"Can you hear me now?"
"Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?"
"How do you hear this transmission?"

It's all around us... we as human beings want to know that we are being heard. We seek acknowledgement of our expressed ideas, thoughts, feelings, etc.

Follow up:

Several years ago, as a young Communications technician in the U.S. Navy, I spent many hours repairing broken communications equipment. Once the fault was located and corrected, the equipment was still not ready to return to service. All the readings could be within specs, but the final check was the verification of the transmitted message. At this point, all I wanted to hear back was "five by five", and then I knew the equipment was working well and providing its intended service.

I thought about this as I've been hearing from our Administrator and his concern and acknowledgement of our Agency being number 214 out of 216 on the latest Human Capitol Survey. For many years we have been sending our "transmissions" into the various Surveys without much hearing much about it from above. IMHO, it's nice to hear from him on this subject. Even better that he is making effort to engage employees and hear from them directly with his "brown bag" lunches.

It is nice to be heard, but it's even greater when our ideas are discussed, given real consideration, or sometimes even acted upon. Then we really know that we have been listened to.

As a front line manager, I realize that there are MANY levels of management between Randy and me. I hold out hope that someday all (most… some..?) of those in between us adopt his practice of hearing and listening to feedback. Time will tell, and I think it may just show up in us moving up from 214. Randy is shooting for #1 and I hope we get there, with all levels operating "five by five".

Okay, so much for all the stuff above us that is out of our control… let's take a moment to think about our own facilities and the folks we work with day in and day out. What are we doing to create, promote, and maintain a "five by five" environment? Maybe we can do a brown bag or two ourselves….

For more on Active Listening, check these out:
QUIZ http://www.mhhe.com/business/management/buildyourmanagementskills/updated_flash/topic13b/quiz.html
TIPS
http://www.taftcollege.edu/lrc/class/assignments/actlisten.html