Be a great listener

- Listening is a key skill when you're working with other people and it's really underrated. We get taught how to talk and how to write, but not how to listen. It's just assumed that we all have this skill, but actually, it's really hard to do. Mainly because we can think faster than people talk, so while they're talking, we have some spare brain capacity left over, which we use to evaluate what the other person is saying. And before long, we're off thinking about whether we agree with them, why they're wrong, what they should be saying instead, and then, suddenly we realize that we've missed a whole lot of what they've been saying. It requires a positive effort to just sit there and listen, without judging, predicting, and planning a reply halfway through their sentence. But if you can become a good listener, it will bring you three significant team benefits. First, you'll be liked more by other people. If you listen to them, it makes them feel important and valued by you, so they will be more inclined to like you. Talking about yourself just gives the impression, probably true, that you think that you're more important than them, which is not a good start. So, we all like people who allow us to have a conversation about our favorite subject, which is ourselves. That's the first benefit of being a good listener. The second benefit is that you learn more by being a listener. It's obvious when you think about it, that when you're talking about yourself, let's say you're talking about the holiday you've just been on or how well your kids are doing at school, you're not learning anything about yourself at all. You're wasting your time, you're boring the other person, and you're making them more likely to dislike you. They don't want to hear about how great your kids are and how fantastic your holiday was, so don't tell them about your successes and don't tell them about your problems either. Someone told me once that if you tell people about your problems, 70% of people don't care and the other 30% people are glad. I know it's just a joke, but it's kind of based on truth isn't it? So, if you're not going to talk about your successes or your problems, what does that leave you to talk about? The other person of course. That's a much better plan. They will enjoy the conversation because they're talking about themself, and they will like you more because of it and you will learn some useful information. That holiday that they've been on, whether it was great of a disaster, might be useful for you to know about. The third and final benefit of being a good listener is a little bit surprising and it's the fact that you control the conversation, not them. You might think that the person doing the talking is the one in control, but actually, it's the one asking the questions and listening who steers the conversation with the questions they ask, including the occasional little linking question like, and then what happened, or tell me a bit more about that first part, or so what will you do differently next time? So those are the three significant benefits you can get by being a great listener to the others in your team. Be liked, learn, and have control. So, here's a fun exercise for you to do this evening, when you're out with your friends. Make it a game to not talk about yourself at all, just ask them questions and listen and in the unlikely event that they ask you a question, just turn it back on them. For example, if they say, so how are the kids? Don't be tempted to go on about yours, instead, you could just reply, yeah they're fine, but tell me, how's little Tony, is he still struggling in school? You'll find this exercise amazing, it's so easy and the other people love talking about themselves and you will learn loads as well. Try it.