I think confidence is sometimes overlooked because confidence is derived from someone's level of preparedness, preparation, and training from the school and from their personal experiences. How often do you we ask our staff about their confidence in performing their job and really encourage professional development? Fruit for thought. 

I'm going to use the Feel, Felt, Found statements more often-even outside of advising! It's a great tactic to addressing concerns and issues. 

Small talk IS necessary and a huge part of building rapport and trust. It is a skill to learn how to small talk in a relevant and impactful way with potential students. 

I had no idea some colleges spend on average $2000 in their admissions recruiting efforts per student. This also goes to show the magnitude of responsibility admissions reps have; since they are the face of the college and have a profound effect on its reputation and hook.

I enjoyed reading about the relationship cycle and I think some of these questions and tactics (asking for the enrollment or motivational stories) are great tools. 

I think it's important to teach our students to be aware of their own barriers to listening, especially the internal dialogue and reactive/critical barriers. It's easy and also most natural for judge what you hear from someone immediately or just focus on your own voice when someone is communicating with you. 

I like the breakdown of what an empathetic listener means and I will focus a lot more of my energy on listening with my ears and making sure I am not occupied with my own filters and issues. 

I like how the most basic the tools for producing powerful questions stems from the asker's ability to ask engaging, skilled questions that use framing, softeners and other techniques to ensure the question produces a powerful response too.

It's very important to ask open-ended questions during an admission process or when getting to know your student. By mirroring asking powerful questions that are open-ended, I hope this illustrates to the student how to best ask questions so they can navigate their education more effectively. 

This is very interesting. I had a time to self-evaluate and it seems I identify from each category (Action/People/Thought oriented), I think this would be a fun exercise to do with students, it really highlights some of key focus areas that might need some attention or further development. I consider myself a complete finisher but I will have to engage in better tactics to help me delegate more work out and also, to worry less.