Monday's Management Motivator: The Seven Laws

Monday, August 10th, 2009

The seven laws of productive listening

Adapted from “Listening: The Key to Productivity,”

The better your listening skills, the more you’ll understand and the more productive you’ll be.
Follow these tips to become an expert listener:

1. Motivate yourself. Ask yourself: “Why am I listening to this?” and “What will I gain?” to help keep your focus.

2. Listen with care. Remember facts such as the speaker’s birth date, hometown, the names of his/her children, etc., and use them in later conversations. That will help build instant rapport with the speaker.

3. Clarify assumptions. Ask questions if you’re not 100% sure what you’re hearing or what it means.

4. Be patient. Don’t rush to complete sentences or respond instantly when someone stops talking. Mentally count to three to see if the speaker has anything else to add.

5. Listen to learn. Make it a goal to learn at least one useful fact from every conversation you have.

6. Pace yourself. When listening to someone who speaks slowly, don’t fill in the spaces by drawing conclusions or thinking about your response.

7. Stop talking. Your task is to hear and learn from the speaker, not to dominate the conversation yourself.