Art of Listening

Art of Listening

This weekend I was in one of the forum learning about “Listening” and couldn’t resist sharing what I learnt during the session along with my thoughts & experiences on this subject. I realized how powerful it is? We often talk about vision, innovation or building strategies as the key leadership trait, but in fact listening is one of the most underrated leadership qualities and it’s the lack of listening and connecting with the world that is causing most leadership failure.

Listening is more than the act of hearing. It's creating an environment in which the other person FEELS heard. If we truly listen to someone else's perspective, we can gain understanding and engage in more meaningful dialogue. Listening is the way to create TRUST, getting to the common ground and build relationships. Listening is replacing our judgment with curiosity.

It was interesting to learn the 4 levels of Listening (listed below) with the emphasis to strive and operate at level 4 of listening. ?The example that was shared to explain the concept was that the great coaches operates at level 4 as they are actively listening to the client, their current struggles, noticing and seeing in them, their emerging future highest possibility.

1. Listening by downloading – You reconfirm your opinion and judgment, what you already know. Result of your experiences and what you project.
2. Factual Listening (Open mind) – Access the open mind, we disconfirm the data and notice differences ?
3. Empathic listening (Open Heart) – Seeing through other person’s eyes and building emotional connect
4. Generative listening – Connecting to the emerging future possibility. Connect more fully

Question arises “How do you create safe space to be heard and be a good listener”? Answer is ?

• Use words like “GO ON”, “What else”, Tell me more” in the conversation.
• You don’t have to like it or not like it what the person is saying, but take it all in. Don’t be defensive. Don’t dismiss other individual thoughts and ideas else he / she will shut down. Don’t react, object to what is being said.
• There are essentially 2 Pre-requisite for listening

???????????????????????????????I.??Commit – You have to commit. Put aside all your distractions. Be in the moment

?????????????????????????????II.???Practice – It takes practice to be good listener.

• ·?You can put these four qualities into active listening

???????????????????????????????I.?? Non verbal communications –maintain eye contact, look at body posture, and observe other person’s moods and behavior.

?????????????????????????????II.????Verbal communication – Asking good question and let the speaker fully answer. Using utterances in between incl. nodding, acknowledging during the conversation.

???????????????????????????III.???? Make an informed response, reflect or ask a follow up question

???????????????????????????IV.????Keep the focus on them. Don’t jump in or change the topic. Resist the temptation to talk.

As I reflect, Good leader’s makes conscious effort to go out to the field, visit markets with the purpose to connect with the broader people in the organization and listen to them. They are innovative and create forums like blogs to capture colleague’s sentiments and hear their perspective. They would leverage corporate town halls and allocate 50% of the time on Q&A so that they can listen to what’s on people’s mind. You would often see them stopping by and asking “How are you doing?” Good leaders are open, show curiosity and ask “What can we do better as an organization?”, “What is that you see, being closer to the process that I am not seeing?” These are simple ways to stay connected and demonstrate active listening.

All of us as leaders at job, have this great opportunity to listen – Weekly or fortnightly 1:1 connects with colleagues. I am not sure if we truly leverage this to its full potential. Among all other agenda items, don’t use this forum to download what’s in your head or to share colleague’s performance feedback. Sit back to Listen. Listen to not just the words that are spoken but also to what’s the feeling and emotions behind those words.

Sanjay Khanna (He/Him) Vishal Jain

Reference: Otto Scharmer on the four levels of listening?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLfXpRkVZaI

#listening #mentoring #learning #leadershipqualities #coaching #career #growth #personaldevelopment