Leaders who listen to their people may be rare but the leader who is not afraid to listen, learns more about his organisation than the leader who has a vision but a closed mind. This article is about the motivating effect of listening to your people – and that doesn’t mean making decisions by committee or even by consensus, it means taking the time to hear what your people are saying so that you are better informed.

Its often said that people just need a good ‘listening to’ to keep them feeling connected and if you are one of the rare leaders who listen, you will also find it to be a powerful motivating force.

Motivation by Listening

By Peter Fisher

Listening skills are a very powerful motivation factor.

Hardly any people are actually good at listening, being more interested in what they are going to say next. When you think about how many people you have met who can remember your name or what you said, you’ll find it is very few indeed. That generally seems to be the norm so when you do meet people who you think are good listeners, your feelings towards these particular people are usually more positive.

By that I mean you likely would place more trust and confidence in them. So because most of us find it very hard to listen, we are surprised by somebody who does listen and we tend to endow them with greater capabilities than they may possess.

This is the secret of motivation by listening. If we can learn to listen well, the people we listen to will be motivated and inspired by our attention.

Most salespeople consider themselves to be good talkers instead of listeners. You hear people saying: “He is a born salesman, he’s got the gift of the gab”. Many people believe that the speaker holds the power and that the listener is meek or docile. Actually you will find that the good listener has much more power in any conversation. The listener is able to gather more information than the talker and armed with information can then produce the desired result.

When two people are conversing, the one who really dominates the conversation is the person who is asking questions and listening carefully to the answers. When we want to motivate somebody to give their best effort, or to follow our direction, we will do so more effectively by listening to their responses to the situation.

Therefore the real job of the salesman is to listen carefully to his customers and understand their needs and concerns. Although they might ask you a few questions first, most successful salespeople will agree with this.

So what steps should you follow to create motivation by listening?

1. Repeat or rephrase so you can clarify the information given

2. Give useful information in return.

3. Listen for the emotions. Selling especially is often based on emotional factors more that objective facts.

4. Look people in the eye and make some reassuring gestures or tones to encourage the speaker.

5. Be careful not to distract the speaker – give them your full attention while they are talking.

6. Show that the discussion is important to you too.

Listening is an essential skill for making and keeping relationships. When you are acknowledged as a good listener people confide in you and trust you; as a manager of people or as a salesperson this is the route to success for leaders who listen.

Peter Fisher is one of the UK’s leading career coaches. He is also the MD of Career Consulting Limited and is committed to your career success. He has written 100′s of articles to magazine, journals and websites. Visit Your Career Change to know more about how you can build your own and other’s motivation by your listening skills and other means.

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Return to the home page of Definition of Leadership from the Leaders Who Listen page which outlines why listening to your people is so important to your leadership and business success because it is too easy to leave things like this to others when wrestling with everyday leadership issues, but if you are not one of the leaders who listen you become detached from what is happening and that damages your leadership position.