How to truly listen

In many leadership development programmes, we are told to learn how to listen. From my perspective, to help us to be better listeners we should learn how to be the last person to speak.

I often quote Stephen Covey’s famous habit on listening: ‘Seek first to understand, then to be understood’. Too often we listen with the intent to reply. We are so focused on what our answer could be that we forget to truly listen to the other person’s perspective or thoughts. Also, research suggests that the average number of words you're able to listen to per minute is around 450. Most people usually only remember about 350. So not so simple to listen, right?

So I want to share 2 tips to enrich your listening.

1) Ask more questions
Focus your mind on being curious. The best way to do this is to ask more questions. This will help you to understand the other person as fully as possible.

2) Summarise or paraphrase
When your mind wanders, focus back on the conversation and start synthesising what the other person is saying, either using their own words (summarise) or your own words (paraphrase)

If we could create a truly listening environment at work, not only everyone would feel more appreciated by being heard, but performance will improve too.

More leadership thoughts to come soon...