How good are you at listening? Is it something you really think about? Is listening really that important to running a successful business? I think so! You spend time developing clear messages for your prospective clients to read and hear, how often do you stop and really listen to what they have to say?

Listening is an important to skill to learn, and one that requires practise, especially to listening empathetically. When listening at this level, you can have a dramatic impact on your sales conversion. But, lets start by looking at the five levels of listening:

1) Ignoring – making no effort to listen,
2) Pretend listening – giving the appearance you are listening,
3) Selective listening – hearing only the parts of the conversation that interest you,
4) Active listening – paying attention to what the speaker says, and comparing that to your own experiences or requirements, and
5) Empathetic listening – listening and responding with both the heart and mind to understand the speaker’s words, intent, and feelings.

What type of listener are you? Most people will either listen selectively or actively, but to really understand and hear what someone is saying we need to listen empathetically. Few people really listen empathetically, and not only does empathetic listening involve a deep shift in paradigm, it requires practise.

We typically seek first to be understood. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. They are either speaking, or preparing to speak. They are filtering everything through their own paradigms, reading their autobiography into other people’s lives.

“Oh, I know exactly how you feel!”
“I went through the very same thing. Let me tell you about my experience.”

These listeners constantly project their own home movies onto other people’s behaviour.

To listen effectively we need to put our egos to one side and focus on helping the other person express their thoughts, feelings, and ideas. The important thing to remember is that listening to someone is not the same as agreeing with him or her. We often feel that we give our power away by listening to someone else, but in fact listening is empowering. Learn to listen with your eyes, your heart as well as your ears.

To support your move into empathetic listening, here are the four stages you need to consider:
· Mimic the content of communication: simply repeat exactly what is said.
· Rephrase the content: put their (the other’s) meaning into your own words; this takes
thought or mental processing.
· Reflect feeling: we listen and look to the nature of the emotion behind the
communication, observing facial expression, body language, voice (tone, intensity,
volume), etc.
· Rephrase the content and reflect the feeling: we put both the other’s verbal meaning
and emotional content in our own words.

So the next time you are in a conversation with someone, stop and think about what type of listening you are doing. If you’re not listening empathetically, are you really listening at all? Tweet