Are You A Good Listener - Part 2

December 23, 2009

Interview with Joe Takash, author of the book Results Through Relationships: Building Trust, Performance, and Profit Through People

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Mike Carruthers:
When you’re a good listener you have a real advantage.

Joe Takash:
The best listeners are the best friends. They’re the people who seem to be surrounded with by positive people. When chips are down for them they seem to get the best support. In business it certainly makes me more money

Joe Takash, author of the book Results Through Relationships: Building Trust, Performance, and Profit Through People says being a good listener takes real effort.

Number one, don’t rehearse. All of us rehearse to a certain extent but try to avoid the temptation to rehearse what you want to say next so you can be fully engaged with the other person. And maybe even before that, it starts with asking open-ended questions and really putting the person in a position to speak and voice their opinion. Eliminate distractions, which involve shutting the door, turning off the cell phone and do what you can to really make sure that you’re fully engaged.

If you want to be a good listener you need to avoid the temptation of what Joe calls one of the sins of good listening.

Which I’m personally guilty of being a “professional communicator” which is sentence finishing. And I would say the one sound bite I would offer to your listeners is, people do not begin sentences with the intention for us to finish them.

And Joe says a good listener practices what he calls honest listening.

Even if that means, “Mike this is a great point, I’m running into a meeting, I don’t want to dismiss you, I’m going to be in my car in an hour can I give you a call from my cell phone? Honest listening is a huge piece to making those authentic connections and building trust.

For Part 1 click here.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here.