Ameican business managers are taught how to talk, but given little training in nonverbal listening behaviors, much less valuable questioning skills. Our culture rewards people who know how to advocate. Certainly presentation skills are valuable at all career levels, and many professionals find themselves needing to know how to deliver the goods a few months into their career.
Smart speakers, it's assumed, control the interpersonal and organizational air.
Au contraire. The fact of the matter is that nonverbal listening skills are the more powerful. Put it this way so you don't forget: the listener controls the talker. It's rare that a talker controls the listener.
Knowing this, and using the relevant nonverbal listening skills are especially useful for gaining information, getting people to tell the truth, building relationships and developing a reputation.
Nonverbal listening research reveals the following:
1. The effective listener makes more eye contact with talkers. Want to kill a talker in a team meeting? Have all the listeners turn away from him. That'll put an end to the biggest mouth in the West. Research has shown that if an audience looks away from the speaker--say to another person coming in a door a few yards from the speaker, the talking will come to a quick stop.
2. The effective listener is more facially expressive. She smiles, nods her head up and down, encourages. Animation is not just a useful speaker nonverbal. It's also a useful listener nonverbal. Signal a simple "no" by turning your head left and right, and the talker will adjust to your response very quickly.
3. In an interpersonal setting, the effective listener leans slightly toward the talker. When you're sitting at a table opposite the talker, try leaning forward toward the talker, and giving him/her plenty of eye contact, along with a slight smile. Listening nonverbals have been shown to be extremely capable of encouraging--even manipulating a speaker.
The basic rule, contrary to conventional wisdom, is that the listener controls the speaker.
My coaching business requires well-honed listening skills, and I've worked on them for years. The consequence? My ability to gather information and feedback has opened doors to me all over the country. Sure it's the development of great questions. But the best questions are always supported with great nonverbal listening skills.
What's the best way to learn nonverbal listening skills?
I recommend that you work with one skill at a time. Begin with one that you have some comfort with. Then, take the following steps:
- Identify two or three listeners that you think are very good at a nonverbal--say eye contact.
- Observe your "experts," noting how they go about eye contact--in several different situations.
- Focus on mimicking what you've seen in several conversations.
- Prep someone to give you feedback on your eye contact.
- Take the feedback, adjust, mimic, get more feedback, adjust and mimic to more feedback.
- Work at the new skill until it's an integral part of your toolkit. If you work a little each day, it normally takes about a month to integrate a new skill.
A caveat: You may feel weird, like a monkey, when trying on nonverbal skills. That's normal. Think about how tough it was when you began hitting tennis balls. Learning a behavioral skill takes about as much time as learning how to accurately lob and return a tennis ball. And remember, understanding how to enact a behavior has no significant correlation to being able to act out that behavior. You've got to practice.
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