The skill of listening is one of the most powerful tools a manager has at her disposal. Leaders are judged by their ability and the perception of their ability to listen. If you as a manager or leader are perceived to listen well, then you are ahead of the game and people will listen to you. You get points for this behavior.

On the other hand, if people hear you cutting into their conversation or being inattentive, lacking eye contact, tuning out, changing the subject midstream, and later not remembering what was said.....then you are toast!

Once you have this reputation it will live a thousand lives before it dies --- even after you have seen the light and changed your ways.

Hey! I don't make the rules, that's just how it is.

When someone speaks what do you see? If you turn to look directly at them you are giving them your personal attention. This is powerful. But you also see their body language. You can tell right away if they are upset, angry, happy, puzzled, agitated or whatever from their facial expression and body movements.

Kids are great at this because they are so aware of their senses. The best tool for getting a 3 year old to listen to you is to kneel down, look them in the eye and speak. Works every time. They understand what you have to say is important and your eye contact makes them feel important too.

Just remember to look and see when listening.

There are times when it is most important to use focused listening. One time would be when you want and need information. As a leader, listening is a primary tool to get facts, and to gain understanding of people in your organization.

Another time is when someone has a need to talk. From a personal point of view this happens when my wife begins to speak...I need to listen...attentively! I'm not perfect at this, but I'm practicing.

When I'm career coaching with a client, it is important to listen for understanding. I like to prompt clients to tell me more about their needs, desires and background. These prompts are called attending skills. For example, we all use attending skills such as head nods, saying uh-huh, and I understand what you are saying. Our body language and what we say to the speaker helps them to continue saying what is on their mind.

Using good attending and prompting skills can give you, the listener, a mountain of information.

Earlier I mentioned that seeing the other person is important for listening...except when you are on the phone. In hundreds of hours of coaching over the phone I have found that speakers give us many clues to how they are feeling. This is vital information which aids understanding.

You can tell when the speaker is excited, angry, sad, discouraged, depressed by their tone, volume and rate of speech. To check for understanding, just say," you sound excited about this." The speaker will agree or set you straight, quickly.

A sensitive comment like,"you seem down, depressed, over this setback" will often lead to deeper thoughts and more information bubbling to the surface.

Or not.

They might tell you ," I'm not depressed...just physically tired of running around trying to pick up loose ends."

The key for the listener is to get on the same wavelength with the speaker for better understanding. Keep moving forward doing and redoing until you have understanding.

Leaders want and need the best, most accurate information possible. The problem is that leaders have this thing called power.

And power distorts.

At least the majority of the time. So when the leader listens for information she needs to keep in mind that her power will influence the speaker.

A key point to remember is that a path of questions often fulfills the listener's agenda at the expense of the truth. Happens in court every day.

The most pure form of feeding back what you have heard is the skill of reflecting.

You reflect by restating the core meaning of what the speaker has said. Use their frame of reference but try not to parrot word for word what they said. Just get the essence of what they tell you. Put your reflection in a statement --- not a question. Remember questions lead, and you want accurate information.

An example: Your team leader says," Our project is a bit behind schedule." You reflect," The deadline is in jeopardy." The team leader responds,"Yeah we're 5 days behind right now and hope to gain back this next quarter."

As listener, you want to be open to what is said while sorting through all the words and meanderings of the speaker looking for the good stuff---the gold --- the understanding which moves relationships, projects, and people forward.

Once you have that accurate reflection the experience will be truly golden.