About Jill
Hi, I’m Jill Chivers, thanks for stopping by the I’m Listening Now site. All my work has been in the people field and the last 15 years I’ve been a corporate facilitator, trainer and coach (related yet separate skill sets).
This “people work” required a high degree of listening, and I became fascinated by it. If listening is so important, why do we pay so little conscious attention to it? What does it take to be a great listener? Can you learn to be an outstanding listener? And why do so many people report that they know hardly one outstanding listener, but most of us believe we’re good, if not great, at it? I had lots of questions about listening.
Late 2008, I had the idea to create a self-paced program where you could be guided through a series of questions, and you got to answer them. This was the genesis of the program you can buy here, I’m Listening Now. I thought it would be neat if you could get to hear your own wisdom anytime you needed it.
I know I need it — I need to hear my own words before I really know what I think and feel about something. But I don’t always have a real live person on tap, when I need them, to listen. To ask me questions. To help me sort it out for myself.
So, that’s how the idea for I’m Listening Now came about. I’ve been asking questions in corporate workshops for years. Seeing how empowering it can be for someone to be asked the right question, at the right time. How empowering it is to find your own answer, to not be told what the answer is.
I’ve come to the conclusion that telling someone the answer isn’t very helpful. Asking them a question, or sometimes just listening without saying a word, usually is helpful.
These are a couple of photos of me on my own journey. Neither the cheetah or the car are mine, I came across them on my travels (to Capetown and London, respectively).
As for my personal journey, well, I’ve been trudging across the landscape of change most of my life. I sometimes would have preferred to have been sitting in the chair of an air-conditioned bus, gazing out the window in detached comfort, instead of being out there in the heat of the day and the cold of the night, getting grumpy and tired from all that tramping across what in most cases feels like an inhospitable landscape. Where’s a Sherpa when I need someone to carry my bags for me?
After many miles of trudging, I’ve had an epiphanyan A-HA moment. There is no way to be a passenger in your own journey. You must get out there and experience it… feel the ache in your calves, the weight of the backpack on your shoulders, the sunburn, the windburn and the heartburn. I’m Listening Now is the result of this a-ha moment. It’s a way of putting the “self” back into self help.
I’m delighted that your search has led you to I’m Listening Now. You can contact me anytime via our form or direct via email.
