The Ultimate Skill e-Newsletter
By Mike Lipkin
Listen Magnetically
Ask the right question in the right way so you draw out the best from others. Read this in conjunction with the latest podcast.
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Welcome to the Fall newsletter that could transform your life. I'm serious. I'm going to introduce you to the concept of magnetic listening that will enable you to hear more so you encourage others to be more by saying more. So empty your mind, and fill it with this thought:
The way you listen to others becomes their opinion of themselves.
If you listen as though what you're hearing is extraordinarily valuable, you make the other person feel extraordinarily valuable. What's more, if you listen for extraordinary value, you hear it. In fact, the way you listen makes it extraordinarily valuable because you're hearing things you would not otherwise have heard. You draw insights out of others they may not even know they had. Your listening expands them, their contribution and their connection with you. It's a beautiful thing.
At 8:35 a.m. on March 5th, 2006, I stood in front of 5000 people in Ottawa, Canada at the Power Within Convention. I was the lead speaker for Lance Armstrong and Bill Clinton who were closing off the day. I told the audience that I knew they didn't come to hear me. I told them that not that many people knew how well known I was. In fact, I said, I was the best speaker no-one had ever heard of. They were there to listen to Lance Armstrong and Bill Clinton because of the magnitude of their achievements. Something that either one of those men said could massively impact their lives. That's why they were there – to hear something that would help them live a life of power, prosperity and preeminence. My message was: listen to everyone as though they were Lance Armstrong or Bill Clinton. Listen with that kind of respect, attention, admiration and awe. You'll be amazed by what you hear.
The way you listen to others becomes the way they speak to you.
If you demonstrate how interested you are in what others say, others will say more to you. Ninety percent of all communication is non-verbal so your listening of others says more to them than anything you can say. If others believe that you're not listening to them, they won't listen to you. It's called the Law of Reciprocation. Think of your most recent encounter with someone you believed wasn't listening to you. Think about your feelings of irritation and annoyance. Or if this person is an important part of your life, think about the anxiety or doubt that not being heard by this person caused you. Here's what I know about humans: if we feel we're not being heard by someone else, we see it as our fault. We question our ability to communicate effectively. We focus on what we did wrong even if nothing is wrong. We take the other person's lack of interest as an indictment on ourselves. And here's the real tragedy: most people are not even aware of the pain they're causing others by their level of distraction. They're ignorant of the trauma they're causing by being absent even through they're present.
So, this chapter is all about listening preeminently so you invest the other person with a feeling of personal preeminence. If you listen that way, you'll do the deal, close the sale and get the job. Literally. Hugh Arnold, Adjunct Professor of Organizational Behaviour, at the Rotman School of Business in Toronto, told me that there is a direct correlation between a manager's rating of a candidate and how much the manager spoke in the interview. We love to hear the sound of our own voices. So love letting others hear the sound of their own voices while you listen to what they have to say. He who listens, lasts.
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I will tell you that listening is so important to me because the way one man listened to me saved my life. It was February 1992. I didn't know it at the time but I was approaching the end of a three year struggle with clinical depression. I had just returned to South Africa from five years in Canada. In my battered mind's eye, I saw myself as unsalvageable. Then a friend referred me to Dr. Bernard Levinson, a 75 year old Psychiatrist-Tai-Chi Master-Sculptor-Poet. The moment I met him, I felt something shift within me. The way Bernard listened to me triggered a spark of possibility. He went on to heal me through a combination of extraordinary gentleness and electroconvulsive therapy. He didn't just listen to what I said. He listened to who I was. He embraced me with his listening and enabled me to hear properly. That was sixteen years ago. Since then, I have listened to many many preeminent people, but no-one approaches Bernard's genius. I asked Bernard to write a few words on listening for us to read together. As you read the words which follow, listen to the words as they enter your mind. Let me know what you heard. Here they are:
"We have a very powerful faculty in our brains capable of modulating and conducting our stream of consciousness. An example of this would be someone meditating. In the distance, a motor bike goes by. He suddenly has options. He can perceive it as noise to which he must respond by getting angry and disturbing his meditation. Or he can perceive it as merely sound - something he could switch off and ignore. We do this all the time. I damp down the music and listen to your voice or I damp down your voice and listen to the music. I can also damp down your voice and only listen to the sounds in my own head. We have options.
A few words on hearing. All the sensory modalities in our bodies cross in the spinal cord and go to the opposite sides of the brain. Pain in my left leg has a centre in the right brain. Hearing is the only modality that crosses twice - making it very significant. And impossible to totally shut off.
We start hearing in the uterus at 26 weeks.
We are hearing while we are asleep. Again the sensor is active filtering all the sounds and alerting us if the sounds are unfamiliar or important for you. The ring of a phone, the cry of a baby, and the unfamiliar creak outside the door. Even in sleep, your hearing is governed by what you feel safe about and what you don't.
We hear in a coma. This has become common knowledge and doctors ask the loved ones to continue talking to describe events because the patient can in fact hear and when they awake, they will remember.
There is now irrefutable evidence that we are hearing during anesthesia no matter what chemical is used and no matter how deep the anesthetic that is taken. The patient may not recall what they heard, but amnesia does not mean the patient has not heard.
So hearing is the perception of sound or receipt of information through the ears. It is constant and involuntary. Listening is when we consciously pay attention to what we're hearing. To reclaim the art of listening:
#1. You can listen with one ear.
This is the universal style. We all frequently listen with one ear. I have made an educated guess as to what you are saying. I think I've heard it before. And I am busy in my head responding to what I think I've heard before. I might even be thinking of something totally different. Many of us are so proficient we can do a number of things at the same time with one-ear listening. And because we are so proficient, we teach our children one-ear listening.
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#2. You can listen with two ears.
This is better listening but it is fleeting. It's when you're listening at a literal level. You're listening to the facts. You're being accurate in your interpretation, but you're not going beyond and behind the facts. With two-ear listening, if a child asks you a question, you'll reply with just the right facts. But if your response does not grab the child, if you don't hook the child's attention, the child will immediately tune into one-ear listening. The child will listen to the voice inside her head that should have been yours. And her lifelong one-ear listening habit will have begun.
#3. You can listen with three ears.
This is the only way to really listen. While you are talking I am in the moment and in your words, not thinking that I am hungry and that it's late. Not thinking of some smart-ass answer, not thinking of some wisdom to round it all off – I am just in your words. When people are listened to like this they are overwhelmed. They say more than they planned to say. They have never been heard like this before.
There is an extra element that must be present. Without it, listening with three ears just doesn't work. It's the element of "intimate rapport". Let me tell you a story. I was a Registrar at Tara Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. I was told that we were going to be visited by an eminent Dutch Psychiatrist. I was asked to present a patient to him at the meeting. The meeting hall was small. There were over 40 doctors, nurses and social workers jammed into the room. I had to clear a space to put down two chairs for my patient and our visitor. With much trepidation, I introduced her and brought her into the room. She sat down totally taken aback and bewildered by the sea of faces.
He pulled his chair up in front of her, put his arms on her arm rests and sealed her off from all of us. They spoke softly. It was obvious he was listening with three ears. But most important of all he was offering himself. He was close enough to touch her, to laugh with her and to cry with her. She was telling him things that she had never told me in the privacy and comfort of my consulting room. What does this mean for you and me? It means abandoning our desks and sitting with the people we talk to. It means keeping eye contact and being close enough to touch. It means offering ourselves totally to the other person. It means creating a quiet space around the other person so she is insulated against the noise. It means listening to her fears so she feels safe. Most importantly, it means listening to a magic internal voice that tells us to be still, so we can do the same for others. It comes with practice."
Three-Ear Listening that creates instant intimate rapport is what we'll be exploring for the rest of this chapter. And the woman who epitomizes this kind of listening is Oprah. Women, especially, listen to Oprah because they feel as if she's a friend. Oprah is the master of "rapport-talk", the back-and-forth conversation that is the basis of female friendship, with its emphasis on self-revealing intimacies. She turned the focus of talk shows from experts to ordinary people talking about personal issues. Womens' friendships are often built on trading secrets. Oprah's power is that she tells her own. She's divulged that she's smoked cocaine, and even that she had been raped as a child. With Oprah, the talk show became more intimate, more immediate, more confessional, more personal. When a guest's story moves her, she cries and spreads her arms for a hug.
Try this idea on: your life is a talkshow and all the people in your life are either your guests or your audience. Be your own Oprah or Michael or Michelle or Susan or Leonard or Catherine or whatever your name is. Practice Magnetic Listening so you draw others towards you and never let them go. Of all the things I share with you in this e-newsletter, the following Ten Ways To Magnetic Listening may be the most valuable to you – on one condition: You have to practice them immediately and then keep on it. Listening is how you light up yourself by lighting up others. Are you ready? Then here we go...
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Lipkin's Eight Ways To Listen Magnetically
#1. Be still mentally by being still physically.
Picture a squirrel as it pauses before it darts away. It's perfectly still as it calibrates what's going on around it. Every sense is tuned in to its environment. Be like that squirrel. Physical stillness precedes mental stillness. Fidgeting with anything telegraphs your distraction and breaks the spell. Be totally tuned into what the other person is saying. You can smile or nod slightly to express your level of engagement but it's your level of calm and composure that will attract the other person.
Movements are contagious. Inside the conversation, we take on each others' characteristics. Nervousness, agitation, irritation, impatience, intolerance, anger, tension, resentment all manifest themselves in non-verbal behaviour that communicates our emotional states loudly and clearly. Emotion comes from motion. And the common denominator among all these emotions is a self-centredness that is the arch-enemy of listening. So when you feel yourself being sucked into your own swirl, remember: it's all about the other person. Practice "Being Still" and watch the calming effect it has on others.
#2. Look and listen for the drama and the magic in others.
Whatever you look for, that's what you'll find. If you go for the magic in others, you'll find out. As importantly, other people sense what you're looking for in them. Think about the people you enjoy being with the most. Aren't they the people who make you feel extraordinary just by the way they look at you when they're listening to you?
Try this exercise: in your next conversation, look at the other person and, silently, say to the other person: I see the magic within you. You are amazing. If you know the person well, say it aloud. And give them a reason why you're saying it. No-one ever became offended because you expressed your admiration for them. In fact, admiration is right up there with love as our most desired emotional response from others. Don't be shy. Get out of your own way. Pay the authentic compliment and something extraordinary will happen: your mutual self-esteem will escalate: you'll feel good about paying the compliment and the other person will feel good at having received it.
The opposite is also true: if you go for what's wrong or broken in others, they'll feel your censure immediately. They'll go into lockdown mode and the game will be over. We all have hyper-developed criticism-antennae. We're scared of being made to-be-wrong because to-be-wrong means to-be-rejected. And to-be-rejected means to be alone, stupid and poor. You never want to be the reason why someone feels like that.
#3. Authentically demonstrate how similar you are to others.
Let me ask you a question: have you ever said to others, "I like you because we've got big differences"? Uh-uh. We like people who are like us or how we would like to be. In the game called relationships, opposites do not attract, they repel. The moment you decide that someone is significantly different to you, you raise your guard. You protect your inner space. You won't grant the other person insider status.
Here's an open secret: We're all more similar than we are different. If you search for common ground, you'll find it very quickly. But you need to meet the other person more than half way. Meet them where they are. Don't wait for them to come to you.
My entire livelihood depends on establishing instant rapport by positioning myself as one of my audience irrespective of where I am in the world. Here are the steps I take:
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- I research my audience.
If it's a company to whom I'm talking, I'll check out their vision, mission, values and key priorities. I'll read the comments from their leaders and share them with the group. I win immediate Kudos by talking their language. I also give examples of how I live their talk.
- I practice Three-ear listening by listening to their style.
If it's a Montreal audience, they'll be passionate and exuberant. If it's a group of Tax-Advisors in Birmingham, England, they'll be reserved and analytical, but very appreciative of tasteful humour. If they're a group of Ukrainian business leaders, they'll be alert and attentive, but wary of strangers. My point is that I wear styles like clothes. I remain constant, but I adapt my delivery to the listening of my audience.
- I listen for the actual words they use and those are the words I use.
Every company and every industry has its own vocabulary. If you crack its code, they let you in. If you don't, you're locked out.
- I ask PAQ's – Personal Aspiration Questions and then orient my entire conversation around them.
Here are some examples of PAQ's:
- What's the biggest goal you want to achieve this year that will make it a huge success for you?
- What do you love most about what you do?
- What's the one thing that you don't like about what you do?
- What's your biggest fear?
- What's your strategy for achieving results?
- What principles are most important to you?
- How do you like to learn?
- What are the conditions you perform best in?
When you ask your PAQs, you will get responses that may not be clear to you because they may not even be clear to the person giving them to you. Most of the time, they won't have thought of these issues before. So here are three All-Purpose-Questions that will help you get to the essence of others:
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- When you say..., what do you mean?
- Why is that important to you?
- What specifically has to happen for you to feel successful/happy/fulfilled...?
Remember this listening truth: the best questions always feed off the most immediate response. In fact, I often use questions to demonstrate my desire to dive even deeper than the previous question took us to.
There is a big red flag I want to wave in front of you: If you ask the questions, you have to remember the answers so that you can feed them back to others throughout the conversation. That's evidence of how deeply you're listening and how similar you're being to them.
4.
Listen like no-one else exists but you and the other person.
I often tell my audiences that they are more precious to me than my wife, my three children and my two dogs. And I mean it. But just for the time I'm with them. You know why? Because they are in front of me. My family isn't. If I'm thinking about my family when I should be thinking about them, I can't do either one effectively. When I'm with other people, the four walls of the room define my entire universe for the period of time I'm with them. I listen as though they're my sole source of power and inspiration.
Of course that takes intense concentration and practice. I have to keep resisting the temptation to think about everything else in my life. But after fifteen years, that's how my psyche is wired. And that's why I can have a one-on-one conversation with a delegate in front of hundreds of other people and get him to say things he would never otherwise have said. And by the way, I only get people to say things that they will not regret saying. My job, like yours, is to make people look and feel preeminent.
You may not have to have an intimate conversation with someone in front of a crowd, but you always have to make them feel like they're the only one that matters. So look at them and listen to them like they are the only people in your life. At that specific moment in time, they are.
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There's one simple skill that will endear you to others and magnetize their listening to you: remember their name and then use it as often as you can. I always ask someone for their name. Then I repeat it and confirm that I'm pronouncing their name right. Then, I use their name to ask a question. So, in the space of a few seconds, I repeat their name 4 or 5 times. At the same time, I picture their name in my mind and I see it smiling at me. Yup, in my imagination, anything is possible. And then I will remember their name for the course of the meeting. In any given meeting, I can remember up to 50 different names. Once again, this skill is expanded with practice. Begin today.
5.
Listen Aloud so they know they've been heard.
Let me ask you a question: how do you really know when someone else has understood exactly what you've said to them? Isn't it when they tell you what you told them? And don't you feel an immediate hit of relief, reassurance and pleasure when you hear that you've been heard. I call it "Listening Aloud". It's repeating what the other person has said to you, asking for validation and communicating to them how you're processing their words. Here are some examples of how "Listening Aloud" can be expressed to others:
- So what I hear you saying, James, is____________. Am I right? Well here's what I'm thinking...
- What you're telling me, James, is_______________. Did I hear you correctly? Here's my take on that...
- Let me be sure I've got this clear, James. What you said was__________. Are we in agreement? Ok, here's my point of view on that...
The moment you can get the other person to nod in agreement with you, the connection has been made. Common ground has been established. The conversation can go forward from there. But here's how you kick it up a notch: later in the conversation, without consulting any written notes, refer to the comment. That will demonstrate that you not only listened in the moment, but that you actually retained what the other person said. That's evidence of how important the other person's point of view is to you. Listen like you'll never forget what you hear, and you'll remember what you've heard – at least for that meeting. It's extreme short term recall we're building here – just enough to make the meeting unforgettable for the other person.
6.
Let your guard down so others don't raise theirs.
Be OK with whatever other people say to you. Treat all their comments as most honoured guests. See whatever they say to you as an expression of their engagement with you. Remember: other people are even more scared than you of being rejected or embarrassed. That's why they're so circumspect in how they communicate with you. If someone actually says something that is honest, frank and direct, salute them – even if it stings a little. That just means it's real. Embrace it.
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At the start of my seminars, I tell people that it's OK for them to say anything to me. ANYTHING. I tell my audience that I've won just by being there. I remind them that they're paying me their attention which is more important than any other currency to me. In almost every program, an outspoken person will openly disagree with me, and even criticize my content or style of delivery. That's the moment I actually try to precipitate as early as possible in my program so the audience can see how I deal with the challenge. I want them to see how comfortable I am with different points of view and how unattached I am to my own.
I will change my mind in a heartbeat if the other person's logic persuades me. If it doesn't, I salute him, I tell him that I will think about his comments before forming an opinion and I ask him to do the same with mine. I make my points with humor and respect, and then I move on. From that point, the atmosphere changes entirely. It opens up as people feel free to challenge me, both in their own minds and in public. I tell people that answers are fleeting but questions are forever. The moment I offer a solution, it becomes obsolete. That's why I love the questions. And that's why I love any kind of response – it means I'm being listened to. And that's all I care about. If you think about it, that's all you care about as well.
7.
Listen with your three-ears, your two eyes, your skin and your stomach.
You already know about three-ear listening. But you also need to listen with your eyes. How they say it may say it all. See the other person when you watch their response. What do I mean? See the authentic human being behind the facade that may be presented to you. Whether we know it or not, we're all actors playing the roles we think we should play. Even the word "Person" comes from the Latin word "persona" which means role or mask. So look for the signals – the hesitation, the gestures, the eye contact or lack thereof, the smile, the grimace, the comfort, the discomfort, the joy or the tension. Respond instinctively. But always be guided by a Primary Mandate: whatever you say must encourage the other person to say more. Make it real, make it compelling, but always make it safe.
Your skin is your body's biggest organ. You feel things on your skin before your head has a chance to figure it out. Think of the goosebumps you feel in the presence of something great. Think of the chill you feel in the presence of something chilling. When the hair stands up at the back of your neck, it's more than just an idiom. It's your body alerting you to danger. So absorb your environment through your skin. Lean into the conversation. Immerse yourself in it. Let it permeate its way into your psyche. When I am in front of others, I consciously lean forward when I'm listening to others. I get as close as I can without invading their space. As I do it, I can see how it encourages the other person to say more. They can feel my investment in them and they respond accordingly.
There is such a thing as gut feel. We have a collection of nerve endings in our stomach that send signals to the brain when we need food and when we've had enough of it. These nerve endings also send signals to the brain when they feel our tension, disquiet or unease. I trust my gut feel to guide me in my conversations with others. If I feel tense, I know others feel the same way. And that's my signal to switch to another frequency or go in a different direction to get back to the comfort zone.
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8.
Be big when you speak and small when you listen so that you make the other person feel big.
I owe this insight to a delegate at one of my programs at the beginning of 2007. He remarked that when I was speaking, I made myself big. But when I was listening, I made myself small. And because I made myself small, I helped the other person feel big. That comment alone has helped me greatly expand my capacity to listen to others. When you speak, you need to maximize your presence. You need to take up space so you capture others' attention. But when you listen, you need to give the other person space.
I have one final request of you: share everything I've shared with you with as many people as possible. The End.
Stay tuned for the next issue...
- Mike Lipkin
Watch for the next issue of The Ultimate Skill e-Newsletter, and make sure to tune in to the next
On Fire TV and Radio episodes, as Mike guides you step-by-step to where you want to go for 2007.
You will find out what it takes to thrive, not just survive!
