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A CORE SOFT SKILL

LISTENING, ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT FOR TAKING FEEDBACK

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Start Listening ..
By CARL RICHARDS

You know what’s crazy? The key to getting people to think you’re smart is to stop talking
and to start listening. Let me share a little story to demonstrate.

Recently, I attended a dinner party with my friend and colleague Dan Solin. We were in a
group of 12 sitting at a rather large table. Dan was at one end sitting directly across from a
management consultant. During most of the dinner, they were engaged in a rather
animated discussion. I was sitting next to them, and I couldn’t help but notice that almost
every sentence out of Dan’s mouth ended with a question mark.

He just asked thoughtful questions, one after the other. The consultant talked, and Dan
listened. At the end of the evening, something absolutely fascinating happened.

The consultant asked Dan if they could connect on LinkedIn. Dan couldn’t resist asking one
more question.

“That would be great, but tell me why you want to connect?”

The consultant replied, “I just found you so insightful.”

What?!

Dan said almost nothing and came across as insightful. This exchange was the most recent
example of a crazy phenomenon I’ve seen and experienced. While it seems like a ninja trick,
it turns out that science backs up the idea that the best way to get people to like and trust
you is to listen to them.

A recent study from Harvard proved what we all already know: We love to talk about
ourselves. A Harvard neuroscientist, Jason Mitchell, and Diana Tamir, a psychology graduate
student, conducted five studies. Their research revealed that “we will often go to comic
lengths to avoid talking about others and to keep the focus” on us. At the same time, talking
about ourselves lights up the areas of our brain “associated with food, money and sex.”
What seems like a ninja trick is actually neuroscience.
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Dan has told me that this experience is predictable. He does it all the time. With one
conversation, he creates a powerful impression that he is someone you’d want to know,
someone you want to trust.

I’ve seen this many times in my life. At the urging of my wife to talk a bit less (a lot less) and
to listen a bit more, I’ve been practicing listening and asking questions. As the research
demonstrates, the result is predictable. In fact, I experienced it again a few days ago.
Someone approached me at a conference and asked for some advice. I said I’d be happy to
help, and we found a quiet corner to chat. She explained the problem, and as soon as she
finished, my first instinct was to dive in and answer the question. I already had some smart
answers formulated in my head.

But I took a deep breath and remembered my ninja training. So instead, I said, “It sounds
like you’ve thought a lot about this issue. What do you think about your options?” With
every answer, I responded with another question. After about 20 minutes, she leaned over,
grabbed my arm, and said, “Oh my gosh, Carl. I’ve had a breakthrough. I now understand
exactly what I need to do. Thank you!” I replied that I was glad to help. In the end, I offered
this woman no advice. But she left the conversation with that answer she was looking for
and the idea that I helped her find it.

The best thing about this ninja trick is that it works in every situation I’ve come across. So I
have a challenge for you this week. At some point, you’ll meet someone new or someone
will ask you for advice or feedback. It doesn’t matter if it’s at work or in your personal life.
Just take a deep breath, and start asking really great questions. Be intensely curious. Listen
with the goal of understanding. At the end of the conversation, don’t be afraid to close with
the question: Is there anything you’d like to talk about that we didn’t cover?

Try it.

I’m betting you’ll be hooked when you see how well it works. In fact, I’d love to hear your
stories. Shoot me an email at carl@behaviorgap.com. If your experience is something you
write about online, make sure I know about it by sharing a link with me on Twitter. Take the
next seven days, and see what an amazing impact you can have on the world by closing your
mouth and opening your ears and heart.
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Dave Kerpen : Shut up and Listen

When I first started out my career as a salesperson for Radio Disney at the age of 22, I was
young and foolish (well, even younger and more foolish than I am today). I thought I had a
great product to sell and that people would love to listen to me talk about it. I thought I
could be charming and persuasive and convince decision-makers why it made sense to use
my product to solve their marketing problems. I thought I could talk my way into anything.
I thought wrong.

Several weeks into my job, I was failing miserably, despite what I considered to be loads of
charm and ability to persuade. My mentor, the Regional Sales Manager for Radio Disney at
the time, Peggy Iafrate, said to me, “How well are you listening to what your prospects have
to say? How many questions are you asking them to better understand them? How are you
showing them that you care about them more than you care about selling them?”

"Dave," she said, "Remember this one thing: Shut up and listen."
I hadn’t been doing a very good job of listening. In fact, by my very nature, I’m a type-A
personality, full of thoughts, running a mile a minute, an impatient New Yorker who always
has something to say and rarely slows down. So, it took some real dedication and practice to
listen to what Peggy told me about listening and heed her advice.
I began asking my prospects more questions. Listening to their problems, listening to their
every word became my obsession. I thought very little about how to sell them on
advertising with Radio Disney and instead focused on listening attentively to everything they
had to say so that I could better understand them as people and better understand their
organizational needs and challenges. Once I understood them, I could do a much better job
of delivering what they wanted and needed, both in the product I was selling and in the way
I sold it.
Things quickly started to fall into place once I started listening. Within six months, I was
the number-one local salesperson in the country, and a year later, Peggy awarded me the
“Mickey Award” for sales success. All for shutting up and listening.
Salespeople, leaders, entrepreneurs and business people are full of ideas. Many of you have
ideas all day long every day about how to make the world a better place, make money, solve
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problems and lots more. But the very nature of active listening requires us to put aside our
ideas completely, if only for a moment, in order to focus on what someone else has to say.

As difficult as that can be, it’s through listening to customers, prospective customers,
colleagues, employees and others that we can better understand what their needs and
motivations are, and ultimately make our ideas better and more executable. It’s leaders like
you who need to learn to listen better, even more so than the world’s followers.

J.P. McEvoy said, "When you talk, you are repeating what you already know. But if you
listen, you may learn something new."
So, as Peggy said to me years ago, please, for your own good and the good of the world,
shut up and listen.
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Best Advice: Listen More Than You Talk

Richard Branson, Founder at Virgin Group

In the past two years, I have shared some of the best advice I ever received from my mum
and my business mentor, Sir Freddie Laker. This year, I thought I would share a simple tip
from another person who had an enormous impact upon my life – my dad.

When I grew up our house was always a hive of activity, with Mum dreaming up new
entrepreneurial schemes left, right and centre, and me and my sisters running wild. You
were as likely to find me helping Mum with a new project as outside climbing a tree. Amidst
all the fun and chaos, Dad was always a supportive, calming influence on us all. He wasn’t
quiet, but he was not often as talkative as the rest of us. It made for a wonderful balance,
and we always knew we could rely on him no matter what.

Within this discreet support lay one of his best and most simple pieces of advice for me:
listen more than you talk. Nobody learned anything by hearing themselves speak. Wherever
I go, I try to spend as much time as possible listening to the people I meet. I am fortunate to
travel widely and come across fascinating characters from all walks of life. While I am always
happy to share my own experiences with them, it would be foolish if I didn’t listen back.

It is one of the reasons why I always carry a pen and notebook, not to mention an iPad, to
note my thoughts. You never know what you might learn from simply listening to the people
around you. Whether it is an attendant on a train, an engineer beneath a spaceship of a
customer service rep at a computer, I am endlessly surprised by what new and useful
information I can gather just by keeping my ears open.

I sometimes come across people in business, especially if they have been fortunate enough
to have some success, that are very fond of their own voices. After saying their piece, they
visibly switch off from what others are saying, offering a perfunctory nod or fiddling with
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their phone, rather than making eye contact and really engaging. Conversely, the most
successful entrepreneurs I know all have excellent listening skills in common.

I presume those who choose not to listen must think they have already learned all there is
to know. Taking my dad’s advice visually, I like to think of a circle that represents everything
we could possibly learn.

What I personally know would make up a dot so minuscule it couldn’t be seen. What
humanity has collectively learned so far would make up a tiny mark within the circle.
Everything we all have to learn in the future would take up the rest of the space. It is a big
universe, and we are all learning more about it every day. If you aren’t listening, you are
missing out.
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Listen carefully :Indra Nooyi

My lesson is about perhaps the most important part of persuasion: listening. There are
always people with ideas for how we can do things differently – ideas we may not want to
hear. But I’ve found that when I’ve been willing to listen, I’ve been better for it, as a
CEO and a person.

We get feedback from our consumers and employees at PepsiCo, but I’ve also found that
some of the best advice has come in moments I least expected it.

Once, I was taking ballroom dance lessons and my instructor was struggling with the lesson.
“Why?” I asked. He replied, “Because you’re trying to lead when you need to follow.” Then
he added, “If you learned to follow, you’d be a better leader. And it would make you a
better dancer.” What a profound lesson.

There’s a reason we have two ears and one mouth. We should do more listening than
talking. We should lead as CEOs. But we should also learn to follow, if needed. We should
listen to the wisdom all around.
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Why listening is important by John Watson, Chevron CEO

In all practicality, Watson agrees that reading people won't happen without good listening
skills. But it isn't merely listening; it's actively listening with intent and a bias for action.

Great listeners have uncanny ability to listen intuitively to the other person's story,
searching conversations for depth, meaning and understanding with the other person's
needs in mind. The listening has one overarching theme: how can I help the other person?
Peter Drucker once said, "The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't
said."
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Deep Listening by Thich Nhat Hanh

Oprah: The case is the same for deep listening, which I’ve heard you refer to.

Nhat Hanh: Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of
another person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose: to
help him or her to empty his heart. Even if he says things that are full of wrong perceptions,
full of bitterness, you are still capable of continuing to listen with compassion. Because you
know that listening like that, you give that person a chance to suffer less. If you want to help
him to correct his perception, you wait for another time. For now, you don’t interrupt. You
don’t argue. If you do, he loses his chance. You just listen with compassion and help him to
suffer less. One hour like that can bring transformation and healing.

Oprah: I love this idea of deep listening, because often when someone comes to you and
wants to vent, it’s so tempting to start giving advice. But if you allow the person just to let
the feelings out, and then at another time come back with advice or comments, that person
would experience a deeper healing. That’s what you’re saying.

Nhat Hanh: Yes. Deep listening helps us to recognize the existence of wrong perceptions in
the other person and wrong perceptions in us. The other person has wrong perceptions
about himself and about us. And we have wrong perceptions about ourselves and the other
person. And that is the foundation for violence and conflict and war. The terrorists, they
have the wrong perception. They believe that the other group is trying to destroy them as a
religion, as a civilization. So they want to abolish us, to kill us before we can kill them. And
the antiterrorist may think very much the same way—that these are terrorists and they are
trying to eliminate us, so we have to eliminate them first. Both sides are motivated by fear,
by anger, and by wrong perception. But wrong perceptions cannot be removed by guns and
bombs. They should be removed by deep listening, compassionate listening, and loving
space.