Be daring, be driven & be down to earth – Listen

And now on to our favourite point and most vital learning in the last six months - “be a good listener.” Well, we had heard this from many people even before we came to China. We even used to think that we were good listeners, however only after coming here and working here for some time, have we realized what perhaps, is the real meaning of ‘listening’. Listening is not about not talking, it is about empathizing, walking a mile or two in other person’s shoes, and suspending counter- logic completely. It is amazing that when we listen to people (without waiting for our turn to speak) there is so much that we can uncover about their view of work, the world and almost everything. Listening helps in knowing and understanding people and work and life is that much easier when you know the people around you well.
Listening helps in understanding people’s individual biases. This helps in figuring how to say that, what you want them to act upon favorably, without hitting against the ‘bias wall’.
Listening helps in understanding the speaker’s vocabulary as to what s/he means when they use certain set of words or phrases, this helps in using their vocabulary to say your thing.
Listening is transfer of control. It makes the speaker feel in charge. However, interestingly, a good listener will end up becoming more powerful at the end of all the listening because s/he knows more about the speaker than what the speaker knows about the listener. Knowledge indeed is power.
When we listen we submit our cerebral energies to the one who is speaking. It is an implicit mark of respect; we are also acknowledging our openness to their ideas. When we listen we get better at asking the right questions. When we listen the right way, we help the speaker refine his/her thoughts.
When we listen, we help people realize that that all the ideas and solutions are already inside them. By helping people articulate their thoughts and injecting the right questions at the right time, we help them structure their thoughts better.
When we listen – better work happens because somebody’s else’s words can trigger better solutions in our mind than what a monologue in our head can help us achieve
As a result, we reach the solution as a team and not just make people feel that we are bulldozing our point of view on others. The difference in approach is that through listening and group-think, we reach the solution as a team and reach there much more motivated than what we would have had, had we gone swashbuckling all by our self.