Articles
What Makes Employees Mad - Part I | What Makes Employees Mad - Part II
What Makes Employees Mad - Part III | Workplace Wrath: Using Anger to Build
All Praise to the Supervisor | Feedback: The Breakfast of Champions
The Emperor’s New Clothes - Providing Negative Feedback | Practicing Safe Stress

Listen First

Would better customer service skill increase your effectiveness as a supervisor? Are you raising teenagers and wonder whose kids they are? Would you like to feel closer to your spouse? Would you like to make more money? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then this is for you.

Many enjoy Leroy and Loretta in the comic strip “Lockhorns”. I asked this famous cartoon couple to illustrate some essential points about successful communications. “I can read while you’re talking, Loretta. I don’t listen with my eyes.”, said Leroy. The first rule of listening is to decide to become a good listener. Leroy, put down that newspaper, look at your wife, and listen!

Leroy said, “We can’t be honest with each other, Loretta, that would lead to a divorce”. I had a participant in a communication class who used these listening principals when communicating with his wife. He later reported his experience was contrary to Leroy’s fear. He said that after 37 years of not communicating, he had begun to listen and their relationship had never been better. Now he really enjoy being with her! So, Leroy, don’t be afraid of honest communication!

“You haven’t nagged me all evening, Loretta, is there someone else?”, Leroy said with a straight face. People in close relationships tend to get locked into destructive communication pat-terns. Since “they” are not reading this article but “you” are; do the hard work, put the focus on changing your part of the pattern. That is the hardest rule to follow; focusing on changing our-selves.

My personal philosophy is “My Life Will Change … When I Change!” When that becomes your guiding light, many wonderful benefits will become yours. However, you must be willing to give up blaming others and become responsible for making changes in your life. Be responsible for your behavior and your own happiness.

The hardest part of being a good listener is focusing on the other person. Most of the time, we talk about ourselves. However, listening for understanding requires not just to be listening in order to formulate a response but putting our full attention on the other person. Let the other person finish what they are saying before formulating a response. This is hard work and it will separate the listeners from the non-listeners.

One of the miracles about becoming a good listener is that people will then become attracted to you. Most of us do not have others who truly listen to us but using these simple tools will make a profound difference. People will be attracted to you and will want to be with you, your customers will be more appreciative, there will be positive changes with the boss, kids, and spouse!

To become a great listener, there is one final and all-important rule to be learned. Take off the judge’s robes! Quit judging what you are hearing and work on acceptance. You do not have to agree with the other person but you have to agree they have the right to be understood! Almost overnight, my relationship with my teenage son went from open hostility to the father-son relation-ship we both wanted. All it took was for Dad to get off his judge’s chair and start listening for understanding.

“I married for life, Leroy, but this isn’t living.”, cried Loretta to Leroy. It is sad to see poor coping skills killing a relationship; to have supervisors yelling at their employees, managers who don’t take the time to care, and couples who live in misery. We can be like Leroy and Loretta and continue the destructive pattern or we can change. “My Life Will Change … When I change!”