There are four basic forms of communication that are essential to people in leadership positions. There is reading and writing as well as listening and speaking. Your leadership ability in these four areas are critical to your relationships with a wide range of people. In fact it could be said that communication is the most important skill for a leader. Never forget that the words you use only represent 10 percent of your communication method. The rest is non-verbal.
When you think about the number of hours that you spend every single day of your life in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Go back in your life moment and consider how long you have spent learning how to read, to write and to speak. You will notice that I did not mention how long you have spent learning how to listen.
It is a tragedy when you consider the number of people who would benefit from learning how to listen. Very few people have had effective training in how to listen so that they understand other people from their point of view. And yet this is a fundamental leadership skill that you need to effectively interact with your team.
If you want to influence somebody, the best way is to listen to them. Yes, I know this is contrary to all natural human behaviour. Normally, if we want influence someone, we talk at them and when we have finished, wonder why they don't do what we want.
The key to leadership influence, is to set the right example. If you listen to someone, they will reciprocate, mirror your behaviour, and then listen to you. Unfortunately, our culture gets in the way. We seem to have been brought up to tell rather than to listen so as adults we develop very few listening skills. A very wise person once said, "You cannot learn anything whilst your mouth is open."
To develop your leadership skills, learn to listen. Now, for most of us this is a radical change in our behaviour and is difficult. It requires practice and repeated practice until you have mastered the skill. The difficulty comes from our previous embedded behaviour. Normally, we want people to understand us first before we even condescend to listen. Then when we listen we do not listen to understand, we listen to formulate a reply.
Think about yourself for a moment. Have you ever actually listened with out wanting to put your point of view, your experience, your feelings into the conversation? Have you ever interrupted someone whilst they were explaining?
Try this. Do an experiment. Have a conversation and first of all see how long you can last with your mouth closed. Once you have mastered that step try to actually understand the message the other person is trying to give you. Follow this basic principle of understanding the other person first before you try and get your point across.
This is the foundation of social intelligence in leadership. We live in an environment where we prescribe solutions to problems that we don't understand. We don't understand them because we don't listen. Another piece of wisdom to remember is, "Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice in medicine and relationships."