The best way to listen is with your mouth shut. If you’re talking, you’re not listening. – Jesse Lyn Stoner
One of the most essential leadership skills you will ever develop and always use is the skill of listening. Are you hearing me? By listening you know what the other person is thinking, feeling, processing, and wrestling with. This skill is perfected when you are totally engaged and committed to hearing what the other person has to say. Listening can be rather casual at times. One tends to get the feeling you are not listening when you are glancing at your smart phone every two minutes or if you keep interrupting them. The art of listening and hearing the other person is saying happens when you give yourself fully, for however long, to the other person without interruption. Never underestimate the power of listening and for the value that it adds to your leadership. You not only are doing a service to the other person involved but you are growing your skills in the process. So do yourself a favor and listen up!
