3 top tips to help improve your listening skills.

What is the cost to you, your team and your business of poor listening skills?

When someone has listened to you well you feel valued, appreciated, heard and recognised. How did they do it?

They will have been genuinely trying to understand your point of view, rather than just hearing your words before interrupting with their idea, suggestion or experience. They will have paid attention to you, rather than continuing to look at their screen, phone, papers, someone or something else. They will have waited for you to finish and perhaps asked a question to clarify something or find out what else you thought, rather than jumping to conclusions and making assumptions.

How well do you listen? Ask yourself; do your team and your colleagues feel valued, appreciated, heard and recognised? It’s easy to have a blind spot on this topic and assume that you’re a good listener, so getting some feedback and testing yourself could be a valuable exercise (this is a bit like all of us thinking we are better than average drivers!).

The problem with poor listening is the cost you can so easily overlook by not being sufficiently aware. Poor listening means you are probably making assumptions which lead to misunderstandings. This can then result in ineffective decisions, incorrect or weak solutions (possibly to the wrong problems or issues) and potentially costly mistakes or errors. Not good for business.

In terms of relationships, poor listening will likely result in hurt feelings, a lack of engagement, loss of team cohesion, reduced creativity and innovation, damaged trust and generally weak communications. Not good for people.

As with most skills, you can improve your ability to listen well. First of all, you need to acknowledge and accept that your skills need improving and that you want to sharpen them up. Get some feedback from those who will be honest with you.

The model below gives you 3 simple tools and tips to help develop your listening skills and remember them for daily use.

Silence – don’t be afraid of it, use it to allow the other person to say all they need to say. Use the acronym WAIT (why am I talking?) as a reminder to stay curious and not interrupt
Questions – use very simple, open questions to ensure you hear everything and avoid assumptions and misunderstandings
Non-verbal – give your undivided attention and be very deliberate in looking the person in the eye to really see them

Listen to others like you want others to listen to you. It will be good for you, good for others and good for your business.