When you’re delivering a presentation, conducting a training class or just having a conversation with someone, of course it’s important to focus on what you’re saying. But what about the rest of that equation?
It pays to think about your listening skills. Marian Thier, an HBDI® Practitioner and cofounder of Listening Impact LLC, says they’ve found that companies whose leaders are excellent listeners have a strong advantage, outperforming the competition by a factor of three. But there’s more to being a good listener than just stopping talking.
In a recent Fast Company article outlining the habits of good listeners, Marian discusses how important it is to be able to adapt your own preferences to how others communicate. The better you are at planning your interactions and keeping the other person’s preferences in mind, the better you’ll be able to meet their needs. It seems obvious when we’re talking about talking, but it applies when we’re talking about listening, too.
So the next time you’re meeting with a client or facilitating training (or maybe having a conversation with a family member at the holidays!), try applying Whole Brain® Thinking as a listener and as a speaker, and see how that changes things.
As the playwright Wilson Mizner once said, “A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while, he knows something.”
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