Sunday, February 12, 2012

Listening critically to what is being said

Listening is key in sorting through your counterpart's perspective in a discussion. It is hard for me to overemphasize the importance of developing good listening skills. Being a good listener not only helps you as far developing an accurate understanding of the subject at hand, it helps you develop a profoundly persuasive position with the participants in your conversation(s). Over several articles, you will learn what it takes to go from being an average listener, to actually being able cause your counterpart to tell you things that they may not have ever even fully admitted to themselves because they are feeling heard for the first time.

When we talk about persuasion, people often imagine a single transaction or presentation in which people move from “no” to “yes”.  Rarely is it such a direct path. A more helpful (and realistic) model would show persuasion as a stepwise path in which we and our counterpart take a five step journey together as follows:

·         from resisting each other’s  input to listening (both of us are now merely actively trying to understand the other’s  position)

·         from listening to considering (now we are weighing the differences between us and examining the merits of our respective positions)

·         from considering to “willing to do” (now we see the merits of each position and agree that we are “willing to do” the thing we are discussing)

·         from “willing to do” to doing (we move to action after expressing our willingness)

·         from doing to continuing to do (having changed our position, we are now glad we did and will continue on our own)

Each of these five steps has its own special purpose and elements, which we will learn over the next few articles. For now, just understand that the ability to listen well determines which person is directing the persuasion and the likely outcome. The person that best understands all of the positions will be in the best position to direct the group to the best outcome.

Listening requires the capacity to:

·         focus without bias on what the other person has to say

·         demonstrate that unbiased focus

·         appreciate the person’s right to have a position, even if you don’t agree with it

This requires some training, which I give in my classes and will give you some exercises over the next few articles to help.

Becoming a better listener.

There is surprisingly a lot to learn about being a great listener. These four points will do for now:

·         You need to listen. As we go through these lessons, you will learn how to get them to listen, but YOU must listen first. That is because YOU are the one learning to communicate. Not listening to your counterpart creates “sides” for an argument (us vs. them). Until people feel heard, they will fight to be heard. Some will fight in an aggressive way, others will withdraw and not speak, others will nod their heads and pretend to agree. All of those actions (and there are more) are signs that they don’t feel that you are listening and considering what they say. Until you do, they will find it “impossible” to listen and consider what YOU say. So you are going to go first. Besides, there are tremendous advantages to going first, which we will discuss later.

·         Recognize that listening is not the same thing as agreeing. Listening to another person’s perspective does not require you to take any particular action. The reason to listening is so important is that allows you to get a detailed understanding of their position on an issue WITHOUT agreeing – it is a data gathering exercise.

·         Maintain a comfortable physical distance (don’t crowd, don’t separate). We begin to understand what a “comfortable distance” is for speaking at an early age. Be conscious of maintaining that. Some of us crowd the other person when we feel the subject is very sensitive and some of us tend to stop talking when crowded. On the other hand, some of us tend to step back and away when the subject matter is difficult, and to some people that signals an end to the conversation. So rather than stop the conversation, go to a place where the conversation can be conducted at a comfortable 2 to 3 foot separation.

·         Don’t interrupt (not with your mouth, gestures, or body language). When listening, it is common to interrupt with words and we all know that we shouldn’t – it is the UNIVERSAL signal for not listening. But we also do things with our body language that is actually intended to signal to the other person that we WANT to interrupt (your mouth opening and closing, your eyes rolling, your head turning away or shaking in the “no” direction) and these are very distracting to the speaker.

We'll cover a lot over the next few weeks and you will find that as you become a better listener, peple want to talk to you more. There are popular commercials for an eye doctor and a dentist in San Deigo right now that use the desire to be listened to as their main theme - "I went to DR. X and instead of them telling me what I needed, they LISTENED TO WHAT I WANTED and then discussed my options with me. I really felt like THEY CARED ABOUT ME." this is the natural response to good listeners, an we will learn how to elicit that response.
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