11 Ways to Become a Great Listener

by dawn billings
Filed under: Business for Women, Networking, Relationships

11 Ways to Become a Great Listener

Want to really accelerate AND sustain your career success? Listen up.
In order to be a successful and effective communicator, you’ve GOT to be a highly effective listener. As a leader, LISTENING skills are MORE IMPORTANT than your speaking skills …. No question.

Here are 11 ways to become a great listener…

Shut up! This sounds rude, but I do not mean for it to be. It is simply a fact that if you want to develop into a great listener you must first learn to shut up to make a space for you to listen.
Listen for ideas and central themes. Whether you are listening in church, class or someone you are speaking directly to, it is a good idea to listen for the speaker’s central theme or main points instead of getting lost in, or reacting to, confusing or provocative details. I used to tell my sons, “Mine for the gold nuggets.” If you are a great listener, you should be able to mine at least one great nugget from every encounter.
Judge content, not delivery. This is a challenging skill to develop. But if you teach yourself to focus, to your best ability, on what a speaker is saying and try not to get bogged down by their way of saying or delivering the message, you will find that every encounter will carry with it a gift for you.
Challenge yourself to be engaged and engaging. It is extremely easy to tune out from a speaker. Challenge yourself to stay engaged, but even more importantly to use the speaker’s content to make you more engaging. Examples: “Oh my goodness that must have been a surprise to you. Do things like that happen to you often?” or“I understand. I certainly have been in a similar situation. What is the biggest take-away you learned from that experience?”
Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s easy to assume that you know the rest of a sentence or message after hearing the beginning. Much of the time we are formulating our come-backs in our minds before someone has completed their full sentence. But if you teach yourself to avoid prejudging a message, you are a much better equipped listener if you wait and take time to evaluate the whole message.
Take notes. If you are learning something new, attending class, or at a conference, it is often a good idea to take notes that you can refer to later. By taking notes you enhance your memory and recollection skills, sharpen your reception, understanding, and, of course, retention of the information.
Concentrate and resist distraction. Distraction plays an enormous role in our inability to be great listeners. External distractions include non-related things you can see or hear, or which may be impacting your other senses, or you could simply be distracted by your own “too-busy” mind. Internal distractions occur when your mind wanders into unrelated memories or shifts its focus to worries, plans, or anticipations. Practice staying focused.
Work to summarize the message being received. Most people can think three or four times faster than they speak. Don’t let your quick mind indulge in all sorts of thoughts unrelated to the conversation. Capitalize on your thinking speed by actively sensing, interpreting, evaluating, and summarizing the messages being received.
Control your emotions. First of all, take time to become truly aware of who you are and notice when things trigger your emotions. It has been said that the intellect is the slave to emotions. Be sensitive to things that trigger your emotions and increase your efforts to focus on a clear reception and understanding of what is being said.
Exercise your mind. Like your body, your mind must be exercised in order to be strong. Listening is a skill of your mind as well as your hear. You must care enough to listen, but you must use a disciplined mind to learn to listen well. It is good for you to intellectually wrestle with complex information so that you will have a chance to grow and strengthen your own intellect.
Work at listening. Be an active listener. Remember, listening is a skill and like any skill, we must focus on strengthening a skill with discipline, effort and heart. Follow the above suggestions. Ask questions and seek clarification. Actively share in the speaker’s efforts to improve your level of understanding, whether or not you think you agree.

Dawn L Billings is an ardent advocate for women’s and children’s issues, the author of over 20 books and hundreds of articles on parenting, relationships, entitlement and networking. Dawn is the CEO and Founder of The Heart Link Womens Network, Trova Women Business Directory and Trova Small Business Directory and The Heart Alliance.com international women’s networking organizations and communities.

Dawn is the creator of the NEW Parenting Tool called Capables, a revolutionary parenting tool and Toddler toy that ends whining and tantrums for good. In 2008 Dawn was selected by Oprah Magazine and The White House project as one of 80 emerging women leaders in the nation. Find out more and buy Dawn’s books, Women Lifting the World inspirational videos to uplift the hearts of those you love, and the NEW Toddler Teaching Toys called CAPABLES Dawn is also the architect of the Primary Colors Personality Test

Tags: art of listening, communication, how to listen, listening skill, Parenting advice, Parenting tool, Primary Colors Personality Test, skill of listening