- Effective Listening For Leaders
- Are you A Good Listening? Listening Skills Assessment
- Public Courses
Effective Listening for Leaders
With organizations and individuals so fervently focused on the bottom line, it’s easy to ignore “softer” goals, such as listening well. All that touchy-feeling stuff is a waste of my time, you might say or think.
On the contrary! A focus on listening can lead to more effective teamwork, higher productivity, fewer conflicts and errors, enhanced innovation and problem-solving, improved recruiting and retention, superior customer relations and more. As authors on leadership development have noted through the years, listening is not just a nice thing to do, it’s essential!
“Make the human element as important as the financial or the technical element,” wrote Stephen Covey in his seminal book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. “You save tremendous amounts of time, energy and money when you tap into the human resources of a business at every level. When you listen, you learn.”
As long ago as 1966, Peter Drucker, author of The Effective Executive and numerous other books, emphasized the importance of listening to both self and others as an essential step in bringing to light everyone’s role as contributors to the organization’s overall success.
Likewise, studies in Emotional Intelligence (EI) over the past couple of decades have found that leaders actually “infect” the workplace (for better or for worse) with their attitudes and energy. To understand and influence these flows of emotions and motivational states, leaders need to be able to practice empathic listening skills.
In their book Primal Leadership, authors Daniel Goleman, Richard E. Boyatzis and Annie McKee, describe how varying leadership styles rely on listening skills for their effectiveness.
Visionary leaders listen to values held by individuals within the group, enabling them to explain their own goals for the organization in a way that wins support.
Coaching leaders listen one-on-one to employees, establish rapport and trust, and help employees help themselves in matters of performance and information gathering.
Affiliative leaders listen for employees’ emotional needs and strive to honor and accommodate those needs in the workplace.
Democratic leaders elicit ideas and participation by listening to everyone’s opinions and information.
In Seven Habits, Covey cites numerous examples of successful business deals and resolved workplace issues in pointing out the importance—and power—of empathic listening versus mechanical, or perfunctory, listening. He also acknowledges that it takes time and practice to become adept at listening empathically. Here are some tips for sharpening your listening skills.
Develop your curiosity. This helps with Covey’s suggestion: Seek first to understand. Genuine curiosity is felt by others and helps to open up their speech and your listening.
Pay attention to your listening. Replay conversations you’ve had and assess whether you listened well.
Seek feedback. Ask coworkers, employees, bosses, clients/customers and suppliers to assess your listening skills.
Work with a coach. Coaches can help you discover ways to listen better not only to those you work with, but also to yourself.
Listening better will reward you with an entirely new level of communication and problem-solving skills, for empathetic listening requires the ability to see multiple points of view in any given situation.
Are You a Good Listener?
Good communication is a two way street: speaking and listening. Listening doesn’t mean just not speaking. To be an effective listener requires certain behaviors and attitudes. Listening is an action word. Find out how good a listener you are by answering the following questions and use it to help you develop a plan for becoming a better listener.
- Listening means paying attention. When I listen to someone, I focus my attention on the speaker. I look directly at him or her, and concentrate on hearing what he or she is saying.
__Always __ Most of the time __Sometimes __Never
- Listening means accepting what the other person says. When I listen to someone, I withhold judgment and accept what he or she is saying “as is.” I acknowledge what the person is saying without labeling it right or wrong, good or bad, true or false.
__Always __ Most of the time __Sometimes __Never
- Listening means being interested in what the other person says. When I listen to someone, I invite the speaker to give his or her opinion, say what’s on his or her mind, or say how he or she feels about the topic or issue.
__Always __ Most of the time __Sometimes __Never
- Listening means confirming and clarifying what I believe I heard. When I listen to someone, I ask specific questions such as “What I heard you say is … is that right?”
or “I think I understand what you said, but will you elaborate on …?” or “When you say …, do you mean…?
__Always __ Most of the time __Sometimes __Never
- Listening means being empathetic. When I listen to someone and I begin to feel defensive or impatient or angry, I try to put myself in the other person’s shoes and appreciate what he or she might be going through.
__Always __ Most of the time __Sometimes __Never
- Listening means being involved. When I listen to someone, I respond actively by nodding, making interjections and asking questions such as “How do you feel about that?” or “What would you have liked to do or say?”
__Always __ Most of the time __Sometimes __Never
- Listening means letting go of control. When I listen to someone, I don’t always jump right in with a solution, or try to fix things, or have to say the “right” thing.
__Always __ Most of the time __Sometimes __Never
- Listening means not judging the speaker. When I listen to someone, I really try to not get hung up on the delivery, even if it’s awkward, hesitant or garbled, or if his or her voice or speech mannerisms are irritating.
__Always __ Most of the time __Sometimes __Never
- Listening means withholding any rebuttal until the speaker is finished. When I listen to someone, I listen to the entire message before I mentally begin my rebuttal, defense, argument or denial. Then, I wait a beat or two before I begin speaking to make sure I’ve let the speaker finish, and I am centered in my response.
__Always __ Most of the time __Sometimes __Never
- Listening means paying attention to the whole message. When I listen to someone, I take in their non-verbal messages, too — facial expressions, gestures, eyes, tone of voice, and posture because I understand these can contradict or confirm the words that are used.
__Always __ Most of the time __Sometimes __Never
- Listening means being present. Sometimes I’m unable to give my full attention to someone. When this is the case, I let the person know by saying something like, “Now’s not a good time for me to talk about this, can we discuss it later?” then agree to a specific time to have the discussion.
__Always __ Most of the time __Sometimes __Never
Remember, just because we’re born with ears, doesn’t mean we start off life as good listeners. Becoming a good listener is a skill we learn, and like other skills, it takes practice to get better. Being a good listener is also a gift we can give to other people. Letting someone know he or she has really been heard is one of the finest things we can do for each other.
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