My Job is to speak and your job is to listen. If you finish before I do let me know.
“My job is to speak and your job is to listen. If you finish before I do, let me know.”
Any leader, collaborator, presenter, salesperson needs to be mindful that communication is not just talking. It is equal parts of listening with talking that requires focused concentration. Being fully present in the moment allows you listen and hear.
We never learned how to listen effectively. The lost skills of listening are exponentially worse in this age of digital communication where the sound of the human voice is rapidly disappearing as bits and bytes into the cloud. It’s not that people don’t listen it’s just that they don’t hear. They don’t how to pick up the subtleties and intonations of the human voice they are listening to.
With training and experience you can sort out if your listener is distracted, bored, disinterested, fails to understand you, lacks the problem/issues you’re hoping to solve. In other words, if you don’t listen fully to the needs and concerns of the other person, your ideas, and solutions to their problems or information on your services fall on deaf ears.
Your listeners don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care about their specific issues. You need to gain their trust and confidence and make an emotional connection with them before they’ll share their private information.
When confronted with a stalemate let me leave you with the wisdom of Lao Tzu from the Tao Te Ching
“The softest thing in the universe overcomes the hardest thing in the universe. That without substance can enter where there is no room. Hence I know the value of non-action.”
As a coach, trainer and consultant, Larry Blumsack partners with people and organizations on the move and those already there to accelerate their communication, presentation and speaking skills to be on par with their ambition. Through one-on-one coaching and group training Larry helps leaders and aspiring leaders elevate their presence and communication skills to influence more people, sell more products-services-ideas and inspire others more successfully than they ever imagined.
Larry is the bestselling author of Face-to-Face is The Ultimate Social Media and founder of Zoka Institute and Zoka Training®. Zoka Training® — Mind/Voice/Body/Mindfulness in sync — is the result of Larry’s 45 years as a coach, acting teacher, actor, voice-over artist, theater and TV director/producer, radio & TV commentator and show host, speaker, trainer, serial entrepreneur, and syndicated columnist. Larry was a founding member of the theater department at Northeastern University.
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