MENTAL DIET: Heart To Heart (Part 3)

HEART TO HEART (PART 3)

Becoming a good speaker has been over-rated and being a good listener has been under-rated. For the most part, speaking skills are taught and learnt but the part of listening has been neglected.

In fact, practicing the art of effective listening could be the missing link that will turn around your personal and professional relationships; your relationship with your customers or clients; relationship with your employees; relationship with your work colleagues; and indeed everyone you have dealings with, producing successful outcomes.

The art of listening is the act of focusing on others. To focus on another, you must be genuinely interested in the individual; be curious to learn about the individual-never assume that you know all about another person no matter how close or how long you may know him or her. Remember, human beings are dynamic.

Until emotions are poured out, your words will not be received. Reserve your desire to be heard and understood and reveal your desire to hear and understand the other; and the other person will feel that you deserve to be heard and understood, when he or she feels heard and understood.

Suspend judgment and you will support the other person to open up.

POINTS TO REMEMBER:

• Listen with the heart and with the eyes.
• Listen without interrupting and interpreting or projecting your intention and experiences on another.
• Listen with the motive to really understand the other person because you genuinely care.
• Listen at both the emotional level and the intellectual level.
• Listen for meaning; listen for feeling; listen for behavior-listen for content and listen for the context and you will prevent contention in your relationships.
• Put the other person first by listening with the intention to really understand before you seek to be understood.
• It is when you truly listen to another and really understand another that you can really influence another or the situation.
• Listening with the desire to really understand another flows from the heart that is full of love and integrity.
• Therefore, heart to heart is founded on a character that its motive is void of duplicity, manipulation or selfishness built through the habitual practice of love and integrity.