This Week, Listen UP!

Here is a quick checklist to evaluate your own listening habits. I got this list from a recent article that I read by Rick Phillips. Try to be brutally honest with yourself and see how you do.

Do you ever catch yourself looking at your watch while you are listening?

Do you ever finish other people’s sentences?

Do your ever find yourself patiently waiting for your turn to talk?

Is it hard for you to maintain eye contact with people who are talking to you?

Do you really give the other person a chance to talk?

Do you ever interrupt while someone is trying to make a point?

Do you ever think to yourself, “I’ve heard this all before?”

Do you sometimes anticipate what the other person is going to say?

Do you find yourself occasionally distracted while the other person is speaking?

Do you ever find yourself wondering what the other person has just said?

Do you ever mentally begin structuring your remarks while they are still talking?

Could you encourage the other person to continue their remarks more often?

If you have answered yes to more than half of the above questions, don’t fret, you are normal. In both sales and leadership, listening is one of the greatest tools that one can possess. Below are a few quotes pertaining to listening:

"It is the province of knowledge to speak. And it is the privilege of wisdom to listen." Oliver Wendell Holmes

"There's a big difference between showing interest and really taking interest." Michael Nichols--The Lost Art of Listening

"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen." Winston Churchill

"The reward for always listening when you'd rather be talking is wisdom." Anonymous
"A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something." Wilson Mizner

"You learn when you listen. You earn when you listen—not just money, but respect." Harvey Mackay

"The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say. It's terribly important for everyone to get involved. Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys." Sam Walton

"I only wish I could find an institute that teaches people how to listen. Business people need to listen at least as much as they need to talk. Too many people fail to realize that real communication goes in both directions." Lee Iacocca

"Seek first to understand, then to be understood." Steven Covey

"Of all the skills of leadership, listening is the most valuable—and one of the least understood. Most captains of industry listen only sometimes, and they remain ordinary leaders. But a few, the great ones, never stop listening. That's how they get word before anyone else of unseen problems and opportunities." Peter Nulty

How do you rank in your listening skills? How would you customers rank you? How about your employees? The Good Lord gave us two eyes and two ears with only one mouth. There HAS TO BE a good reason for that.

The art of solid, empathetic communication is founded in the ability to effectively respond to the other person. Some of the people who you have met in your life that you found to be the most interesting have also been the ones that have been the most interested. They asked questions and listened to your response. They cared and they showed it.

I’ll close with a challenge to you. This week, no matter what it is that you currently do as a leader, a sales manager, or a salesperson, I want you to ask a minimum of 10 questions to everyone with whom you engage in a conversation. Make note of what it is that they tell you and make it a point to bring that up the next time you speak. You will be amazed at the response that you will get in return for your attentive listening.