Everyone knows that better communication is key to transforming our work and businesses as well as our lives beyond work.  Often when we think about communication, we think about what we say and how we say it but we forget that the best way of knowing what to say and how to say it is to listen. A big part of my training as a business coach was learning how to listen professionally and I now run coaching workshops and webinars for clients on listening well. I do this for three big reasons.

Firstly, so few of us (and I include myself in this) listen well naturally. We all know how annoying it is when someone else is not listening to us properly and yet we all think that we can get away with pretending to listen well to others while thinking about our lunch, or what we want to say next or whatever else is on our mind.

Secondly, listening intentionally transforms relationships and outcomes. In a professional context, effective listening saves time and money, it dismantles assumptions and saves us second guessing people and, in doing that, prevents and solves internal and external conflict. 

When people feel that we’re really listening to them, they feel valued (building relationship), they tell us the truth (building trust), they give us key information (building invaluable insights). All of these things are vital for increasing your impact at work or in your business.

Thirdly, effective listening is a skill which most of us can learn with a bit of effort and those who do develop it see tangible improvements in the way that they do business and in the business that they do. I've seen this both with my individual and organisational clients where listening better has resolved workplace tensions, increased collaboration and led to new ways of approaching things and better results.

So, how do we listen better? Well, there are two main barriers to effective listening. The first is our attention: Unsurprisingly the quality of our listening is linked to the quality of our attention. We talk about paying attention to someone, because there’s a cost to it for us - when we’re paying attention in one place, we aren’t paying it elsewhere. But it is an investment that yields dividends. So, first of all, if you want to improve your work life by improving your communication, engage your attention. I'll come to the second big barrier in a future newsletter!

If you're interested in exploring how to listen better and how to build professional relationships and environments where that happens more, " Time to Think" by Nancy Kline is a classic well worth exploring. There's also more on building listening skills in this article for founders on my website. I'll be running a small virtual workshop on Listening Well At Work this autumn. Numbers are limited so click here to learn more.

Next, a question for all of us as we seek to make wise professional decisions.