Good Listener

“To be a good listener; you must have interest and you must care to understand.”

Whether you’re a leader, an interrogator or a father/mother, husband/wife as long as we’re human, we can’t memorize how to listen with formulas or with flowcharts.

In order to be an effective listener regardless of our position in an interaction or in a relationship, we must have an “interest” to listen and most importantly we must want to “understand” what others are telling us.

When we have an interest to understand; we then “care” to listen; hence in order to be interested and to care to listen to understand we must have:

1. Empathy: To care to listen.
2. Perspective-taking ability: To observe and understand things from someone else’s point of view.

But most of all, in order for us to be able to listen to others; we must first learn to have self-interest and self-care to listen to and to understand our own “Self”.