CONCENTRATE ON WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING

1. CONCENTRATE ON WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING. When listening to someone, do you often find yourself thinking about a job or task that is nearing deadline or an important family matter? In the middle of a conversation, do you sometimes realize that you haven't heard a word the other person has said? Most individuals speak at the rate of 175 to 200 words per minute. However, research suggests that we are very capable of listening and processing words at the rate of 600 to 1,000 words per minute.

Skvortsov, Dyson and Korniyenko spent nearly six months aboard the International Space Station, arriving on April 4 in the same Soyuz TMA-18 that brought them back to Earth.

They were to have returned on Friday, but the descent was aborted after latches on a docking port holding the spacecraft to the orbital station failed to open, sending puzzled engineers scrambling for answers.

NASA later said crew members rigged up a solution, attaching jumper cables to bypass a failed hatch sensor that was blocking commands, enabling the latches on the Russian-made Poisk module to open.

"Space station crew members installed a series of jumpers, bypassing a failed component that had prevented commands from being received by the Russian Poisk module's docking mechanism," the U.S. space agency said on its website.

The Soyuz separated smoothly from the docking port this time and landed in Kazakhstan at 11:23 a.m. (0523GMT).

The three crewmates' stay aboard the station was marred by mishaps including a cooling system failure in August and a faulty radio link that sent a supply craft coasting past after an aborted docking. It docked successfully two days later.

An internal auditor's job today is very fast and complex, and because the brain does not use all of its capacity when listening, an auditor's mind may drift to thinking of further questions or explanations rather than listening to the message at hand. This unused brainpower can be a barrier to effective listening, causing the auditor to miss or misinterpret what others are saying. It is important for internal auditors to actively concentrate on what others are saying so that effective communication can occur.