When you’re having a conversation with people, do you listen to what they are saying or are you waiting to speak?
In our Leading Yourself and Leading Others Experience we dedicate an entire day to developing our listening skills. It’s amazing to me how most people’s listening skills are so poor.
The first micro-skill we teach for listening is to be quiet; to not interrupt and to show attending behaviours of nodding your head etc. to show that you are actually hearing and listening to what the other is saying.
This skill is so important because it enables you to really understand what the other is saying and that is my point for today.
When I listen to you, I can hear your beliefs; your limiting beliefs and your empowering beliefs.
When I hear your beliefs, I can predict the results or lack of, that you will achieve.
I find this fascinating. People always tell you what’s going on for them, if you listen.
In other words, our beliefs are like biases that we have. We make a decision about something then we look for the evidence to prove ourselves right.
Here’s a couple of limiting beliefs, see if you can relate to any of them:
- Nobody at work listens to what I have to say
- I’ll never get a pay rise.
With these limiting beliefs I can predict your results:
- You won’t speak up and therefore others won’t get to hear what you have to say.
- You won’t do what’s required in order to get the pay rise, and therefore won’t be offered more money.
I can hear you. I listen to what you say and I can predict your results. By the same token, I can look at your results and predict your beliefs and my own.
How about you? Are you really listening to what others are telling you? Do you know what they’re thinking or what they believe? Often they aren’t even aware of their beliefs. Are you?
