Business today, especially in Michigan, is so fast paced and challenging. Every manager and leader needs a very simple tool that makes strategy and teambuilding more focused and more results driven. As they say on TV, “We have an app for that!”
The app that is so necessary for success today is listening. When you think about it, active listening is indeed an application of good communication. Since the days of Socrates, dialogue is only successful when someone turns on the “mental” listening app. But everyone listens right? This is just not the case. In business listening, people have to listen to learn, understand, and get information. The challenges are to minimize the distractions, to understand the message, and most critically, to stop talking.
It was said somewhere that no one learns a thing if they are talking. That is an important point. Listening is a skill just like piano playing. Practice, effort and improved performance must be integral to both.
Why is listening so hard? Because it is a derivative of our best thinking. The better we think, the better we listen.
In the management classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie said this: “So if you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments. Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.”
Listening indeed is an application of quality communication. The secret to success is listening.
This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of Michigan, providers of professional development and management development courses and information in Michigan. We would love to connect with you on Facebook and Twitter @MarkWillDCT.
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