The skill of listening
Each month is an opportunity to create excellence. There are three forms of happiness: the happiness of pleasure, the happiness of grace, and the happiness of excellence. The happiness of pleasure is leaning toward being sensory. For example, it's getting cosy and drinking a warm cup of coffee or tea on a rainy day. As for the happiness of grace, it's feeling immense gratitude for the things you have in life. Lastly, the happiness of excellence stems from going after a great cause.
As Brianna Wiest said in her book "101 Essay That Will Change The Way You Think", going after the happiness of excellence is not just about feeling good. It also comes with the peace of mind that you are becoming who you want and need to be. Therefore, the happiness of excellence is not an accomplishment but an identity.
We need to continue refining so many different skill sets. So many people lean too heavily on developing their hard/technical skills, which isn't bad, but soft skills get left out, especially listening.
Listening is super powerful for building emotional currency and connections with your co-workers, employees, and clients so that you can get the best out of them. Besides, they can also enjoy developing a relationship with you.
Listening sits alongside other skill sets like curiosity. It asks us the questions: How curious are we about the person we're working with? Or the person whose problem we're trying to solve? What is our level of intuition? Can we have the skills of taking action and learning simultaneously and encouraging others to do the same?
Listening Assessment: Are you really listening?
Assess yourself where you currently sit on the scale of listening. Are you on a scale of 1 where you're a poor listener, or are you sitting on 5 where you feel that you are attentive to what's happening?
Another important thing is to reflect on what gets in your way of listening if you've realised you aren't as attentive as you thought.
Are you a bad listener when...
you've had a poor night's sleep?
you're feeling anxious?
you're overwhelmed with tasks and responsibilities?
On the other hand, making an effort to be a good listener can result to:
building more trust in your working and personal relationships
creating ease and harmony in your team
making people feel deeply supported
Action Plan
So over this week, keep a listening journal and record how you have been listening across the week. You can use the following statements to get started:
What are the moments or triggers that cause you to zone out and stop listening?
Do you tune out of conversations because you already know the answer to the problem?
Which of your relationships do you think could benefit from you being a better listener?
What might you do differently moving forward now that you have this hindsight?
When we master the ability to listen with curiosity and engagement, we invite more aligned conversations and relationships into our life. It takes us from just listening to the data and facts to actually seeing the whole person and intuitively responding to them with attentive awareness.
Are you ready to build better self-awareness, self-leadership and well-being at work? Head to the link to learn more about our Be Happy First Well-being Programme.