From the course: Mastering Authentic Influence for Highly Successful Sales

Listening filters to avoid

From the course: Mastering Authentic Influence for Highly Successful Sales

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Listening filters to avoid

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- For too many of us, our training in the art of listening went like this. Keep quiet, sit down and listen. Sadly, for many of us, this was all the training we got on how to listen. Bad habits of listening are common practice and even the best intentions to be supportive and understanding and to create a genuine connection, well, bad habits surface. And I call these habits listening filters. They work at cross-purposes for many trusted advisors. By the way, you'll see these in personal relationships as well, having good intentions and the kind of impact don't always line up. So we want to take a look at how to be really mindful of the way we listen. Here are four of the most common listening filters that get in the way of people listening effectively. Their intentions are good, but the actual impact they have, not so good. One of the listening filters is what I call listening to fix. This is where I'm not listening so much to understand you as listening for the kind of information I need so that I can come up with a solution and slap it onto your problem as quickly as possible. It's not really helpful to you if you're the speaker and I'm the listener, if all I'm doing is trying to solve your problem but I'm not really spending time to understand enough about it, that I can get past probably what you've already determined for yourself. So listening to fix doesn't help, even when it is well-intended. Another kind of listening that is a filter is listening to look smart. This is when someone's listening and all they really want to do is hear you say a little bit and then add their piece on demonstrating how much smarter they are or how they know something you don't know. If you're the speaker and I'm the listener and I'm listening to look smart, That can come off as really off-putting. Again, I might be well-intended in my listening but not necessarily helping you if I'm trying to look smart in the process. One of my favorite listening filters and a very common one is what I call listening for drama or the drama queen listening. Drama queen listening is where I want you to ratchet up the drama or ratchet up the passion you're you're speaking about. I kind of throw fuel on the fire. So I might say something like, "Oh my goodness I can't believe, you must've been so angry. Tell me everything. Don't leave a thing out." That's drama queen listening. I'm really listening because it jazzes me up and it jazzes you up but it doesn't necessarily help me get closer to having you express everything you need to say, so that we can move forward to a solution. And the final filter that I'll talk about is one that's called stealing the spotlight. Stealing the spotlight's an interesting one. It's as if the client or the person who's speaking starts down a pathway telling you a story of their vacation at Walt Disney World, let's say, and once you hear just enough information to be able to connect to that point, you grab the speaking baton and start making it all about you. So they're talking about going with the family to Walt Disney World, and you hear just enough. You might go, "Oh, my family and I went there too." And off you are, off and running, talking all about you and your family. Again, your intention is probably to make a good connection, but the impact you're having probably is not as connected as you think it would be. Commonality is not always a good connection point when the speaker actually was hoping to tell their story. When you steal the spotlight, you take over and once again, intention to impact, you miss. So when you're listening, the intent is to make sure that you're having an actual connection that lands.

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