Listening Skills: Improve Your Communication Style for Killer Results!

One secret to being a successful partner, parent, and business owner, is having great listening skills. Learn to be a good listener and increase your effectiveness at home and work. Listening is a crucial communication strategy. Increase your success by incorporating effective listening into your conversations.

Listening carefully for many is difficult. Have you ever talked with someone you could tell was not listening because they were so eager to state their view? In the rush to express ourselves we can get wrapped up in our 'rightness' and dedication to convincing the person in conversation with us to see things our way. Too often the result is both sides lose their audience smack in the middle of a discussion. Both parties can become emotionally invested with protecting their position as if it's part of their ego. Therein lies the seed of successful change!

Being passionate about our values propels our actions to live as we believe. That passion is motivating. It's healthy to feel our behavior and beliefs are congruent. When we personally identify with our ideas as part of who we are as a person, that can trigger an impulse to protect our ideas as if they are our arms or legs. Unknowingly we may thwart our best efforts to allow another to understand our point of view. It's common to feel 'shut out' and frustrated because we've not been heard accurately.

Consider this: Think of ideas as things. Ideas are tools. You are separate from an idea. Listening to another idea could expand your perception. If your idea is somehow altered with new information, you've grown! When a new idea enters your awareness, your capacity for understanding increases.

Listening carefully to another, asking questions, repeating or summarizing what you've heard (active listening) is a profound way to influence the person who is speaking. How can that be true? When you take time to listen and understand another person's point of view, thoroughly, they have a sense of feeling validated. Listening is not the same as agreement. Listening is respectful. It's also a caring gesture when practiced authentically.

When you allow the other person to say what they think and feel to be true, without judgment, that person eventually comes to a point of peace. They appreciate your ability to listen and your interest in them. Emotionally, because they may not be able to see their ideas as things, they'll feel heard. When a person feels they've been heard, they feel accepted. Their ego is no longer being threatened. At that point something magical tends to happen. They open up to receive your thoughts.

Listening is a powerful tool. When you take the time to listen first, you'll find you save time. When you know what matters to someone you can address that issue directly in terms they understand. By hearing any flaws in their logic, you save time knowing where your comments can have the biggest impact. Once you've heard someone's point of view, you can improve a relationship by first identifying what you have in common. Acknowledging the ideas you share enables the other party to see you as an ally vs. the enemy.

Developing good listening skills will increase your effectiveness. It's a sign of maturity and leadership. You'll accomplish more with less effort! Winston Churchill said, “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

Today, listen effectively to someone with an opposing point of view. Ask questions. Clarify any confusing implications. Take the time to hear them state their position completely. This exercise may make you utterly uncomfortable. So what? Write down how you felt so you can consider those feelings later. Summarize their position accurately. Tell me what happens next.