Be a Better Leader: Talk Less and Listen More
Posted on September 15, 2020 by Matt Tracy, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
How can you improve the way your company works together? Hear each other. Really hear each other. Here are the steps to better communication.
Communicating well doesn’t mean being a good speaker. It means being a good listener. It means asking questions that make the other person answer thoughtfully, following up with another question to garner more depth, and then telling them your understanding of what they just said.
Most people listen just enough to know when the other person is done talking so they can say what they have been thinking about while the other person is talking.
The best leaders, however, listen intently to understand what the other person is saying, take in what is important to the other person, and make them feel like they have been heard and understood.
People feel heard and understood when the listener asks follow-up questions to gain more understanding of what they are saying, and then paraphrases their understanding back to them for them to confirm or modify.
Follow up questions such as the following invite a deeper understanding. Notice that they tend to start with the word “what.” These are open-ended questions and invite a more thorough answer.
“What more could you tell me about that?”
“What were the steps that led you to that conclusion?”
“What’s important to you about that?”
“What would that look like?”
“What effect would that have?”
“What else?
After asking a follow-up question, paraphrasing back to the other person your understanding of what they are trying to convey allows them to agree that you have understood or to make a change to your statement to more accurately reflect what they have said. Paraphrasing often starts with phrases like the following:
“If I’m hearing you correctly…”
“What I understand you to say is…”
“I think what you’re saying is…”
When conversations follow this pattern, they feel slower, almost relaxed, but really go faster because the quality of the communication is so good. Each person feels like they have gotten their idea across and feels no need to repeat themselves.
When a leader can make their team feel like their voices are heard, they feel like they are making a difference. When a team feels heard, they are more engaged and more productive. When a leader listens, the minds of the whole team are at work instead of the minds of a few.
Try this the next time you’re talking with someone and they tell you their opinion or conclusion about something. Ask them a follow-up question, one that begins with “what”. When you feel like you understand what they are saying, say it back to them in your own words and wait for them to agree that you understood.
For most people this will feel clunky at first, but soon it will become second nature, and will make your communications smoother and more clear, and will make the people you work with happier and more productive because they feel like they have been heard.
