Can You Hear Me Yet?

So, want to increase your sales numbers?  Relate better to colleagues?  Communicate with your patients?  Want to improve your personal life?  Want to win friends and influence people?  Start listening!


I'm not just talking about nodding and interjecting an "uh-huh" to make a customer feel like you're paying attention.  I'm talking about active listening.  The academics sometimes refer to this as reflective or responsive listening, but its really just receiving a speaker’s message in a nonjudgmental, open-minded fashion.  It's making every attempt to understand the complete meaning of a communication, and "getting it" that feelings and facts are both part of the message. Depending on your natural personality type this may be an effort, but in this case, changing your natural tendency is worth it, both personally and professionally.


The big question is what do active listeners do differently than the rest of us?  Well first, active listeners utilize listening as an equal part of their communication skills.   Like the attentive listener, the active listener’s behavior involves eye contact, nodding, supportive comments, and sincere facial expressions.  The difference is they also patiently ask questions to clarify the speaker’s thoughts, and then work to summarize both the emotions and ideas behind the entire conversation[i]. 


To become an active listener it’s important to not jump in before the speaker has completed a thought.  Hear the message in its entirety.  I know this is sometimes difficult as a sales person when we feel we have so much to share and not enough time.  It requires respect, patience, and emotional control: a skill that is especially difficult when dealing with people who have a drama-tically different communication style.  Try to avoid offering advice before it's been requested---especially if the speaker has yet to share their entire thought. 


A truly effective active listener must also  be able to focus on what is being said.  If necessary remove any distractions or physical barriers that are impeding communication.  Turn off the car radio, shut an office door and absolutely put away that Blackberry!


If you want to improve your listening behaviors, practice echoing.  Echoing is a technique where the listener uses the exact phrase a speaker uses in order to gain greater understanding.  For example a client may say,  “That product is too expensive for our budget.”    The sales person would the repeat the word expensive and ask for further clarification.  “Is it something you would want if it were priced less?  Does the product offer value? If price wasn't an issue, how would you use this in your business?”  Doing this insures that ambiguous phrases or statements are more clearly defined, and brings you closer to being an active listener.

Note:  The thoughts and opinions on Training Wheels are my own, unless otherwise referenced, and are to be food for thought.  If contemplating business changes, these blog posts are not a substitute for consulting your lawyer or accountant. I"ll bet you already figured that out, didn't you?  

[i] Booher, p. 154

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