Day 2 - Listening
At one time ‘listening’ wouldn’t have been in my top 10 leadership skills (I had no idea!); now it would be number one (not that’s it’s my number 1 skill yet, but I now recognise how essential this is and I’m working on it).
If you consider leadership to be about influence, then it’s hard to go about influencing others if you don’t listen well.
Everyone you meet has a different personal and professional blueprint (their beliefs, values, training, experiences, traits etc.) and it’s hard to begin influencing them if you don’t know what influences them already.
I saw Simon Sinek say this the other day: “Hearing is listening to what is said; listening is hearing what is not said.”
Interestingly for me, the coaching training I’ve had, has been equally useful for developing my own listening skills, as it has been for the actual coaching.
There are lots of active listening strategies that you can use (summarising, etc.).
Below is a link to a ‘Leadership Reflection Tool’ that we use sometimes in our training; it may be useful for you.
Self-reflection listening tool
