Excellent leadership begins by giving team members sincere attention, attention and more attention. This means listening to them!
Listening is different from hearing. Hearing is done with your ears, listening with your brain. With your brain you give meaning to what you hear, see, feel, taste and smell. You can listen with a closed or an open mind. Most people ask a question with a particular purpose and formulate their question from their own frame of reference, listening to the answer from their own frame of reference. They listen to the answer as if it is based on the question as they intended, while the other person answers based on how they understand the question, from their own frame of reference.
In other words, in ‘ordinary’ or passive listening, you mainly hear what you want to hear; you expect the person to whom you are asking your questions to understand the questions exactly as you mean them (closed mind). With active listening, you look wider: you attempt to understand the other person’s perspective and try to understand the answer to your questions in the light of which ‘environment’, which background or social field the other gives their answer. You listen to the ingrained patterns, values and norms (open mind). And you try to judge as little as possible.
In observational listening, you go a step further; you not only listen actively, but also to the underlying message, to the emotions, to the unconscious from which people make their decisions, on which they base their behaviour (open heart). In ordinary listening you understand the message, in active listening you understand the meaning of the message, and in observational listening you understand the person.
#Observational #Listening is the foundation for the book The Excellent Leader. Take your first step in becoming an #Excellent #Leader and visit the website Excellent-Leader.com.