Listen Up or Lose Out: How to Avoid Miscommunication, Improve Relationships, and Get More Done Faster

by Robert Bolton, Dorothy Grover Bolton

Want better results? Talk less and listen more.

Listening might seem like the easiest thing in the world to do. But most people retain only a fraction of what they hear, resulting in miscommunications and lost opportunities.

When you actively listen, you learn to gather perspectives, bridge differences, and resolve problems. Absorbing what a person is saying, thinking, and feeling sets the stage for dramatically improved relationships and increased professional success.

Listen Up or Lose Out pulls this underused tool out from the shadows and highlights its role in effective communications. Step by step, the book breaks down listening into a set of learnable skills, explaining how to:

Avoid the urge to criticize, question, or advise ● Focus on the speaker’s point of view ● Ask the right questions, in the right order ● Restate the speaker’s key points and keep the conversation moving ● Read people’s feelings and reflect them back ● Find solutions together

Skilled listeners experience fewer conflicts, make better decisions, and discover opportunities that others might miss. No amount of talking beats great listening!

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology

272 pages, Paperback

Published February 22, 2018

Reviews

[Peter Twist]

Provides some helpful strategies for improving listening skills. The entire first section is devoted to the importance of developing active listening skills, which seems unnecessary. If you are reading the book, you already recognize the need to improve in this area.

[Josh Sieders]

I read this with colleagues at work. It wasn't earth-shattering, but it was a good lesson and reminder that I'm not as good as listening as I think, and the value of becoming a good listener. This is true at work, and it's true in our personal lives. If we can listen to each other well, we can de-escalate situations, manage people to their full potential and truly care for and encourage others.

After driving home the point that we need to work on listening better, the book is full of practical steps on how to do it and I suspect I will need to refer back to it from time to time.

[Stefania]

The whole book could have been summed up in a Tik Tok video.

[Hamid Khaleel]

An excellent book to create a foundation for active listening, empathy, improve communication & relationships

[Alfie Yee]

A great little book on improving listening. With a career built on leading and directing, I'll be the first to admit that my listening skills kinda sucks. Bundled this with a highly impatient nature this is a recipe for disaster.

I decided to do something about this by finding out more about listening skills and this book came by my way

Take In, Sort Out, Sum Up and Parapharse. Explore, Transition and Resolve . All methodologies that both seem extremely formulaic and weird where listening has been perceived as like breathing.

It however it does not come naturally to me and for people like me learning formulas and practicing them is important

[Andrew c Chuang]

80 percent of fluff, but the rest 20 percent might be just worth it. For people who have learned and practiced active listening, a lot is already intuitive, thus I believe this is most useful for those who don’t actively seek ways to listen better.

For me, I did take away a thing or two but can really summed up into an article about listening missteps.

[Amanda]

I could not possibly have been more bored while trying to slog through this book during downtime at work. I can't imagine actually picking it up of my own accord in hopes of finding it useful. Don't waste your time.