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Extraordinary Listening

Our mission: Extraordinary Listening is dedicated to exponentially increasing human wealth through the power of harmonious communication.

Our goal: Extraordinary Listening provides the quintessential knowledge and skills that enable everyone on the planet to enhance the creation of wealth through peace, prosperity and creative human relations.

Our vision: Extraordinary Listening contributes the most powerful educational technology for extraordinary EFFECTIVENESS, SYNERGY and PRODUCTIVITY.

Our willingness to listen to and communicate is fundamental for creating a healthy society. Even though we may hold information back with the best of intentions, that withholding limits the power of interaction. In a culture of trust, we take greater risks, enhancing creativity and innovation.

Our collective assumptions create our culture. Exploring open communication develops a culture of connection, information flow and autonomy empowering any group, team or society to function extraordinarily effectively in achieving their desired outcomes.

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The Creation of wealth

Extraordinary Listening is designed to increase the wealth of the world. The Oxford English Dictionary says in defining wealth: "Wealth is to the spirit what health is to the physical body." When your body is in good condition you are healthy. When you live in a spirit of learning and creativity you are wealthy. Wealth is more an attitude than a number.

Our wealth does not reside in our money or our physical resources. It does not reside in our industrial plants or even in our high-tech industries. Our knowledge base gives us the power to use all the other resources to create our lifestyle. It is an important delineation in our understanding of wealth. However, we can differentiate it further. The creation of our wealth emerges from our ability to learn! Learning and creativity allow us to create and continually re-create our knowledge base. Together learning and creativity lead to new possibilities and new solutions that improve the quality of our lives, individually and collectively.

I describe this process with the word listening. Listening as I use the term represents the full spectrum of attention. It is much more than noticing and recognizing sound and words. Listening includes the meaning that we make which informs the totality of our thought, feelings and action. I have chosen the word extraordinary to suggest listening in a way that allows us to hear subtle and significant meaning that we might ordinarily miss.

About Richard Moon

Endorsements

… A superb teacher . . . in his ability to devise ingenious ways of communicating the complexity and subtly of the art.

George Leonard
Author

I have known and worked with Richard Moon in the field of international ethnic conflict, and its resolution since 1994. He is a Master of applying the principles of Aikido to the problems of the world. His insights into people and their problems, regardless of where they come from in the world, coupled with his ability to call on an infinite variety of skills to help resolve the often potentially violent conflicts they are faced with, is like magic. In the face of challenge you need Richard at your side.

John McDonald
Former US Ambassador
Chairman and CEO, Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy, Washington, D.C.

Your principles are simple, valuable and applicable.

Bill Ide
former President American Bar Association

His writing is simple and clear. He strips away the inessential, and offers the reader only those teachings where the real leverage occurs. I can think of no one more qualified or able to teach about the art of listening.

Douglas Stone
Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School
Co-author, "Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most"

You were very effective at tuning into my frequency, which can be very selective when it comes to receiving input.

Jim Dixon
Start Up President Nextel Communications
President and CEO, Cellular One San Francisco

Richard Moon is intuitive, insightful and endlessly creative. He models the kind of power in the world that integrates listening and action. The work is a delight; and an adventure. It translates the mysteries into simple, practical actions that anyone can take. The skills of listening build strong and effective relationships.

Louise Diamond
President, Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy, Washington, D.C.

The customer doesn't want to listen. The customer only wants to tell us. They want us to listen to what the time frames are, what it costs, all of the things that mean life and death to them. When you say, "Would you just listen for a minute?" You are adding to the reactivity.

So of course their fear, that you won't hear them and what they need, only increases. Especially when the customer is irate and there are hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, the answer is in listening.

Michael Bush
former CEO, Whalen & Company

Your skills as a teacher are extraordinary. A major contribution to the success that Nextel enjoys today. Your teaching enabled us to accelerate the development of world class teams and operate at a level of trust that made us the leading team in the company. In the early days I was skeptical that your contribution would be as permanent as it has been.

John W. Combs
CEO, InternetConnect
former President, Nextel, Southwest Area

Though the presentation was exceptionally unique, even our most conservative executive found value in his remarks!

David Levine
Vice President, Human Affairs International

As Nextel crossed the 1 million-subscriber mark I thought back to who else should see this. Richard I couldn't help but think of the difficult path that both you and Chris have helped us navigate. Thanks for your support and guidance. Your contribution has meant a lot to me and I deeply appreciate it.

Bill Jarvis
President, Nextel Western Region

Richard Moon's seminar on Extraordinary Listening teaches a deeper understanding of how to arrive at much more meaningful communication. This learning helped us to develop the skills to co-create a brighter future, absent the resentments, fear or suspicions that usually creep into human relations. Bringing the instruction to a physical as well as intellectual level grounds the lessons in the learner. It became exceptionally clear that conflict and misunderstandings have little future in light of his methods of listening. This training is for everyone! Just outstanding.

Tim LaSalle
Executive Director, Agricultural Education Foundation

A completely new dimension in learning.

Mike Campbell
Assistant Dean, University of California, Davis

He has provided some of the most exciting learning experiences in which I've had the pleasure to participate. Richard has displayed an uncommon ability to share deeply with his students.

Paul Ehrlich
University of California, Berkeley
JFK University

I'm a BIG fan of your listening ideas; which I think are far and away superior to anything else on the subject. And I really mean that.

James Laflin esq.
Attorney and Mediator

His teaching always inspires our program. I recommend him highly.

Richard Strozzi Heckler
Author, Aikido and the New Warrior
Founder Rancho Strozzi Institute, Aikido of Tamalpais, Lomi School

I am fascinated by the very simple yet powerful concepts you present. You have made me realize every moment is an opportunity to learn.

Brenda Ouwerkerk
California Agricultural Leadership Program

Provides them with experiences that were simple and effective in teaching basic principles. You were especially able to tune into their emotional levels and give them immediate feed back.

Lindsay Warren
Director, Island School

Richard has an uncanny ability to sense where a student is and adapt the teaching accordingly . . . (producing) . . . a greater understanding of the untapped inner resources we all have.

Roger Folge
Tamalpais High School

The deep level of communication among the participants made it one of the richest experiences of my life. Under Richard's strong patient guidance I learned to "listen". . this ability to feel what other people were sending out.

John Wittmayer
Student

Quotes About Listening

The action that creates peace is listening.

 

In the modern world success will not be determined by what you know but rather by how fast you learn.

 

My learning and creativity depend on my ability to listen.  Learning depends on my ability to listen to what is going on around me and creativity depends on my ability to listen to what is going on within myself.

 

When you listen to your reactivity, instead of unconsciously listening through your reactivity, you can begin to listen beyond your reactivity.

 

Learning & Creativity require a delicate listening that protects new ideas coming into form from the loud and reactive voices of precedent and prejudice.

R. Moon

It takes a rare person to want to hear what he doesn't want to hear.

Dick Cavett

There is only one rule to become a good talker: learn how to listen.

Source Unknown

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

Winston Churchill

An inane person tends to get excited what ever is being said.

Heraclitus

Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.

Jimi Hendrix

Listen! Make a space for yourself inside yourself. 

Rumi

Since it both the benefits and the dangers inherent in listening are equally great I am of the opinion that listening ought to be a constant topic of discussion in one's own mind and with other people.  This is especially so because it is noticeable that most people go about the matter in the wrong way: they practice speaking before they have got used to listening, and they think that speaking takes study and care, but benefits will accrue from even a careless approach to listening.

Plutarch

Don't listen with your ears, listen with your mind.  No, don't listen with your mind, but listen with your spirit.  Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with recognition, but spirit is empty and waits on all things.  The Way gathers in emptiness alone.... Let your ears and eyes communicate with what is inside, and put mind and knowledge on the outside.  Then even gods and spirits will come to dwell, not to speak of men!

Chuang Tzu Basic Writings

Hearing is a faculty; listening is an art.  When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

Ernest Hemingway

One of the most valuable things we can do to heal one another is listen to each other's stories.

Rebecca Falls

The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood.

Ralph Nichols

The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention.

Richard Moss

When you talk, you repeat what you already know; when you listen, you often learn something.

Jared Sparks (1789-1866)

If I can listen to what he tells me, if I can understand how it seems to him, if I can sense the most of flavor which it has for him, then I will be releasing potent forces of change with in him.

Dr. Carl Rogers

Our first responsibility as effective listeners is to understand ourselves as communicators. Just as the sources of the communication message shoud be trained in self-intrapersonal communication, so, too, should listeners know themselves.

Wolvin & Coakley

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice; take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.

William Shakespeare

A good listener tries to understand what the other person is saying. In the end he may disagree sharply, but because he disagrees, he wants to know exactly what it is he is disagreeing with.

Kenneth A. Wells

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why.

Mignon McLaughlin

An open ear is the only believable sign of an open heart.

David Augsburger

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.

Robert Frost

My soul is my counsel and has taught me to give ear to the voices which are created neither by tongues nor uttered by throats. Before my soul became my counsel,  I was dull,  and weak of hearing, reflecting only upon the tumult and the cry.  But now,  I can listen to silence with serenity and can hear in the silence the hymns of ages chanting exaltation to the sky and revealing the secrets of eternity.

Kahlil Gibran

Links

• Moonsensei.com DVD's of Robert Nadeau & Richard Moon's Aikido.
• City Aikido - Senseis: Robert Nadeau & Richard Moon.
• Aikido of Marin Richard Moon - founder / Jeff Kato - chief instructor.
• Quantum Edge – Liberating the Human Spirit.
• Open Mind Adventures – Transforming leaders.
• Aikiweb – A source for information on Aikido.
• Aikido.com - Repository for Aikido resources.
• The Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy - International peace-building.
• Peter Ralston & Cheng Hsin - One of Richard Moon's extraordinary teachers.
• Capoeiraarts.com - Where Richard Moon studied with Mastre Accordion.
• Kyu Shin Do Aikido - Aikido Dojo in New Zealand that has invited Richard to teach.