Selfless Questions.........
Emotional Intelligence starts with starts with self-awareness. One of the greatest assets of self-awareness is listening. What?
Listening can begin with yourself, listening to your body, your mind, your energy, and try to get a sense in regards to where you are emotionally or where you are about to go. Really valuable asset if we chose to use it.
The other important part of listening is listening to others. We have all had those people who don’t listen, and while you are talking they are building up what they want to say next. I call them selfish or story trumpers. If you are confused, a selfish listener is only interested in what they have to say and a story trumper simply wants to trump your story with a better one.
There is another type of listener, the interrogator. We see this often in sales and it is a blitz of questions under a motive to move their agenda and not the agenda of others.
I suggest you try an exercise that can help all us be better listeners and understand more about people. I like the rule of three because normally people can remember three things. So let’s just call this the listening rule of three.
Here is how it works: You ask someone a question, maybe like where did you go this weekend? Before you can tell them where you went, ask them three questions about what they just said. After that, you can tell your story.
Here is why. People like to share and be listened to. The human condition wants to be listened to and understood. Often we are so busy going back and forth we go a mile wide and an inch deep.
I did this recently with a heart surgeon at lunch. My father told me about him and suggested we have lunch. I have little in common with a heart surgeon and the knowledge gap, in my opinion, is very wide. Maybe we have health care in common but that conversation would be too easy. I want to start somewhere else.
I started with an easy question. 1. Did you grow up in Dayton? No, I grew up in a small town near Knoxville, Tennessee. 2. How did you get to Dayton? My mother went to Peabody University and knew someone in a hospital in Dayton. Now, here is the key to asking the next question (You see, this doctor is 80 years old, he told me his mom went to college at Peabody University. That was a long time ago in an age where getting into college was hard and being a woman on top of that even tougher.)
Now the third question. 3. Let's go back to your mom, how did she get into Peabody University? He told me her husband, his dad owned a company in South Africa where he was born. The country was going through massive unrest in the 1920s. He suggested his family leave and go to his brother's house in Knoxville, Tenn., where he owned a general store. Now we are going places, South Africa, massive unrest, a general store (when was the last time you heard that word, outside of the Walton’s on TV?) (Some of you don’t even know what I am talking about!)
Stay with me here. He told this story about his father, who was killed in South Africa, and his mom, who at 19 was challenged with raising children in a new country with a husband who had just passed.
She worked at the store and raised enough money to go to school. Her brother-in-law helped work nights in the store and she graduated.
She ended up with a great job, and her big passion was making sure each of her children had the chance and opportunity to go to college. He said he didn’t have a choice, if she could find a way her children would find a way.
He fell in love with medicine and finally ended up as a heart surgeon where he spent 40 years in Dayton saving lives.
I learned so much by simply asking him three questions. I watched him tear up when he spoke about his father. I watched him smile as he spoke about his mom. I found the entire conversation very interesting but I learned even more. I learned he might have needed to tell that story more than I needed to hear it.
Simply try it. Ask someone an innocent question and go into three more until you talk about yourself.
Stay Smart
Scott McGohan
