Here’s a quick excerpt from the book that I’m currently working on right now.
The Art of Listening: I once told my friend Edward about a good friend of ours that never seemed to have great listening skills . I remember telling Ed “Man, he’s such a horrible listener. All he does is just want to get his own input in. He’ll talk for like half an hour, and then when I need two minutes of his time, he can’t even give it.”
Ed listened to me sympathetically. I remember about a month later, Ed and I were having a conversation on the phone. “Hey you know how you mentioned that he can’t seem to listen, I KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN NOW…all he does is talk and talk, and then he just seems to ignore me when I say something, or he’ll let me talk for like a minute and then he’ll go on tangent again.” I wish I could say that this is not a common pitfall in conversations, but active listening doesn’t happen as often as I would like. In this case it can be quite understood why my friend Edward and I would be upset at this person. He has poor listening skills. No person can truly be a great conversationalist, without also being a great and active listener. They are the yin and the yang. Without being able to actively listen to someone carefully, then most of what I teach would be useless. Being a great listener isn’t about just using your ears, there are many factors such as your body language, and the way that you react to a person while they are talking. So what does it really mean to be a great listener and to have listening skills?
1) Ensure that you make eye contactwith the person you are speaking, and that your body language is appropriate. (We’ve covered that earlier of course, but it’s always good to give people a reminder of the fundamentals.)
2) Letting the other person finish what they have to say. This is very important; one of the BIGGEST mistakes I see people make is that they generally don’t let other people finish their thoughts first. Even though we may be eager to share our thoughts because we might have found that we had something in common to that person, let the person finish. Remember to read the section on learning to pause.
3) I find that being a good listener is having the ability to paraphrase a thought that someone has shared with us. Especially if someone has shared something deep and personal, such as a happy moment, or a moment that they found incredibly frustrating, it helps to state back what they have said.
4) Putting Aside Judgment- If you’re going to be a good listener, this means that at times you will have to put your judgment aside. This can be very tough for many of us. There’s always beliefs and values that we have that are part of our very core. But being a good listener means putting them aside and trying to understand the perspective of other person you’re having a talk with.
5) Be curious. Being part of a good listener is also genuinely being a curious person. This can take some practice as there are things that you may not be interested in asking about. The more excited someone is about a topic or the more interesting it seems, and then feel free to ask more questions. But also remember to share a little bit about yourself during the conversation.
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