Listening Skills: #1 Soft Skills Success Factor in Business (Udemy.com)

The best communicators in any industry have one soft skill in common...they have exceptional listening skills.

Think about you own life, career or workplace...

Do you know any  exceptional communicators who aren’t good listeners?

Most every great communicator has a magnificent ability to listen well.

If you have strong listening skills, your clients, staff, team members, or anyone else in your life will tell you exactly why they will buy, follow, or respect you and how you can help them get to that decision. 

If you’re doing all the talking, you’re just hoping your one “pitch” is the one that’s going to land in the right spot in their minds where they will say,

• “Oh, this is why I should work with this person.” 

But, if you have exceptional listening skills, people will tell you why they would want to work with you, and then you can decide if or how you want to work with those people. 

Let me ask you a question...

• "Why would your team members want to follow you?"

In order for you to understand why your operations director, for example, would want to be a part of your team, you need to understand what is important to her.

What qualities does she want out of her life that your business can then deliver for her?

She should be able to ask herself if this operation is something she wants to be a part of in order to reach her personal or family-related goals.

The ability to listen isn’t something you are necessarily born with.

This is something you can learn how to do.

We’re talking about listening well in this program because if you can listen well, you can build more respect.

You can gain more and more respect from people, whether that be clients, employees, staff or family, in part, because you have learned to listen well.

How do you show you actually care about someone?

The answer is by being a good listener.

• Most people in this world we’re living in right now don’t have a lot of people listening to them.

• Many people want to be the one who talks.

• They want to get their own words in.

• There’s also a lot of distractions going on.

Think about you and your significant other or family members.

When one of you is talking, is the other person listening to you?

A good family member, hopefully, is listening to you, but what are the distractions going on in his life?

He may have kids, his own career, or any number of other distractions.

The same is true for you as you’re listening to other people.

You have your career, your work, your friends, your family, and all the other distractions going on in your life.

As a leader, you may have a conversation with a staff member, client, or employee in which you’re the first person who has actually listened to him. That applies to everything.

• It applies to how you work with your clients.

• It applies to how you work with your team members.

• It applies to how you run your business, and it certainly applies in your home.

Isn’t it hard for communicators who like to talk to learn this?

We can tell you all day long it’s important to learn from people why they want to follow you.

The reality is that most people love to talk and hear themselves talk.

Instead of asking the person why he would want to follow, many leaders tell the other people why they should follow them.

They say something like,

• “I’ll tell you why you should follow me.”

Many new leaders are afraid to listen because they’re afraid of what other people will say.

One leader said,

• “I’m afraid to listen because I’m afraid my staff members will say something I don’t know how to handle. I won’t be able to follow my plan. I’ll be off my guard.”

If that’s how you feel, you should know most new leaders feel exactly the same way.

What you’re about to learn in this course is how to change that mentality.

You’ll learn how to move from this place of wanting to speak all of the time.

Instead, you’ll build the desire to want to actually learn about these people in your life.

At the end of the day, as a new or experienced communicator, there are THREE key things you can do to listen well and still be able to handle your leadership position.

These three key things form the foundation for the agenda of this course

Module 1: Get Out of Survival Mode

When you’re in survival mode, you simply cannot listen very well.

Whether you are a new communicator or have been in a communication role for a long time, you can probably remember that time in your life when you were just trying to make ends meet or get your career or business off the ground...

...that’s survival mode.

Module 2: Put On Your Curiosity Hat

What makes somebody feel like he is working with a great communicator?

If your staff members say they love working for you, there’s likely a strong sense of loyalty there.

The real question may be:

• What makes people loyal?

The answer is that people feel loyal when they feel understood.

Module 3: Develop A Listening Action Plan

You know you need to listen well to be a great communicator.

Let’s say you’re now out of survival mode; you’re relaxed and ready to listen.

• You’ve got your curiosity hat on.

• You know why you want to listen to someone.

• You’ve walked into the room, and you’re focused on one person.

• You’ve even complemented the person’s body language.

Now what?

What’s the plan?

What’s the step-by-step process to listen well?

Imagine having a blueprint as a communicator to get better at listening once you’re actually in front of the person.

What if there was a blueprint to gain the respect and loyalty that you need in your life as a leader?

As you learn and become more confident at listening, you will take some of the pressure off of yourself, and it becomes easier to relax, shut up, and let the other person talk.

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