As experts, managers or leaders, we often seek to help others by talking, talking, talking. But what if we didn't talk and just listened?

This week in The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross and Gemma are joined by Georgie Rudd, an executive coach, to discuss the trials and delights of listening.

We explore:

· reasons that we don't listen well

· the consequences of not listening (and of listening!)

· how we can improve listening skills.

Georgie recommended Nancy Klein as an expert on listening and techniques to improve. Time to think is a good place to start: amazon.co.uk/Time-Think-Listening-Ignite-Human/dp/0706377451

You can find out more about Liz Wiseman's concepts of multipliers and diminishers in her book Multipliers: amazon.co.uk/Multipliers-Best-Leaders-Everyone-Smarter/dp/006239066X

In 'What I Learned This Week', Gemma spoke about the widest fairy ring in the world. John Wright reports that it's around 800m across in A spotter's guide to countryside mysteries, but a quick internet search revealed this to be a questionable fact.

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

And, this week, we're giving a special shout out to our Learning Performance Benchmark. Not sure how your L&D function is performing? Find out now, for free: mindtools.com/business/products/lpb/

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on LinkedIn:

· Gemma Towersey

· Ross Dickie

· Georgie Rudd

Georgie can also be contacted via her website: https://www.ruddcoaching.co.uk/