Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone

by Mark Goulston

Making someone “feel felt” simply means putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. When you succeed, you can change the dynamics of a relationship in a heartbeat. At that instant, instead of trying to get the better of each other, you “get” each other and that breakthrough can lead to cooperation, collaboration, and effective communication.

the way to truly win friends and influence the best people is to be more interested in listening to them than you are in impressing them.

How do you master the skill of being interested—and be sincere when you do it? The first key is to stop thinking of conversation as a tennis match. (He scored a point. Now I need to score a point.) Instead, think of it as a detective game, in which your goal is to learn as much about the other person as you can. Go into the conversation knowing that there is something very interesting about the person, and be determined to discover it.

The greatest single cause of dissonance is the fact that people behave their worst when they feel most powerless.

“Hmmm …” is what I call a “relationship deepener.” It tells people that what they say is important, worth listening to, and worthy of some sort of action. You’ll notice, however, that it commits you to nothing. The sole purpose is to calm a person to the point where you can identify the actual problem and come up with a realistic solution.

So the first thing you need to do is to break down the thick walls between these silos. To do that, build on the things all silos have in common: the sky above (a shared vision) and the ground below (shared values).

The successful networkers I know, the ones receiving tons of referrals and feeling truly happy about themselves, continually put the other person’s needs ahead of their own. —BOB BURG, AUTHOR, THE SUCCESS FORMULA