This is the fifth post in the series on Leadership Development.

As a leader, whether you are leading your team, organization, family or hobby group, you end up interacting with many people and the choices you make impact them all.

Your position holds a great deal of power, yet the flip side of it is that it is easy to lose touch with the reality of the people you lead. Sometimes, it is difficult for them to speak openly with you. Other times, they may speak when things reach a critical point, and everything bursts out in a way that doesn’t help anyone.

An important skill for a leader is listening. Listening provides you with information you need to make effective choices. It empowers you to understand the multiple realities you influence and make choices that lead to the most accepted decisions and productive change.

So what really is listening?

We hear things all the time. Yet, we hear them through a filter of thoughts running through our mind. If my team member says that he does not think it advisable to accept more members on the team, I may hear it as he has something against expanding the team, or that he thinks the current size is capable of handling matters more efficiently. What is happening here, is that I’ve had these thoughts at some point or I have a perception of him as someone who has an attitude like this, and I quickly assume he means that.

Yet, the reality may be different. It is only when I really listen to his words and understand what he has said in those words, rather than my own descriptions, is when what he has said has reached me. I may or not agree. I may or not use his opinion as an input, but until I really have ‘got’ what he is saying, I have lost out on a resource in my belief that what I’m thinking is what he is – I already have myself as a resource. So I have effectively missed out one important resource without even realizing it.

Listening is the single most important thing to become popular as a leader. When the people you interact with feel that you care about what they go through, they trust you more.

How can you develop listening skills?

Robert Carlsen has a suggestion.

It takes a lifetime commitment and you discover your own ways of ensuring that you listen better and better, but the following tips might help:

1. Be interested in what the person has to say.
2. Repeat back how you understand what he is saying, and check if that is what s/he means.
3. Ask questions that help you understand the thoughts, intentions, reasons, concerns, objectives, etc that underlie the content of what is being said. Often, we may quickly disagree with what we hear, but we have similar intentions, which help us build a dialogue around resolving them.

Things to watch out for – these ‘alarms’ can alert you to when you have stopped listening, and are instead listening to your imagination of what someone is saying:

1. Quick agreement/disagreement: If you quickly feel that what someone is saying is right or wrong, it is likely that you have listened to a phrase that evokes that reaction in you, and lost touch with the entire message that is available to you.
2. You have something to say: Sometimes, we hear things that trigger some points to make or new ideas in us, and we start waiting for the other person to stop speaking so that we may have our say. Needless to say, what you are doing in that moment is planning what to say and looking for the opportunity without really registering what is being said.
3. When the other person starts looking dissatisfied, or gets agitated or starts repeating him/herself: This happens when the person feels that his point is important and you haven’t got it or don’t value it. A person who feels listened to relaxes and speaks easily.

There are loads of things you can do, and hundreds of indicators of being listened to or not, but each of them is a learning curve, and this is a good place to begin. As you start listening better, you will discover many of these and form your own style on your own. Each will come with effort and deep desire to listen.

But the rewards are worth it. Newly discovered bonding as a leader aside, there is a glow of warmth and closeness you feel when you really connect deeply with another person that is a rewarding experience in itself. You get listened to more as well and don’t need to fight to get your point across as much. It has to be experienced to be believed. The first time it happens to you, is when you discover a whole new world of meaningful communication.

When we don’t understand, we react. When we understand, we respond.

When have you really felt listened to? When you felt you mattered. How did it impact you?