The Secret to Great Listening to Become Instantly Attractive.

What everyone ought to know about intentional listening.

The benefits of listening are all over the literature and blogs. ‘Listening is a subtle behaviour of effective, attractive people’, yet… I challenge you to listen for one day. Yep, you got that right. One day when you just listen, and when you want to speak, you stay quiet. Try another one — a day where you aim to strike the perfect balance between speaking and listening.

I don’t know about you, but every time I try doing so, I fail miserably until one day when… I realised I was missing an intention- the why, the BEING.

I started planning my days intentionally by asking myself, “What do I need to listen for and to in this meeting?” In my interactions with friends, family and colleagues — I started listening to understand the emotion beneath, the interests, the needs, the feelings, and the expectations. It made a massive difference in how quickly I was building rapport and trust, and it felt good for once not to do all the talking.

Here are some scenarios and how to shift to intentional listening to improve all your interactions.

1. When you want to influence a situation at work — Set up the intention to listen for emotions and expectations.
2. When you want to have a difficult conversation — set up an intention to listen to the other’s reality, conflicting priorities and needs. Find ways to fulfil those needs.
3. When you lead a new team — set up an intention to ask questions and listen to your team’s interests and what matters to them. Make fewer statements and raise their ambition by building on top of their ideas and changing how they think to dream bigger and bolder.
4. When you run your 121s with your team — set up an intention to find 1–2 things you want to learn about that person, their reality, ways of working, find 1–2 ways to appreciate and praise them and 1–2 ways to improve their thinking.
5. When conflict arises — set up the intention to understand the underneath emotion. When conflict arises, it’s not the topic but the emotional state beneath.
6. When you want to motivate someone — set up an intention to hold a space for encouragement and appreciation and take a keep interest in the other person.

Prime yourself to Listen Intentionally:

1. Notice your mental chatter, the narrator — stay as present as you can
2. Set up those intentions first of who you want to be, listen for, and what you and the other person want to feel at the end.
3. Be more interested than interesting.
4. Discover your listening style — Nancy Duarte, a guru in communication, has a free webinar where different listening styles and how to adapt yours to your intentions — available here.

What makes us attractive is when we forget about ourselves and pour all our attention on others.

Hi there, I’m Alina 😊. I am a coach and a mentor and I write about personal growth, leadership, awareness and the power of radical inquiry. If you would like to receive thought-provoking content, join my email list. If you are interested in coaching, drop me a comment.