Social work students were learning the value of reflective listening -- summarizing what someone has said to show you heard them accurately. At the conclusion of several practice sessions, each student was asked to choose someone with whom they could practice their new skills. One student, Mary, chose her 8-year-old neighbor.

“Hi Jimmy,” she began. “How have things been going?”

“Not very good,” Jimmy responded.

“You haven’t been doing too good?" Mary questioned.

“No, I have been in trouble with my mom most of this week.”

“You have been in trouble with your mom?”

“Yes, and it’s not my fault.”

“Not your fault?”

“Mary, you seem to have the same problem my mom tells me I have,” Jimmy exclaimed. “It seems we both don’t hear too well.”

Kenneth Haseley, a communications professor at Ivanovo State University in Russia, offers some very interesting statistics on listening: “Most of us spend 70 to 80 percent of our waking time communicating; nearly half of it -- some 45 percent -- is spent listening.

“But we are poor listeners. We listen at an efficiency rate of only 25-50 percent. One reason for this is that the average person speaks at a rate between 100 and 200 words per minute (wpm), but we can hear at a rate of at least 600 wpm. That leaves a lot of time for our minds to wander. When someone is talking, most of us are thinking about how we're going to respond.

“Listening is hard work. When you listen actively, your pulse goes up and you breathe faster. To listen effectively, and to show that you are listening, do the following: Take notes. Repeat or paraphrase what the speaker has said. Ask questions. Ask the speaker to clarify or elaborate on what was said. Don't interrupt. Look at the speaker.”

Listening at work is an important skill to develop. You need to listen well for many reasons: so that you can understand others, so you know what it is that you are supposed to do, so that you can predict and prevent possible problems and so that you can set your goals for the future in a positive and realistic manner.

“Learn to listen,” says author H. Jackson Brown Jr. “Opportunity sometimes knocks very softly.”

Listening can be hard work, and some people are more challenging to listen to than others. But when you find yourself tuning out what someone is saying, you should ask yourself why. Are you tuning them out because what they’re saying is irrelevant or boring? Or are you tuning them out because you don’t want to hear what they’re saying?

Listening goes both ways. If you want people to listen to you, you need to listen to them. To build better relations with your employees, customers and managers, avoid these listening mistakes:

-- Discounting the issue. Don’t minimize the importance of what another person has said. Saying, “Oh, it’s not that big of a deal,” can make someone feel that you think his or her concerns are trivial. The intent of a response should be to support and encourage.

-- Offering unwanted advice. When you jump in to tell the other person what to do, you may be solving the wrong problem without understanding all the issues. You may also send the message that you don’t think the speaker can solve his or her own problems. Give advice only when asked.

-- Interrogating the person. We often respond to a problem by analyzing it: asking a lot of probing questions and judging the other person’s response. Asking too many questions or interrupting can alienate the person. Let him or her finish before searching for solutions.

-- Monopolizing the conversation. Being a good listener means giving the other person a chance to talk. As simple as that sounds, learn to watch for signals that you are talking too much. Sometimes actions speak louder than words. Non-verbal cues are an important part of listening.

The editor Maxwell Perkins, famous for discovering Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others, decided to test his theory that no one really listens to what others say at most social events.

Arriving late to a cocktail party, Perkins told his hostess, “I'm sorry I'm late, but it took me longer to strangle my aunt than I had expected.”

“Oh, I completely understand,” said the hostess, smiling sweetly. “I'm so happy you could come.”

Mackay’s Moral: Two ears, one mouth: nature’s way of telling you to listen more than you talk.

Mamie Adams always enjoyed going to a branch post office in her town because the postal employees there were friendly. She went there to buy stamps just before the holidays one year, and the lines were particularly long. Someone pointed out that there was no need to wait in line, because there was a stamp machine in the lobby.

“I know,” said Mamie, “but the machine won’t ask me about my arthritis.”

The personal touch is no laughing matter. Many people shop and buy where they feel appreciated and comfortable.

I’ve been in sales for a long time, and -- to me -- the concept of personal touch hasn’t changed. People buy from other people because of likability, chemistry and people skills. That’s why every speech I give I ask the question: What’s the sweetest sound in the English language? It’s the sound of your name on someone else’s lips.

Ever wonder why servers in restaurants introduce themselves? It’s the personal interaction that goes beyond delivering your food and mugging for a bigger tip. It’s to make you feel comfortable and “leave a good taste in your mouth” for the establishment.

The personal touch works in all areas of business, from attracting and retaining employees to engendering loyalty in your customer base.

I know the headmistress of a private school who makes it a practice to learn the names of each of the 1,000-plus kids attending her school. If they’re new and she hasn’t met them, she learns their names by studying their pictures. On the first day of school each year, she greets each student by name as they get off buses.

Imagine how reassuring it is to a frightened kindergartner, suddenly thrust into strange surroundings, to be recognized immediately by an adult who is in charge of his or her life. Or to the child’s anxious parents. When they ask Junior how it went the first day, they discover that the headmistress of the school has taken a personal interest in their child.

In the 12 years this headmistress was at the school, enrollment more than doubled, and the endowment increased sixfold. Not entirely the result of learning those names of course, but it certainly didn’t hurt to have a headmistress who understood that her performance as a salesperson was as important as her role as an educator.

To quote Meg Ryan in “You’ve Got Mail,” one of my all-time favorite movies: “Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal.”

I wrote a short lesson in my book “Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive” that simply states: Once you attach your personality to a proposition, people start reacting to the personality and stop reacting to the proposition.

But is all that about to change?

Electronic self-service may be the wave of the future for many organizations, but lots of consumers are bucking the trend. The CRM Buyer website reports that researchers surveyed more than 24,000 consumers in 12 countries about customer interactions. Here’s what they found:

-- 80 percent prefer customer service from a human instead of an automated system.

-- 83 percent say that interacting with a customer service rep is important on the phone or in a store.

-- 68 percent believe they’re more likely to get a better deal when negotiating in person instead of online.

-- 18 percent said they would renew products or services because of good personal customer service, even if they were more expensive.

Are companies paying attention?

The British blog Fresh Tracks notes: “It’s so much easier to fire off a text or an email instead of making an appointment in person, writing a carefully thought-out letter, or even picking up the phone. More of us are allowing technology to replace elements of our face-to-face relationships. In many instances, it’s hugely convenient and efficient to send someone a quick text and receive a reply in seconds.”

But it’s difficult to put nuance into electronic communication. You can program responses, direct customers to FAQ pages, promise that their messages will be returned within 24 hours or whatever. But never forget that the personal touch is already one step removed, and you must respond as promised or they are on to the next website.

When you can’t be one-on-one with customers, make sure they know you are still there for them. Pay attention to your reviews, handle complaints immediately, deliver more than you promise. Keep your finger on the pulse.

Mackay’s Moral: The personal touch means all hands on deck.

Are you performing up to your potential? Are you afraid to jump to the next level? Are your habits pushing you forward or holding you back?

The most important book on self-motivation and achieving more than you imagined hit the bookstores last week: “High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way,” by Brendon Burchard.

Brendon is the world’s leading high-performance coach and a sought-after personal development trainer. Drawing inspiration from Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Successful People,” which he describes as “the best book of all time,” Brendon was determined to answer three questions:

-- Why do some individuals and teams succeed more quickly than others and sustain that success over the long term?

-- Of those who pull it off, why are some miserable and others consistently happy on their journey?

-- What motivates people to reach for higher levels of success in the first place, and what practices help them improve the most?

I’ve heard Brendon speak on several occasions, so I invited him to speak to my Roundtable group about his results. “The right habits lead to sustained long-term success. High performance means succeeding beyond standard norms, consistently over the long-term,” Brendon explained. “It feels like full engagement, joy and confidence that come from giving your absolute best.

“What we know about high performers,” he said, includes the following:

-- They are more successful than their peers, yet they are less stressed.

-- They are more confident that they will achieve goals despite adversity.

-- They are uniquely productive. They’ve mastered prolific quality output.

-- They work passionately, regardless of traditional rewards.

-- They are admired and adaptive leaders.

-- They are healthier than peers.

-- They feel appreciated and feel their work makes a difference.

Shockingly, just fewer than 15 percent of the population are high performers.

Years of research led Brendon to identify the six deliberate habits that gave people the edge. He also discovered that anyone can practice these habits with extraordinary results in their lives, relationships and careers. “High performance is not strongly correlated with age, gender, nationality, intelligence, personality, strengths, creativity, empathy, years of experience or compensation,” he said.

Brendon sites six habits in a long-term success story:

-- Seek clarity. “Compared with their peers, high performers have more clarity on who they are, what they want, how to get it and what they find meaningful and fulfilling,” he said.

“You generate clarity by asking questions, researching, trying new things, sorting through life’s opportunities, and sniffing out what’s right for you. It comes from asking yourself questions and further refining your perspective on life.”

-- Generate energy. “I’ve found that the most effective way to help high performers increase their energy is to teach them to master transitions,” which he defines as “a powerful space of freedom between activities. ... I’m convinced that if we can get you to change the way you shift from one activity to the next, we can revitalize your life.”

-- Raise necessity. “Necessity is the emotional drive that makes great performance a must instead of a preference,” he explained. “When you feel necessity, you don’t sit around wishing or hoping. You get things done.” He continued, “If I’ve learned anything from my research and a decade of interventions developing high performers, it’s that you cannot become extraordinary without a sense that it’s absolutely necessary to excel.”

-- Increase productivity. “The fundamentals of becoming more productive are setting goals and maintaining energy and focus,” he said. Clear and challenging goals are the starting point. Taking care of yourself, including good sleep, nutrition, exercise and positive emotions help you maintain energy. Keeping focused isn’t easy in the modern era with information overload, distractions and interruptions diminishing productivity."

-- Develop influence. “Having influence means you can get people to believe in you or your ideas, buy from you, follow you or take actions that you request of them,” he explained. “Of course, influence is a two-way street.”

-- Demonstrate courage. “Our coaching interventions suggest that demonstrating courage is the cornerstone habit of high performance,” Brendon said. “Demonstrating courage doesn’t mean you have to save the world or do something grandiose. Sometimes, it means taking a first step toward real change in an unpredictable world.”

In his new book, Brendon offers specific examples that illustrate how to develop these habits as well as exercises and practices for achieving high performance status. He even offers a link to a free professional assessment. Get ready to up your game.

Mackay’s Moral: The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.