04.01.2025 Today’s Insights from Harvard Business Review: 4 Listening Skills (Aspiring) Leaders Need to Master
Dear Students,
“Listening skills” sound pretty easy to master, right? Wrong. Effective listening requires much more than simply waiting for your turn to speak in a meeting, quietly taking notes during a presentation or nodding your head in support of a point your supervisor is making.
In the HBR article below, Harvard Business School Graduate, Stanford lecturer and corporate consultant Debra Schifrin unpacks some of the nuances of this key power skill, which ambitious international students (including you!) ought to master, in order to reach your full potential as an aspiring global leader. Schifrin points out that “Mastering the art of listening is not just a strategy – it’s a transformative leadership force that elevates interactions into meaningful moments of growth and connection.”
Essentially, Schifrin implies that listening can foster trust, forge bonds and even inspire your desire for personal development, which makes it potentially very powerful.
Schifrin highlights what she views as 4 elements of effective listening:
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Listen until the end (be present)
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Listen to summarize, not to solve
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Listen for both the relationship and the content, and
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Listen for values
https://hbr.org/2024/12/4-listening-skills-leaders-need-to-master?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=dailyalert_Active&deliveryName=NL_DailyAlert_20241217&giftToken=17187643051735941594724
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Leaders who listen well create company cultures where people feel heard, valued, and engaged. In addition, employees who experience high-quality listening report greater levels of job satisfaction and psychological safety. If you’re interested in sharpening your listening skills, try using these four techniques: (1) Listen until the end — don’t jump in or interrupt the speaker; (2) Listen to summarize the problem, not to solve it; (3) Balance your focus between building a connection with the speaker and understanding the issue they’re presenting you with; (4) Listen for values — whether someone is ranting about something small or sharing something emotional or complex, it’s an opportunity for you to learn more about what’s important to them.
hbr.org
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While students and new grads (like you and your friends) may be experienced in “being respectfully attentive” during discussions with more senior professionals, you may not yet fully appreciate that this isn’t the same as truly listening. In coaching, MCI candidates (yes, you!) can practice the above techniques (which may be more challenging than they appear), yet which you can improve with experience.
Here’s hoping you “hear” some laughter in your world this weekend!
Best,
Amy-Louise