I received a group email from a colleague the other day and I couldn’t stop laughing. The topic of the email was on communication and this is how he summed up his communications skills:
“I love to hear myself talk. It’s nice to have others hear me sometimes, too.”
He was joking, but it got me to thinking.
In the past week, I’ve had to give feedback to two newer clients about their need to listen more and talk less. When I broached the subject, guess what happened? Each client automatically disagreed with me–they argued for the “fact” that they were great in the listening department.
Of course, their automatic response showed otherwise. A great listener doesn’t automatically disagree or defend themselves when they hear something they don’t like. They ask questions instead. And they listen. Then they ask more questions. Then they listen some more. How many people do you know that do that?
Several years ago when I was traveling across North America doing corporate seminars on emotional intelligence, leadership performance improvement, I would often ask, “Are you a good listener?” I’m sure you won’t be surprised when I tell you that almost everyone raised a hand to answer the question. The truth is that most of us are NOT great at listening–and not many of us are even good at it. We just think we are.
How can we know how good we are (or aren’t) in the listening department? Only by asking those around us. Even that doesn’t guarantee we will find out where we rate as listeners. It’s not easy to tell someone they talk more than they listen or to tell them that they get defensive about their opinions? Who is going to tell us the truth–because we can’t rely on ourselves for that, not when it comes to our listening skills.
I will never forget they day many years ago when I asked a colleague for some feedback, positive and negative. After listening the positive, I had to help him feel safe enough to venture into the “negatives.” The first thing he said was, “You have a tendency to want to be right all the time.” My automatic response? “What are you talking about? No I don’t!” Of course, the “What are you talking about?” wasn’t really a question! In fact, I wasn’t really listening–I just thought I was.
Categorized in: Articles, Career Success, Leadership, Mastering Emotions, Persuasion/Influence, Relationship Mastery, Self-Esteem/Self-Worth
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