Listening can make listener better businessperson

Listening is one of the greatest business skills, yet few people completely understand what good listening is. Ex-cellent listening promotes healthier relationships, makes you a better salesperson, a better boss, a better employee and promotes self-awareness.

Three parts to listening create more effective communication: Asking questions, being silent and observing.

Asking questions

Asking the right questions shows your interest and intelligence. It also positions you as a sensitive, intelligent person who is interested in the other person. Sales professionals who ask lots of questions make the customer feel important.

As Toby Keith says in his song, "I like talking about you (you-you-you) usually, but occasionally, I want to talk about me." Since good question asking eliminates assumptions that you have all the answers, it also prevents you from giving unwanted or unneeded advice.

A great example came from a fellow speaker who told me that she met a man, (I'll say his name was Roger) who started giving her advice on how to start a speaking business. Roger was hoping he could make a sale for his wife, who happens to be a speaker's coach.

Unfortunately Roger didn't know that the woman he was dispensing free ad-vice to had already written several books and had been speaking for more than five years. Roger positioned himself as an idiot rather than an expert. In order to ask a good question you must first shut your mouth and hear what the other person is saying.

Being silent

Silence can be powerful, rejuvenating, soothing and ... uncomfortable. In public speaking, it's the pause that holds the power. After an intense conference, si-lence is rejuvenating. When a friend talks about a tragedy, silence is the comfort; and in a heated conflict, silence gives you a measure of control.

Yet at the same time silence can be uncomfortable. Anyone in sales knows that the space of time between asking for the sale and waiting for the answer is agonizing. It seems as though filling that gap with chitchat will lead the prospect to say "yes" instead of "no."

When a friend tells you his woes, the natural response is to fill the space with "I know how you feel," or "Everything will be just fine," or, "Let me tell you what to do." However, the comfort comes from listening, with the intent to understand instead of the intent to be the hero.

At my previous job, I remember being uncomfortable with silence when my boss made a mistake on my vacation schedule. When I went in to confront the situation, he paused. I was uneasy with his silence and instead of waiting it out and letting him fix a mistake he had made, I jumped in for the rescue by saying, "Oh, well, everyone makes mistakes. I guess I can go ahead and work that day anyway," to which he readily agreed.

Silence would have allowed him to address the problem and take responsibility for fixing the mistake. Silence would have forced me to represent my-self with integrity instead of trying to rescue him from his oversight. Because of my inability to deal with silence, I created an unwanted situation. It is important to observe your relationship to the power of silence.

Observing

Good listening is like breathing; it is a process of giving and receiving. Effec-tive communication requires that you ob-serve the amount of air time you take versus the time you give to others. Being observant of your surroundings is a form of "listening." In other words, pay attention.

For example, I have attended gatherings, where the host or hostess was preoccupied with his duties while some blabbermouth stands there yakking and yammering, oblivious to the chaos and frustration the preoccupied host is feeling.

I've also noticed it at round table business meetings where someone starts a conversation about his business and another person cuts in with her own agenda. In the process, they cut off the oxygen of the one who was supposed to have the floor.

What goes around comes around. I regret the times I've been guilty of taking too much air time. I remind myself every time I feel drained from some chatterbox that I probably need to look in the mirror.

Listening takes a lot of energy, and when you don't get equal time, it's suffocating. When I talk, I know what I know. When I listen, I know what I know, and I know what you know. Silence affords you the opportunity to observe.

(Marlene Chism is president of ICARE Presentations in Springfield.)