#Reimagine ... Learn the Power of Power Listening

[Phil Miglioratti]

by Marc Ottestad <[e-mail]>

"Power listening—the art of probing and challenging the information garnered from others to improve its quality and quantity—is the key to building a knowledge base that generates fresh insights," ~ Bernard T. Ferrari, author of Power Listening: Mastering the Most Critical Business Skill of All (Portfolio Hardcover, 2012).

It's not easy learning to be a better listener. We think faster than we can hear. While we're waiting for someone to finish their sentence, we've already figured out what they're going to say.

So in the meantime, most of us are thinking about other things, like what we're going to say next. But then we miss opportunities to challenge assumptions. And we lose focus.

Bernard T. Ferrari suggests four steps that form a good listening foundation:

1. Show respect
2. Keep quiet
3. Challenge assumptions
4. Maintain focus

In my previous post 4 Steps to Better Listening,  I mentioned that theability to really listen is the most overlooked and undervalued skill. We rarely practice doing it better. Here's more about the last two steps, #3: Challenging assumptions and #4: Maintaining focus, both essential to building power listening skills.

3.      Challenge assumptions.

Too many high caliber professionals inadvertently act like know-it-alls, remaining closed to anything that undermines their beliefs. Good listeners seek to understand - and challenge - the assumptions that lie below the surface of every conversation. Holding onto these assumptions is the biggest roadblock to power listening

It’s admittedly hard to scrutinize preconceived notions and shake up our thinking. We must be willing to reevaluate what we know and welcome what we don’t (or can’t) know. Shift your mind-set toembrace ambiguity and uncover what each conversation partner needs from the interaction.

4.       Maintain focus.

Power listening requires you to help your conversation partner isolate the problem, issue or decision at hand. Discard extraneous details or emotions that interfere with homing in on what truly matters. 

Create a focused, productive conversation by reducing external and internal background noise. Ask questions that highlight key issues and minimize the urge to stray from them.

Recognize that all conversations have intellectual and emotional components. It’s important to “decouple” the two, according to Ferrari, as several emotions are guaranteed to hinder communication:

1. Impatience
2. Resentment and envy
3. Fear and feeling threatened
4. Fatigue and frustration
5. Positive emotions and overexcitement

As with anger and fear, excitement can also distract you from asking the right questions and challenging underlying assumptions.

“The most exciting part is that, once you get good at listening, you will be able to do it easily, almost effortlessly, without even thinking about it,” Ferrari writes.

Practice his four power-listening steps to become the kind of listener others seek as a conversation partner. You’ll build valuable relationships, become more informed, make better decisions and come up with new innovative ideas.

Another resource that increases your listening skill set is The Good Listener by James Sullivan. Sullivan grounds the skill and the why on the foundation of God and our responsibility to one another to listen as a reflection of worth and dignity bestowed upon every person as God’s creation.

Take a couple minutes each day to stop and reflect on your listening. Listening is a skill set that can change your trajectory. Develop your favorite questions that work for you in different situation like work, home of with friends. Taking regular pause inside and ask yourself if you are really listening. As a coach (www.moleadershipcoaching.com) I work in this area regularly and find leaders make great progress quickly when they decide to work on the skill of listening.

What are you doing to pay attention to this key skill of listening?

I’d love to hear from you I can be reached [e-mail] and on LinkedIn or text me at 714-267-2818

Here is my CALENDAR to make connecting simple

 

If you have yet to read my previous posts here are the links 

 

PERSEVERANCE         GETTING THE BEST FROM PEOPLE        COACHING CONVERSATIONS        FEEDBACK               5 GOLDEN RULES FOR LEADERSHIP     POWER OF FUN        PURPOSE    BOUNCING BACK       ENJOYING GOD             SELF AWARENESS                         GRATITUDE 

view online

[Phil Miglioratti]

Thanks for allowing us to post this, Marc.

My degree of difficulty:

1. Show respect = usually not difficult
2. Keep quiet = VERY difficult
3. Challenge assumptions = open 
4. Maintain focus = sometimes difficult

[Steve Hackett]

Hi, I’m new to this site, and enjoying going through some older posts, so sorry if the conversation has “moved on”, and my new comment seems somewhat dated.

You said: “It's not easy learning to be a better listener. We think faster than we can hear. While we're waiting for someone to finish their sentence, we've already figured out what they're going to say….

Too many high caliber professionals inadvertently act like know-it-alls, remaining closed to anything that undermines their beliefs. Good listeners seek to understand - and challenge - the assumptions that lie below the surface of every conversation. Holding onto these assumptions is the biggest roadblock to power listening”.

This describes not merely a poor listener, but the sinful state of the proud heart of man!  Every man, including me!  It is rude to the person speaking, it says you as listener either don’t have time for this conversation, or you think you know better than they.  Whilst that may be true, it is presumptuous and unloving, and probably judgemental.  Worse still, we know that we fall well short of Christ’s perfection, and seek to grow in him to become like him, yet here we are with a closed heart and mind unable to learn from this speaker before us - a fallen person, yes, for we all are - but a person nevertheless who has been made in the image of God and is loved by God and may have some Godly wisdom or experience to speak into our lives if we were but humble enough to receive it.  How would Jesus treat this speaker?  What would he think of our response?

As a relational evangelist, I often find myself trying to move a conversation on to the Gospel - and Jesus as an answer to the many problems in a speaker’s life - even before I fully understand what those problems are!  But then we need to understand the context. There is probably no second chance with a stranger in a fleeting context, where a contextually relevant pointer to Jesus is the best that can be achieved.  But for a family member, friend or acquaintance, we must make time or schedule a time when we can properly listen, build relationship, earn respect, and with it, a desire on behalf of the speaker to hear what we have to speak into their situation.  And that should not come before we have enquired sufficiently to “know” and to “feel” what it’s like to walk a mile in their shoes.

Go, Make, Grow, Disciples of Jesus

Steve

[Reimagine Curator]

Sharing your comments and insights on social media ...

Phil

Steve Hackett said:

Hi, I’m new to this site, and enjoying going through some older posts, so sorry if the conversation has “moved on”, and my new comment seems somewhat dated.

You said: “It's not easy learning to be a better listener. We think faster than we can hear. While we're waiting for someone to finish their sentence, we've already figured out what they're going to say….

Too many high caliber professionals inadvertently act like know-it-alls, remaining closed to anything that undermines their beliefs. Good listeners seek to understand - and challenge - the assumptions that lie below the surface of every conversation. Holding onto these assumptions is the biggest roadblock to power listening”.

This describes not merely a poor listener, but the sinful state of the proud heart of man!  Every man, including me!  It is rude to the person speaking, it says you as listener either don’t have time for this conversation, or you think you know better than they.  Whilst that may be true, it is presumptuous and unloving, and probably judgemental.  Worse still, we know that we fall well short of Christ’s perfection, and seek to grow in him to become like him, yet here we are with a closed heart and mind unable to learn from this speaker before us - a fallen person, yes, for we all are - but a person nevertheless who has been made in the image of God and is loved by God and may have some Godly wisdom or experience to speak into our lives if we were but humble enough to receive it.  How would Jesus treat this speaker?  What would he think of our response?

As a relational evangelist, I often find myself trying to move a conversation on to the Gospel - and Jesus as an answer to the many problems in a speaker’s life - even before I fully understand what those problems are!  But then we need to understand the context. There is probably no second chance with a stranger in a fleeting context, where a contextually relevant pointer to Jesus is the best that can be achieved.  But for a family member, friend or acquaintance, we must make time or schedule a time when we can properly listen, build relationship, earn respect, and with it, a desire on behalf of the speaker to hear what we have to speak into their situation.  And that should not come before we have enquired sufficiently to “know” and to “feel” what it’s like to walk a mile in their shoes.

Go, Make, Grow, Disciples of Jesus

Steve