By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to enhance your critical listening skills. Reading time: 2:27.

“Listen: do you want to know a secret? Oh, I can hear the Beatles’ song now. Great memories. But with all due respect to George Harrison’s clandestine offer, the answer today for too many people is: “No. No. No. No!

Most people do not want to know a secret. That would mean they would have to LISTEN!

And most people are too busy to really stop and listen. Even if it kills them.

Take for example the night the Martians invaded New York City.

It was fiction.
It was fable.
It was make-believe.

But millions of hysterical Americans believed this Halloween evening radio broadcast in 1938 was real.

And panic broke out across America!

In Pittsburgh, a man returned home during the broadcast and found his wife with a bottle of poison in her hand crying, “I’d rather die this way than like that.” No. No. No. They weren’t really listening to the radio announcer’s disclaimer three different times in the broadcast:

“You are listening to a dramatization of
Mercury Theater’s War of Worlds with Orson Welles.”

Too many conversationalist seem more deaf than deft in showcasing their listening skills. Too many conversationalist duel viewpoints rather than view dual points . Too many sing the Sounds of Silence as Simon & Garfunkel echoed: “People talking without speaking. People hearing without listening. People writing songs that voices never share.”

“Everybody’s talkin’ at me. I don’t hear a word they’re sayin’.

Too many struggle like the Midnight Cowboy in Harry Neilson’s song: “Everybody’s talkin’ at me. I don’t hear a word they’re sayin’. Only the echoes of my mind.”

No wonder the most effective leaders I know are always working on their listening skills. I’ve always found it instructive that the word LIST comprises over half of the word Listen. List for me means more than the obvious of compiling either a written or mental list of what is being said.

I like the definition of List as “leaning toward one side” like a ship does when its loaded weight shifts. In really LISTening to others, leaders lean in towards the speaker. And when they do, these effective leaders do want to know a secret and oh so much more about what you DO want to hear.

Today’s ImproveMINT

Sharpen your listening skills to keep your leadership thinking in mint condition.

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