Five steps to becoming a better listener

By Greg Dardis / Guest Column

Executive coaching is known for helping people find the right words, whether they’re delivering a major presentation, pitching a prospective client or briefing the boss. That’s how our company slogan came to be: “Speak as well as you think.”

We work with intelligent people – folks who know their stuff and do their jobs well – and we equip them with strategies that ensure their communications will reflect their smarts.

And yet, a vital component of our training pertains to the times you’re not speaking, but listening. A precursor to our slogan could be “Listen well so you can think well.” It goes in that order: listen well, think well, speak well.

Listening skills are often dismissed, relegated to the realm of second-grade etiquette. But listening is far more than a social nicety; it’s one of the most powerful tools we have to unlock insight.

The more you get the other person talking, the better your sales pitch is going to be. This is a truth experienced firsthand by participants in our consultative selling skills program. Sometimes prospective clients are just waiting to reveal the secret to winning them over – if only you will shut your mouth and let them tell you.

We can all benefit from sharpening our listening skills. The first step is to make sure you’re really present and paying attention. Tuck your phone out of sight, close any other distractions and get into the mindset of active listening. Set a comfortable pace that allows the other person to think and speak. Exercise your emotional intelligence, picking up on the subtle cues behind someone’s words.

Second, be open-minded. Allow yourself to be surprised by what you hear, reserving judgment and releasing the storyline you had expected to emerge. An open-minded listener is likely to pick up new and valuable perspectives. Consider unlikely sources too. Follow online comments along with board-meeting notes. Ask frontline staff for their opinions as often as CEOs. To learn as much as possible, you must get out there, listen and draw people out.

Third, don’t let ego get in the way of listening well. This means you don’t block out criticism or get defensive, a sure-fire barrier to listening. It means you’re willing to admit what you don’t know. And it means you’re OK being uncomfortable with silence or negative feedback.

The fourth step to effective listening is crucial: ask good questions. You can’t expect (and you shouldn’t) the first statement to provide a complete answer. Treat it as an invitation to go back and forth until, together, you’ve zeroed in on the crux of the matter. It feels good when someone cares enough to help you articulate exactly what you think and how you feel through engaged listening.

Follow-up questions should take many forms. Clarify and paraphrase. Reflect, react and occasionally repeat the words you just heard verbatim. This is one of the most powerful ways to make someone feel heard, a technique that Oprah Winfrey uses to great effect when interviewing.

The sooner you can get someone talking, the better. A terrific way to kick off a meeting with a client or boss is to invite them to share their goals and objectives for the topic at hand. It points you in the right direction from the onset, shedding light on how they define success and how you can achieve it. Bring up that goal at later meetings to demonstrate how closely you’ve listened and how much you care.

Sometimes the simplest follow-up questions are the most effective. Why do you say that? What would you like me to do next? How can I make your job easier? What else should I know?

A fifth and final key to good listening is documenting what you’ve heard. Don’t assume you will instantly memorize the insights you just gleaned. Be deliberate about recording them – from the major takeaways to the personal references, like the mention of a spouse’s name or upcoming trip. Schedule a reminder on the return date to ask for the highlights. Set yourself up for success by building in these follow-ups. You don’t need a perfect memory; you need a handy cheat sheet.

Follow these steps and you will harness the power of good listening.

Greg Dardis is the CEO of Dardis Inc., located at 2403 Muddy Creek Lane in Coralville. For more information, visit www.dardisinc.com.