the two of us team planning, he said, “This really works well because I am totally task-focused and you are people focused.” This is before I even said anything about, about DISC. And he realized the difference between the two of us and how we were such a good balance for one another. So it was a huge aha moment for me to see how that really, really does work to our benefits. And now I’ve actually gone back to the district and taught DISC to the entire district and everybody, the custodial staff, the food service, the bus drivers, as well as all the teachers and paraprofessionals, and then also on how to be a more effective teammate as well. And I’m hoping that they’re able to use some of those same insights working with their students, their families, and their teammates,
Sarah:
Julie there’s, there’s so much there of what you shared on all of the impacts that this one class, this one opportunity has impact various aspects of your professional life. And the first story that you shared about how it impacted your relationship with families, I’m thinking about the amount of times that I went in as a parent for those parent teacher conferences. And I’m grateful. Of course, all of our listeners know that I think my is the most amazing young man on the face of the earth. But sometimes it’s not always easy. I know he went through a struggle when he was in fourth grade, a relationship he had with another young man. And as a parent, I was off the charts wanting something to happen, that there was a problem, someone was going to take care of this.
And I think back to those educators that sat there and listened like you listen. Like you described listening for your families and how that really helped me as a parent be the best parent I could be and be part of the solution for my young man at that time. So listening to you talk about those relationships with your families, I was like, “Yep, that’s the thing.” If there’s nothing else, that’s the thing to be able to listen to those parents when they come into those conferences. Thank you. Thank you for having that presence for those families.
Julie Zumach:
Oh, you’re very welcome.
Sarah:
Well, one of the reasons that we asked the two of you to join us as guests on our podcasts is, people are all chatting around the water cooler, that’s kind of our joke. We have a weekly meeting where we just kind of gather as a group and just connect and socialize. And we were talking about the challenges that are in education and especially the challenges that are happening right now in education. And we’re all trying to figure out how to stay connected to our students, how to continue, educational environment, the behavior issues that might be happening with young kids as it relates to stressors, the support in the home. We’re all just having this conversation about how it is a challenging time in education. And Teresa I know that you were really talking really heartfelt about all of those challenges that you saw in your experiences, in your roles, within an educational environment, and really then the benefits that the skills have related to that. Did you want to kind of expound on that a little bit for us?
Teresa Vineyard:
Sure. And I remember that coffee chat around the water cooler very clearly. And when the question came up, I don’t know what I did. I did not laugh, but I thought to myself and I made some noise because I feel like it’s just a really hard question to answer quickly. I think there are so many issues in education right now, first and foremost is safety of students and mental health of students. Mental health, meaning that students are able to cope and self-regulate. A lot of teachers nowadays, got 98% of the teachers have told me, not told me, but told research that they have experienced a student with mental health issues. And then there are many, many stressors that we’re talking about. We’re talking about death of a parent, we’re talking about separation of parents, we’re talking about bullying that happens at school, we talk about when people move and uproot their homes and move somewhere else, all of those can be real stressors.
And if mental health problems not addressed, and really some teachers really are uncomfortable addressing them. But research also tells us if they are addressed and teachers talk about them and listen to the student and use empathic reflective listening skills, that it actually will circumvent that mental health issue from developing. It could be a poor experience for a person, but it won’t necessarily lead into a mental health problem. So I think that is one major issue with in education.
I think also teachers are just really worked hard nowadays, little time for teachers to do what they need to do because their roles have really expanded over the years. They’re driven by curriculum that is dictated to them, testing over that curriculum. They’re dictated to include students who have behavioral issues or mental health problems and learning disabilities. So they’re basically trying to universally designed good curriculum for every student in the classroom now and that’s really hard when you have 25 to 30 students. And then some teachers, depending on where they work, they have limited resources to do that with. So I think just the time teachers have to devote to students is less and less because of all the other demands.
Sarah:
There’s so much out there. I wish our listeners could see my face right now, because when you shared the statement and the statistical information around mental health issues for our youth where those youth have a teacher that’ll just listen to them or a counselor or principal or probably I’m just going to say some sort of supportive adults, I would assume, that is just available to, empathically listen to them, that can change the trajectory of, of their mental health issue. I see you nodding, did I catch that right?
Teresa Vineyard:
Yes. From what I’ve read recently, and also I wanted to say, I am a retired school psychologist so it’s been three or four years since I’ve been in the educational system. But based on what I hear, because I still do substitute work in consultation with districts, from what I hear, yeah, I think, and what I’ve read, just when you’re an emotionally available adult, you avert mental health issues. And being emotionally available means that you build rapport with your students, you listen to students, you empathize with students, and this can all reduce a student’s emotional stress when they’re going through some particular stressors.
I think in particular, students are struggling nowadays too, because they’re not being heard at home and we all want to be heard and listened to and I know that our communication skills training really emphasizes good listening skills and reflective listening. But they’re not being heard at home all the time. They’re dual income working families and they’re not there all the time, they’re busy, they’re tired from having two or three or four jobs actually to support the home nowadays. So yeah, the teacher falls into that role so much more sometimes than even a parent will in providing that solid role model that will empathize with him or her.
Adam:
I know… My wife is a school teacher, she is special education, and I see it through her lens a lot because our girls are so young now that as a parent, I’m not seeing it quite yet from that side. But she oftentimes says some of the students that she’s servicing are dealing with more emotional trauma or more emotional issues than they truly are dealing with maybe a learning disability. And I know part of what, and the reason why she’s good at what she does, even though she would struggle to admit that, but she’s very good at what she does, is because she’s a very empathetic person. And I think she has that ability to connect with these kids. And I certainly am going to have her listen to your words, because I think it would mean a lot to her to know that it can go a long ways.
Teresa Vineyard:
So Adam, did I hear you correctly that she feels that some of these students who are labeled, for lack of a better term, identified as a student with a learning disability or really have struggling with behaviors?
Adam:
Yes. I mean, not to get into specifics, but there’s been times where she’s talked about it and she said he or she can’t focus on what I’m trying to tell him, because for the first four or five years of their life, they were in fight or flight. And so they’re little body wants to move, the little body needs to do something like… So she feels that she’s definitely working through emotional disorders as much as she’s working through potential learning disabilities or cognitive disorders.
Teresa Vineyard:
Yeah. And actually the research says that students who have emotional stressors at home, like I mentioned, or even at school, like the bullying or at home with death or parents who aren’t available, they are six times more likely to develop a behavioral problem and a three times more likely to experience academic failure. So a lot of the behavior really comes from having that emotional stress.
Adam:
Yeah. It’s very interesting to hear those statistics because it’s nothing, to be honest, I’ve done a lot of reading on myself, so it’s nice to be educated knowing that she’s out there trying to make a difference in and help with those numbers.
Teresa Vineyard:
Yeah. It sounds like it really was with the best thing she can do is just listen and be there for them. And it sounds like that that’s what she’s doing very effectively.
Adam:
Yes. And she needs that reiteration sometimes, and it doesn’t always come from me, but I know by the end of each school year, she normally gets it from one or two kids and her heart grows 10 times bigger and she’s ready to take summer off and then get back at it and they’ll fall.
Teresa Vineyard:
Good for her, good.
Adam:
Go ahead, Julie.
Julie Zumach:
Well, I just made this connection that we believe that all behavior is an expression of a need. And when those children are acting, we say acting out or behaving in a way that isn’t quite right for the classroom, there’s a reason. There’s a reason. And being able to see through that lens to help them, as Teresa said, can make tremendous, tremendous impact positively for them to create that learning environment.
Adam:
Sarah, we haven’t touched yet on personal. I’m not sure if you want to get there, or if there’s more we want to touch on when it comes to some of the professional side.
Sarah:
I was really enjoying this conversation and I can see just the interaction here that there’s this very, I don’t know, it’s like a clear case, right? I hear in everything Teresa’s sharing, this clear case for why listening matters. And then I see on Julie’s face this like, yes, we can see what’s happening with these young people. And then even Adam, you in sharing Becky stories about, gosh, it’s hard to even feel like you’re making a difference. So to have that encouragement of just being present and just the same for those families for those those youth is really what is making a difference in their lives. So I don’t know, I’ve just been enjoying this conversation. Julie or Teresa, do you want to share any personal anecdotes of maybe like this has been around the education environment, super helpful, we’ve been talking about listening, we can tell that listening is the most helpful thing a person can do. And we have our five [inaudible 00:22:29] listening skills, and that is our topic for the month of the month of June. Anything else you want to share personally about how you’ve been impacted in your relationship with our community lessons and the skills that you teach and abide by?
Julie Zumach:
Well, I wish I would have taken it sooner than 2014 and I need to make a correction, it’s actually 2010 that those pilot classes were held. So 2011, the first classes, and then 2013 and beyond in Philips. So 2014 was when I first took it. So that’s only been basically six years that I’ve been able to, what I consider to be blessed with the skills that I’ve learned. I have two daughters, Meghan and Tara. They are 34 and 31 years old. And they would tell you that it’s not easy growing up being a teacher’s kid in a small community. And I was probably tougher on them than I should have been and wasn’t the best listener as they were growing up. So when I went through Our Community Listens in 2014, I was not just determined to be a better teacher, but I wanted to be a better mother even though my girls were grown and in their 20s. So I worked really hard on using my reflective listening skills. And of course I’m a kind of person who needs feedback, I need to know if I’m doing all right.
And after maybe seven, eight months, I finally sat down with them and I said, “Hey girls, I need to know, do you, do you see a difference in me at all? Is anything better?” I kind of felt it, but I wanted to hear it. And they said, “Oh mom. Yeah, big time.” And I’m like, “Okay, get ready to hear this Julie, because you asked for it.” So I said, “Okay, I need some specifics now, need some specifics.” They go, “Well mom, you don’t interrupt anywhere near as much as you used to.” I’m like, ‘Oh, well, good to know. Good to know I used to do that. Oh okay. Maybe I still do once in a while. Think about silence, right?”
I said, “Okay, anything else?” “Oh yeah. You don’t offer that sage old advice like you used to without being asked.” I said, “Oh okay, well that’s good. I’m holding back on it a little bit. Good to hear. So I don’t interrupt. I’m not offering advice like I used to. That’s got to be it, right?” No, there was one more. Like, “Okay, let me have it.” And it was, “Mom, you jumped off the judgment machine.” I very quickly passed judgment came up with my thought about why this happened. You can go down the road, you know exactly how it works. And I’m like, “Whoa, that one hit home.” And I thank them for their feedback, and I continue to work hard because they openly share with me. I look at that as a sign that I have grown as a parent, as a person through my ability to listen. Well, and every time I hear them say my favorite words, “Thanks for listening, mom,” I say a silent prayer of thanks.
Sarah:
Oh, thank you. I feel like it’s a message of hope for parents of adults, talk about working with youth. Then we talk about wanting to be the best parent that we can be. And even in our young or our kids, I guess they’re still kids technically, right? I don’t have 20 and 30 year olds yet, but [inaudible 00:26:33].
Julie Zumach:
They’re always kids.
Sarah:
They’re always kids, okay, cool. I have stepchildren that age but…
Adam:
I’m the youngest of five. I’m 36 and my mom still calls me her baby.
Sarah:
There you go.
Julie Zumach:
There you go.
Adam:
I think we’re always kids to our parents.
Julie Zumach:
Yes, you are.
Sarah:
I feel like it’s a message of hope, right? Of like, how do you still have a relationship with your adult children? How do you still connect with them? How do you actually support them without giving that unsolicited advice? How do you still support them and suspend all of the concern, possibly judgment of their making or what they’re doing. And it sounds like you’ve done that. And that has just really created a great relationship with your daughters.
Julie Zumach:
I never realized it could be this good and I still have to bite my tongue sometimes and that’s helpful. That’s helpful for so many reasons, but yeah, I’m really grateful.
Adam:
Julie, very happy to hear the progress and the continued relationship building you’re making with your girls. Teresa, tell me a little bit about you and how have the skills made a difference in your personal life?
Teresa Vineyard:
Well, when I was doing some mild preparation for this podcast, I made a collage of all of the communication skills training terms and I looked at them and I thought, wow. And I’ve wrote down a couple of things I wrote down were, let me back up, would say empathy, reflective listening skills, effective confrontation behaviors are messages, style flexing. All of those terms are very relevant to home and to school. In my life at home, I have a husband and I have a child who is 17 right now. And I have to say that I probably utilize effective listening skills the most, meaning that I just listen. I mean the most powerful thing you can do to somebody is listen, and I can be present in that moment with my son, especially, and just try to hear what he’s saying and give him that space and that time to really tell me what he needs to.
And it may not start that way, but I think as the more you sit and listen and make that connection through listening, they’ll tell you more. I’ve also utilized the effective confrontation, the FBI approach to formulating an effective confrontational message. First, you identify your specific feelings, you talk about the behavior that’s happening. And then you talk about how it’s impacting you. Well, of course, as a mom, we always want, not always, I shouldn’t say always, but we often want to confront what’s what somebody is not doing at home the correct way, or at least from our perspective, the correct way. So crafting these more effective confrontational mass messages have really been a huge benefit to me.
Sarah:
I think of the hardest things about effective confrontation is then the next step is to shift back and listen. And I know the times that I have delivered confrontation messages at home, and then I’ve shifted back and listened. I have learned something about my young child, my young man, that I would not have learned if I did not have that ability to shift back and listen. And I mean, even pointing to Julie’s story and having the history of being a good listener, right, where he could trust that. “Well now mom, I’m going to tell you what’s really going on. And this is why you’re seeing this behavior. He doesn’t say it in those words, I can put those little gaps in between it, but he can trust me that I’ll actually listen and suspend that judgment and be fully present so then that relationship grows. It’s like a synergy, it’s a synergy of everything we know to be true, but it seems to just really hinge around that listening piece.
Teresa Vineyard:
I love, and you have utilized this Sarah in a couple of your presentations to some groups of people, but I love the Karl Rogers quote that says, “One of the most powerful dynamics of human interaction is when people feel as though they have been heard, really heard. Hearing someone does not mean we necessarily have to agree with what has been said, rather it is working to understand where people are coming from and then going to a new place together.” So that encapsulates what you’re talking about, about the power of listening and how you get to learn so much more when you do effective listening or when you effectively listen.
Adam:
Thank you both for taking the time to chat with us today. As always, we like to ask our guests to give us a couple key takeaways for our listeners. So Teresa, why don’t you go first?
Teresa Vineyard:
I feel like what really jumps out at me is how we all, whether we’re a student, we’re a parent, or a spouse, or a friend, we all just need to be heard. So I feel like anybody listening to this podcast can take away just when you’re in that interaction with somebody, try to listen to them and let them be heard. Because again, that is something that can really circumvent a lot of issues down the road. And then I love something that Julie said, and in education we say it a little differently, but Our Community Listens says that behaviors are an expression of a need. I used to say it as behaviors are a message and I think that’s really important for listeners to understand when they have kids they’re dealing with, and there’s some inappropriate behaviors going on, what are they really to do?
Are they trying to gain attention? Are they trying to avoid something? Are they trying to meet a sensory need? There’s there a couple of functions of behaviors, and when you get down to the function of what the behavior is, it’s usually not at all what you think it is. And I think when you get down to that function, you can really what they need, I guess I should say, not the function, but when you can really get down to what they need, you can meet their needs better.
Adam:
Teresa, you reiterated one more time why I love recording these podcasts because they give me an opportunity to reflect on my own family and my own interactions. And I think about my four year old and I think, okay, she’s not remotely listening to me and she’s running off into the corner. So why? Why is she doing that? And so thank you for that key takeaway it’s a good reminder.
Teresa Vineyard:
You’re welcome. Thank you.
Adam:
Julie. What about you, ma’am?
Julie Zumach:
I would say that my key takeaway is, it’s about relationships. Relationships with families within your family, with your coworkers, as a leader, it’s about relationships and listening really is the key to being able to make that connection. And until you practice some of those skills, it can be difficult to truly deeply listen, listen, to understand, instead of just listening to respond, really giving of yourself. And often as I’m working on curriculum right now, I see the term, practice the pause, practice the pause. It’s a slide that we put into many of the sessions, but there’s a reason for that. We always say kids count to 10 before you say or do something it’s true. And to be able to practice that pause and really gives you a chance to say, Whoa, calm down, give that person the grace and space that they need.
And then of course, really keying in on yourself and having that keen self-awareness of where you’re at. One of the questions that had been posed earlier in the notes was the biggest struggle. And I look at myself personally is my non-verbals. I do not play poker for a reason. It is all on my face, and it can sometimes be in my tone of voice as well. And you might have the very best intentions, but as you’re speaking to whomever, being aware that you are the message and the way that you come across is very, very important. So those are the things that I find to be critically important, to be a good listener. I
Teresa Vineyard:
Love that you bring that up about the non-verbal messages because they account for so much of someone’s communication. Anywhere from 50 to 75% of communication is nonverbal. So yes, when you’re listening, you need to be really reflective of what you’re communicating non-verbally.
Julie Zumach:
Most definitely.
Sarah:
I so enjoyed being with wise smart, insightful heart-led people. I so enjoyed our conversations today. I’ve made some notes over here. I always feel like I’m trying to kind of bring the knowledge and the inspiration to our listeners and I’m just really grateful to have had the two of you with us today and where I can sit back and be the listener and gain the knowledge and inspiration. So thank you.
Teresa Vineyard:
Thank you, Sarah. And thank you Adam.
Julie Zumach:
Yes. Thank you, Sarah and Adam.
Adam:
I’d like to thank you both for being on the podcast today. It’s outstanding to have a strong, powerful women as part of our listening group and part of our organization. Thank you so much.
Teresa Vineyard:
Thank you.
Julie Zumach:
Thank you.
Adam:
If you have any suggestions about subjects for our podcast, feel free to reach out through our Facebook page. And if you’re interested in taking a class, visit ourcommunitylistens.org. Thank you again for listening to our podcast and don’t forget, each word, each action. Each silent moment of listening sends a message. Therefore, you are the message.