There is a story about two candidates running for office. One, after meeting him, you thought he was the most important person in the world. The second leader, after spending time with him, you felt you were the most important person in the world. The leader that made you feel heard and important of course won.
And it seems so straight forward that to effectively gain trust and build rapport we should listen to our employee, team mate or associate yet you can walk into any business, coffee shop or retail store and watch (honestly completely comically) “leaders” trying to prove just how much they know more than anybody else to satisfy the facade of what they think ego is.
No bull shit, this is what I thought effective coaching, management and leadership was until I started to actually track what the conversations created. I would use a scale of 1 3 5 and a short briefing of each conversation. A 1 would mean after the conversation the person acted like it was a great meeting or conversation then continued the same patterns. A 3 meant that in the ensuing weeks there was change in the patterns and behavior. And a 5 meant that not only did the client, employee or business associate change their pattern, they also started to have a more upbeat perspective about their company and our relationship and started to communicate in a more self-less manner.
When we start to listen like a deadly listening assassin we become extremely curious about the person on the other end of our conversation and the nonsense repeating what we want to say in our own head dies. Being genuinely curious about how the other person speaks, thinks and sees the world can help you effectively share with them how they can understand themselves better and actually create the change for themselves instead of relying on you to do everything for them.
Next time you find yourself in a conversation try to play a game of going into “Listening assassin mode” aka i am going to listen the shit out of this conversation (Laughing emoji !!). Seriously though, make it fun to be curious and deeply listen to another human being and you can have a good time in any conversation which will make you the 1% of people on our planet that are more interested in others than themselves. And guess what that directly correlates to – respect. And being respected will create the type of environment where you naturally are the leader that everyone wants to support.
