Hear out others and their ideas
• Listen before you speak, understand before you diagnose, pay attention to the emotions, body language, tone and inflection of the voice. Listen not just with your ears, but with your heart. Don’t assume that what matters most to you, matters most to others as well. Don’t presume that you have all the answers.
• Most people don’t listen to understand, but rather with intent to reply; so instead of listening while someone is speaking, people are formulating a response. People go through different spectrums of listening from ignoring, pretending, selectively listening, to attentively listening; but the most effective listening is empathic listening – listening with intent to understand – emotionally and intellectually.
• Actively seek other’s perspective and viewpoints that is different than your own. Explore their ideas, find worth in their ideas, and give them credit. Don’t just try to prove your own point. People like to surround themselves with like-minded people, but how does that bring about any growth; no one is pushing one another outside their creative boundaries.
• Humility frees from your constricted views on problems to a broader and wider view of the problems and tasks at hand; it gives you the ability to openly and empathically listen to others and their experiences and points of views. With humility, your interest is not just limited to your own, but your interest is to bring about a benefit. So if you are having a tough time listening to other people, perhaps it’s the ego that needs to be checked.
• Situate yourself physically where you are most comfortable to take in information, and mentally clear your mind so that you can focus on what others are saying.
• Prepare your ears and your eyes. When someone is trying to communicate with you, don’t just listen to their words, but listen to their eyes and hearts. Only 10% of communication is done by words, 30% are sounds (tone, inflection, energy), and 60% is body language. Most information is contained in the nonverbal aspects of the communication—tone of voice, rate of speech, eye contact, body posture, gestures, and so on.
• Keep appropriate silence. Don’t talk in the middle of the conversation. And when you think someone has finished, yield for a few seconds before you speak just in case the speaker wishes to complete or add what they were saying or may go to an even deeper level.
• Listen at different levels: Listen for the content on what is being said, listen for the process on how the what is being communicated, and listen for the emotions. The emotional listening is where you are able account for others concerns and difficulties. The challenge comes in during stressful moments when it becomes difficult for a person to express their emotions. It’s difficult to be rational and perhaps even impossible to solve problems when emotions are not expressed honestly.
• Ask amazing questions. Thinking is a process of asking and answering questions. Before making statements and comments, ask the right questions to make sure that you understand what others are trying to communicate. This is also one way to encourage people to express their true emotions.