Leadership Strengths - Listening Ability for Building Working Relationships
By Andrew Singer

I have often asked people to tell me the leadership strengths for building better working relationships. As we think about communicating powerfully through listening, consider a good listener as someone who has the ability to:

• Receive spoken words and interpret the whole message (including intonation, rate of speech, gestures, and facial expressions) in an unbiased way.
• Remember or retain the information for use in the future.
• Maintain attention on the speaker.
• Leave the speaker feeling heard and feeling good about the communication process.

While I was debriefing a recent workshop exercise on leadership strengths, one participant said the exercise was useful because "I never really stop to think about listening." This person's insight is instructive and, I believe, common. In reality, many people think of listening as a chance to take a break from talking, not as one of important leadership strengths. It should be exceedingly clear that to become a highly effective listener requires going beyond "taking a break" or "waiting for our next chance to talk."

More than once I have attended an event with the intention of practicing my leadership strengths. Rather than choosing to speak, I chose to be an active listener and engage in conversation with others by primarily listening-by getting (or letting) others do the talking. Every time I have done this, I have left having been complimented on being "very interesting," and on more than one occasion, I have been told that I was a great conversationalist.

Interestingly enough, I had said very little, yet the perception was that I was a great communicator (and the by-product of this exercise is that I learned much more than I would have if I had spoken more).

The people you are talking to are one hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems good leaders build relationships. This single sentence summarizes the importance of listening as one of leadership strengths for building a connection, and it exposes a vital truth: connection is defined by the other person.

There are some techniques good listener has to know.

1. Face the speaker. Your body language shows your attentiveness. Sit up straight or lean forward slightly while facing the speaker.
2. Maintain eye contact. In most cultures, eye contact shows respect and interest. If you are listening to someone from a culture where this isn't the case, focus on the face, not the eyes. Use the comfort of the other person as your guide.
3. Minimize external distractions. Forward your calls, and turn off the cell phone. Close the e-mail, turn off the music, and eliminate anything else that keeps you from focusing on the speaker and the message.
4. Minimize internal distractions. You can think far faster than anyone can speak, so you may have thoughts (including what you want to say next) distracting you. When you become aware of those thoughts, let them go, and refocus your attention on the speaker and the message.
5. Keep an open mind. Wait until the speaker is finished before deciding if you disagree. Try not to make assumptions about what the speaker is thinking. Listen for understanding rather than for ammunition for your next comment.
6. Show that you understand. Nodding and other positive facial expressions are useful. Verbal cues like "uh-huh" and m-hmm" are helpful as well.
7. Ask questions to deepen your understanding. Remember that listening ability is about connecting. In order to connect, we must truly understand what the other person means, which can be much more than the words being said. Ask questions to probe, reflect, generalize, or get more specific.

Listening is only the one of many leadership strengths effective leader has to possess. I am planning to describe other leadership strengths in next articles.

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