The best way to sway others is not to tell them your answer, but to arrive at an answer — together. Listening is the key pathway to go from your idea to our idea. Listening reshapes the idea as needed, and ultimately creates the kind of shared ownership that is needed for any idea to become a new reality.
Source: Harvard Business Review, February 6, 2018.
To listen is to pay attention to. Listening means stepping outside one’s own interests, to actually want to know more, and to care what others’ interests are. To not just hear words, but to pay attention to the underlying needs and frames of reference.
INSIGHTS: Developing a list of questions can help you be ready to really listen to what is actually going on, shares Nilofer Merchant. PLAN. Most of us don’t do that ahead of calls or meetings. We’re afraid that if we’re listening, we’re not advocating for our own ideas and why those ideas matter.
Most of us listen to the degree we can understand points of agreement or disagreement, or to prepare what to say in response, rather than to learn. But when we do that, we’re not so much hearing other people as we are waiting for our turn to speak.