Effective Communication Begins With Listening

Hi there, I'm Ben Morton and welcome to another episode of the Leaders Kit Bag. It's the weekly micro edition of my podcast. Each episode is just six minutes long and is designed to provide you with tips, tools and tactics around specific aspects of leadership and management. It addresses some of the most common, common challenges you will face as a leader or manager. They are all recorded unscripted whilst I'm out walking in the countryside. So you'll probably hear birds tweeting in the background or just ambient noise as the people around me are going about their day to day life. That's all I'm going to say by way of an introduction, so let's dive straight in to this week's episode. If you have ever been speaking to somebody, either one to one or in a group setting, and have had a sense that they're not really listening to what it is that you're saying, or perhaps you've got the feeling that they're not fully present in the conversation or meeting, then you're absolutely not alone. And you're not alone. Because of you. I can say with a high degree of certainty that on at least one occasion somebody who you have been speaking with has had that experience of you. And this is why, in today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag, we're going to talk about listening, the key critical ingredient of effective communication that often gets forgotten. It's absolutely true that as leaders and managers, people pay much more attention to what it is we actually do than what we say or what we say we will do. So if we want to improve the effectiveness and quality of communication that takes place within our team, business or organization, we absolutely have to model the way ourselves. And that includes being really good at listening. Now, I think it's fair to say that the average standard of listening within many workplaces is actually quite poor. And that's partly because when we talk about listening, we make the assumption that we're talking about one person or a group of people listening to what somebody else is saying. But that's not the reality. In many cases, people aren't listening to what somebody is saying, but actually they're listening for a pause. Sometimes they're watching and listening for the person to take a breath. Why? So that they can jump in and say what they think. So that they can jump in and talk about the stance they've already adopted or their view. And what this means is a lot of the time we're not partaking in or experiencing conversations or a dialogue, but rather we're seeing a series of monologues or pitches or presentations where people are just speaking regardless of what the other person has said. Now, I've mentioned this to you. Pay attention in the meetings you attend and the conversations you have and you'll see this playing out. So how do we fix it? Well, step one, we've already started. It's simply about increasing our awareness. With better awareness, we can make better choices, and better choices lead to better behaviors and better outcomes. So step one is to tune in and dial up our awareness. Step two comes from the listening expert Oscar Trimbley, who I had on my podcast, and he talks about true listening or the ability to listen well, starts before we even arrive at the meeting or meet the person we're going to be communicating with. What he and what we mean by that is it's about setting our intentions before we go into a meeting. It's about getting ourself in the right state of mind to listen, being ready to listen with an open mind, being ready to hold back before we speak, and setting the intention to go into that conversation and really listen, to understand instead of merely listening to speak. Give it a go and I'm sure you will see some pretty amazing results. That's it for today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag. As always, look after yourself, look after those you've got the privilege and responsibility to lead. And until next time, lead on.