The Leadership Journal

Hi all, I recently came across an article by Michael Schutzler, called the art of listening.  Below are a few key excerpts, you’ll find the full article – here.

The Art of listening

The act of listening is probably the most powerful tool you have as a leader. There are many ways to listen; the most obvious is with your ears. The act of listening is carefully paying attention to sounds, not just to words. The pace, breath, tone, and inflection of the voice all combine to provide you implied meaning, intentions, state-of-mind, and needs of the speaker.

When listening carefully, other thoughts are put aside for a moment. There should be no judgment, no discrimination, no understanding. Only hearing. Soon our brain, that hyperactive dog pulling on a leash, starts barking in with ideas, assumptions, interpretations, and decisions. If we can hold off that dog for a bit, we can listen with clarity, which leads to insights that were hidden. Insights useful to a leader. Our society acts as though listening is the same as hearing. But listening is a skill, which like any other skill is mastered through practice.

Five Steps to Listening Meticulously
1. Breathe. Find a quiet place. Sit still and comfortably with good but relaxed posture. Close your eyes. Breathe as fully and slowly as you can. Settle down.

2. Relax. Now open your eyes and look down toward the ground or to the table in front of you. You want to be awake and present while listening. What do you hear? Can you hear traffic? HVAC air blowing through a register? Birds chirping? People talking nearby? Your heartbeat? A dog barking in the distance? The blood rushing in your ears? A clock ticking? Your breath? Your mind is like a puppy. Let it roam around and listen to everything around you one-by-one, but keep your eyes open.

3. Concentrate. With your eyes still open, now count your breaths from 1 to 10. Every time your mind wanders away from this exercise, just come back to counting your breaths from 1 to 10. You will still be able to hear very well despite counting breaths. Now you are concentrating on one point amidst all the noise around you. Just breathe and count. You are training your mind puppy to sit instead of letting it roam around.

4. Wake up. You may get bored with counting to 10. You might get frustrated that you don’t get past 4 without ending up in a daydream. You might feel antsy. You might realize you are hungry. Whenever you notice that you are not counting anymore, you have a spark of awareness – you just woke up. Use that awareness and just come back to counting each breath from 1 to 10. Practice patience. Practice calm control. Practice staying present. You are training your mind puppy to come back on command, gently.

5. Practice. Do this for at least 5 minutes every day. If you enjoy it, do it for 10 or 15 minutes every day or do it several times a day. After 2 weeks, apply your newly honed concentrated attention on to the person speaking in front of you. If your mind wanders, or starts to get bored, or starts coming up with ideas while that person is speaking, use that same spark of awareness to come back to the person speaking. Come back to their voice, just like you came back to counting breaths from 1 to 10. With practice, you will notice that you aren’t drifting as much.

Leadership is a long term relationship. Listening builds relationships and makes you a more effective leader. When a person is heard fully and completely, without interruption, without debate, they are more likely to feel trust in you. They are far more likely to be receptive to whatever ideas you would like them to consider – whether it is a request you are making of them or whether it is an opinion you would like to share with them.

It doesn’t take much to practice this. If you start now, in a few weeks you will already be a more skilled listener than the majority of people on the planet. Keep practicing and people will notice. Soon you will be a more effective leader. Are you listening?

Michael Schutzler

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 28th, 2010 at 2:16 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.