MindSwitch Mondays #15: Real Listening is Intentional
Real listening is about being intentional.
What is listening really about?
We tend to see good listening as active listening. Asking questions, putting your phone down, offering a “reflection statement,” and keeping quiet when the other person is talking.
But real listening is about being intentional.
Intentional listening involves hearing and understanding the communicator. It requires us to go deeper, to get out of our head and away from our perceptions and biases.
It is about getting a glimpse of the communicator’s world at that moment.
By listening intentionally, we are able to observe the world from the other person’s point of view. We are at an advantage when we hear and understand others.
When we listen intentionally, we receive feedback.
Listening is about hearing and understanding the type of feedback the other person is giving us at that moment. Feedback can come in all forms and sounds, such as a tantrum, complaints, laughs, words, screams, or silence.
How can we use this feedback?
Parenting Strategies
As parents, we struggle to educate our children in a loving, peaceful, and meaningful way. There are days when we feel we’ve got the groove, and others when we just want to close the door and not deal with it.
When we have that *groove* we have it all. Our strategies are working, our kids are learning, our house is at peace, our relationships are flourishing.
But when we want to shut the door and scream, our strategies are most likely not working at the moment. Not for us, and certainly not for the kids.
It is in these moments when we have to become intentional listeners. Instead of closing the door, open it to listen to what is being communicated.
Listen to your kids, your own reactions, and rethink your strategy.
Team Leaders
Leaders need to lead, most think of managing a team. But leading a team requires listening to inspire. Leaders whose strategy is not working will have to intentionally listen and rethink the strategy.
Marketing Directors
Who communicates louder than a crying baby? Consumers. You know your product is not good when your numbers crash, when you get no visitors at your store, or when someone else is selling more than you are.
Listening intentionally to buying behaviors, reviews, and other market cues will give you the right direction of the strategy.
Doctors
Symptoms give doctors a clue as to what treatment they should administer to a patient in pain. Intentional listening to patients can help doctors reveal symptoms that are not obvious.
Being intentional about listening gives us an advantage in anything we want to do. It gives us information and insights that would be missed if we would not be listening closely, attentively, and intentionally.
Listening shines a light on what our strategies should be.
Here’s how Peter Drucker put it
"The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.”
That does it for today’s newsletter.
I’ll see you next Monday with another MindSwitch.
Alexandra
P.S. To all FRIENDS fans reading this, check out this post on FRIENDS “The Reunion” I published a few weeks ago.
Friends producers also listen intentionally: “Audience is ALWAYS right”