This is the last of seven principles in week number one of our Daily Leadership Tip Series. This whole week, we have covered six ways to build trust and build a team environment. The last leadership tip this week is number seven, Practice Good Listening Skills.

Don’t look for techniques on how to listen better.  The people who are great listeners do so because they want to be great listeners, not because they learned the latest “technique” to trick people into thinking that they are listening when they aren’t.

 I’ve noticed that there are about four different levels of listening.  

 THE FOUR LEVELS OF LISTENING

The lowest level of listening is to completely Ignore the speaker.  We all fall into this trap from time to time, such as when we are in a boring meeting and our mind wanders.  

 The second level of listening is when we Pretend to listen, but we are really just looking for an opportunity to end the conversation or change the subject.  

The third level of listening is when we Selectively listen (mainly out of self-interest.) When we listen at this level, we will practically ignore the other person unless they are talking about something that directly concerns us.  

Selective listeners will sometimes listen just enough to form an opinion or a rebuttal.  They tend to interrupt a lot and give advice.  

When we move into this level of listening, a lot of times, we do so to speed up the listening process. But for the most part, this type of listening can slow down the communication process giving us a negative result.  

The highest level of listener is the Attentive or Focused listener.  This person ignores all distractions and focuses totally on the speaker.  

In any given conversation, we will typically slip from one of these types of listening levels to another.  The key is to get our minds off ourselves and onto the other person.  

If we are genuinely interested in the other person – if we really care about the other person – we will automatically spend more time in the focused listening level.  

Week #1: Build Trust and Rapport Quickly
Principle #7: Be a Good Listener.
https://www.leadersinstitute.com/daily-leadership-tip-7-practice-good-listening-skills/