583 | Why Good Communicators Are Great Listeners

Understanding Others' Perspectives

Let's explore the power of active listening and leadership as we discuss why good leaders are indeed great listeners. That is coming up next.

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto Show, where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.

Welcome to the show, folks. I hope you're having a fabulous day wherever you are. Today we are going to go on a little journey to uncover the hidden power behind effective leadership.

And that is the art of listening. Yes, I know. You hear that and you think to yourself, well, I already know how to listen, Chris. I got two ears. Yep, I know you do.

We all listen. But today we're going to talk about why good leaders are indeed great listeners.

And we're going to explore many of the benefits that brings the skill of great listening to small business leaders and their teams and bringing them together and making better decisions and understand how to lead somebody better.

So that is going to be our focus today. And as we dive into this, I’m going to start with something that I think is vital in leadership. It's vital in understanding how to lead a person to success.

And that first piece is going to be understanding other people's perspectives. Now, you hear us talk about it all the time. You need to be gaining quality perspective. You need to be asking questions.

Techniques for Empathetic Listening

Nonverbal Communication: Highlighting Body Language

You know, a phrase that came out of StratPlan so many years ago was, does anybody want to ask a freaking question, or do we all just want to, you know, give our own opinions and make our own statements?

The problem is, is that when we don't ask questions, we only have our perspective.

Think about it for a second. If you're not actually asking me anything about what I think or asking me anything about my perspective, then the best you got is your perspective, right?

If the two of us are the only people in the conversation. So if you're going to be a great listener, if you're going to be a great leader, then one thing you need to do is you must be gaining quality perspective.

Now, perspective means no more than point of view, essentially, if you were to define it. However, for us, quality perspective means getting as many points of view as we can so that we can make the best decisions that we can.

Putting Yourself in Their Shoes

So if we are going to understand other people's perspectives, then we have to do it by asking questions and then using this great technique. The old saying, God gave you one mouth and two ears.

Use them accordingly. This is where we need to start listening. And I'm going to suggest something that a lot of people I think don't really think about or maybe even understand, and that is to be an empathetic listener.

Now, what does that even mean? What does that even mean, to be an empathetic listener? What does it mean to be empathetic?

That's a buzzword going around, but really, it's stuff that we've been teaching forever, right? To be empathetic.

Think about it this way. What is it like for me to be in the shoes of the other person? Empathy is me trying to understand what that person is experiencing, what that person is feeling, what that person is going through.

So if I'm going to be an empathetic listener, instead of just listening for information, period, which so many leaders do, I mean, that's a common thing. We're all, we're all busy.

We're all running 90 to nothing. How do I spend time empathetically listening? Well, what I'm listening for is not just information, but I'm also listening for clues or.

Or pieces of information that is coming from the person emotionally, something that they're experiencing, something that they're feeling.

I'm listening to see if they're giving information, like how they feel about a certain subject, a certain situation.

Are they fearful? Are they excited? You know, are they full of joy? Or do I see that there's some serious hesitancy going on? Right?

So if I'm going to be an empathetic listener, that means I'm not just listening to the details, but instead I'm also listening for what this person is experiencing or what this person is thinking.

Avoiding Distractions

So it's not enough just to be listening? Well, it could be enough. Right? But I'm going to tell you what we do. So I'm going to give you some techniques that I would love if you implement, because we do it all the time.

One of the things anybody who's been through Next-Level Life, or you've been through StratPlan, or you've just been to our offices, it's possible that you will recognize that we are constantly watching your body language.

Now, that may sound weird. Why are you always watching my body language? Very simple. Because many times your body language will give off information that your words are not.

So, quite often, being able to watch how somebody's responding to something can feed us information. Now, it's not information to use against somebody.

It's not information to manipulate somebody. You could do those things, but you're just a loser if you do, right? It's the, the goal is to help people. The goal is to understand people.

Making Eye Contact

So empathetically we will watch body language. And the reason why is because the nonverbal communication communicates to us. It's. It's giving us some other piece of information. It is.

I can't tell you how many times that I always love this one. I can. I can be watching somebody who's stressed out or, or concerned about something, and I'll ask a question, what are you afraid of?

And depending upon the personality style, many times I know the answer coming right back at me is, I'm not afraid of anything.

But you can look at their hands and they're wringing their hands, right? Or you can see maybe their leg is going a thousand miles an hour as they're sitting on a stool or something.

There's certain things that you can watch and see that does not align with what's coming out of their mouth. The words that they're saying. Now, why is that important?

Benefits of Embracing Diverse Viewpoints in Decision-Making

It's not something we turn around and go, aha, your hands just gave you away. You know, it's not something that we're going to use against somebody. It's something that helps us to know.

Okay, so right now, like, in that, let's say, let's take that situation, if somebody was stressed out about something, and I can look at their body language, and I can see that they're stressing out, you know, maybe they've gone back for, you know, a sip of water every 3 seconds.

You know, I can take a look at all of these pieces that I'm watching from their body and go, okay, they're definitely stressed. There's something that they're concerned about.

So if I say, hey, what are you afraid about? And sometimes I'll just look at the personality style and know that say, using the word afraid is not going to work anyways, what are you concerned about?

And if they can feel vulnerable enough, then they can share it with me. Let me say that again.

If the person can feel vulnerable enough, which means that the person trusts that the information that they share, I'm not going to use against them.

I'm not going to become controlling or manipulative, but it's something that they can share with me, then they'll share it with me.

They'll say, well, here's the deal, or, here's the situation, or, you know, I came in, I don't know what to expect. I don't know what to think.

And then they give that information, and it allows me to understand where they're coming from, what they're experiencing, and be more empathetic. Now, I can see where this person is.

A lot of times it's stuff that we may already know if you're coming into Next-Level Life. Everybody, every single person, 500 and some odd events, every person has the same concern coming in.

Well, I don't know what we're going to discover. Well, we're not going to discover anything that's going to blow you away and go, I would have never guessed, right.

We're going to discover a lot of amazing things, but there's nothing that you're going to go, wow, that is so, you know, I would have said that was impossible to discover.

You know, it's going to be things that you have a concept about or even if it's new to you or very, very eye opening to you.

Guiding and Mentoring with Intention

Using Active Listening to Mentor and Develop Team Members

It's not something that's so shocking that you hate to see it. Right? Nothing that you see is something that you hate to see. Everything is, wow, that is so beneficial.

Wow, that helps me. Right. But people come in going, well, I don't know. I don't know what to expect. Great, let's get in there. And this is a great reason why we have breakfast on the first day.

We spend time talking to each other so that people can get this level of trust already.

And when we get into, and it's a one on one session unless you bring your spouse, but when we get into that session, it's amazing how fast somebody can get to trusting.

It's amazing how fast somebody can get to, wow. This isn't a person who's trying to harm me. This isn't a person who's trying to control or manipulate me.

This is a person who cares about me. And I will tell you, the next technique that you need to do is you need to care more about the other person than you care about yourself.

It is impossible for you to be truly empathetic if the person you're focused on is you. It is impossible to understand and put yourself in somebody else's shoes.

If the person you're focused on is you, you just can't do it. Right. So for me, it is a choice. I have got this time right now. Whatever.

However long this conversation is or however long this event is, you know, for, for us as facilitators and Next-Level Life, we are spending two days or a day and a half to two days caring more about the person in front of us than we do ourselves.

That's what makes a great next level life facilitator. As somebody who can care more about somebody else, guess what? That's what makes a phenomenal leader.

Now, leaders, I'm not telling you that you got to go and counsel every single person on your team and listen to every, you know, crazy thing that they've been experiencing in their lives. That's not what I'm telling you.

But as we are going to have conversations, we're going to have, you know, maybe possibly tough conversations, maybe KRA reviews, maybe it's brainstorming on new projects, maybe it's trying to understand a situation that blew up.

Whatever it is, if you can care more about that other person in the moment, you will get the best quality perspective possible.

If I see that all you care about is you, and I don't trust that you're gonna, you know, that you're gonna take the information I share with you and not use it against me or not be controlling or manipulative.

Then guess what? I'm probably not going to share everything. I might not even share anything with you. Gosh, it all depends on how I experience you as a leader. Now, another technique. Boy, oh, boy.

Please. I will tell you, if you've spent any time around me, you usually notice that I'm not carrying my phone around. If I am, I mean, it's because I'm in the middle of something.

But if I am doing an event or talking with people or stuff like that, I'm usually. You don't see my phone in my hand.

My phone is usually face down, or it's in my backpack, or it's, you know, it's somewhere sitting there, not being a distraction, not being something more important.

I do not have a watch where I get my texts on my watch. I don't have it. One of the things that annoys me so greatly, this just drives me crazy.

And the reason why it drives me crazy, because whatever's happening on your wrist is way more important than me in the moment.

One of the things that drives me nuts is that I can be talking to somebody. They can be looking at me. Aha. Right. Yeah, this, that, everything.

And then all of a sudden, they raise their arm up and they're reading something on their watch while I'm talking, and--

Or maybe it cut off their conversation, but usually it's when the other person is talking, when they start reading, you know, something on their wrist, and then they laugh a little bit, and then they look at you.

It's like, how in the world do you think I feel right now? Do you think I feel important to you? Do you think in this conversation I feel important? Of course I do not.

So, folks, you gotta get rid of distractions if you're on your phone. I know plenty of people who do not realize how addicted they are to their phones, how much time they spend on their phones.

It is insane. Well, Chris, I got all this. This work to do. Well, then you probably need to figure out better leadership strategies inside of your business, because your entire business shouldn't be run off your phone.

Your entire leadership shouldn't be run off your phone. Right. It's different if something blows up. You know, we've got, you know, the ox is in the ditch. We got to go get the ox out of the ditch.

I totally agree. You're not hearing me say stay off your phone 100%.

What I'm saying is, is in this aspect of being an empathetic listener so that you can be a great leader, distractions will communicate to the person you're communicating with that they are not more important in that moment.

So you got to make a decision. Is having your texts on your watch really that important? Is it really that important?

Is reading it? If it pops up in the middle of a conversation really that important? I just highly doubt it. It's funny, I don't have any texts going to my wrist, and my life is great. I'm surviving.

Everything's going well. My businesses are running, my family is great. I mean, just. It's amazing to me, right. The things that we will do in the. I don't know. In the name of what?

Convenience? I don't know if it's convenience. I don't know if it's efficacy. You know, I think it's just. It's just another distraction that you don't need.

In fact, I highly doubt of all the texts that you get to your wrist in a day, I highly doubt more than a percent of them are things you need to move on right away.

I'm not saying you haven't told somebody. Hey, this thing coming up, shoot me a text. I'll know as soon as I get it. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the regular, every day texts or even emails.

People get their stinky emails on their wrist. So why am I so crazy about this?

Because when you realize in a conversation that somebody doesn't care about you in that moment that whatever's going on on their wrist is more important or on their phone is more important, or on their computer is more important, or, you know, they keep taking phone calls or whatever, that's when you stop communicating.

That's when you stop giving your perspective. Why? Because you're not being treated with dignity. So instead you're just like, well, I'm done. If that's more important, you deal with that thing.

I'll be done over here. So, leader, choose. Choose to make the other person feel more important. Choose to care more about them than you care about yourself in the moment.

Choose to care more about that conversation. Then any conversation that's on your phone, choose. Now, again, what's the caveat?

If you're expecting something coming in because it's important or urgent, then let that be known ahead of time, and then don't take anything but that.

And not every conversation, not every conversation is gonna be one where you need to be an empathetic listener. So, you know, that caveat can be thrown in there as well.

Creating a Culture of Feedback and Growth

So last strategy that I wanna just throw in, make sure that you're making eye contact. It's important for me to see that and listen. Not everybody can.

There's plenty of folks that struggle sometimes in having that connection emotionally, of connecting eye to eye. You'll notice that you can see that in certain folks.

A lot of times when I'm processing, I can be looking you straight in the eye, but if I go to processing, I'll look down. You know, there's certain things that those aren't the things I'm talking about.

I'm talking about just the regular, run of the mill conversation you're having with somebody. Do your best to have to make eye contact to help that person, to understand that you are listening, that you do care. Right.

It's a smart technique. If you're going to, you know, really focus on understanding somebody else's perspective, at least you can do is look him in the eye.

I do feel like, depending upon the conversation, I can feel incredibly disrespected if you won't look at me.

And again, it is a random conversation once in a great while that, you know, it just feels like, you know, maybe somebody is, I don't know, complaining about something or.

Or trying to, you know, control a situation or whatever and they can't look at you. It's like it, at the very least, look me in the eyes, right?

So just something to think about as you're focusing on gaining as much perspective from somebody else as you possibly can.

Leveraging Empathy to Build Trust and Rapport

Proactive Help: Anticipate Team Members’ Needs

Moving on. Another thing that we need to be thinking about if we're going to be great listeners and we're going to be great leaders is that we need to really embrace the diversity of viewpoints when it comes to decision making.

Now, I can't stress this enough. You know, you've heard me say, I call it taxing the collective intelligence. It's something I have done for decades.

It's something that I learned to do way back when I was at e trade and, you know, a assistant customer service supervisor. I wasn't even the main guy.

I was the assistant one, the second one in line in the customer service supervisory role. That, as I had a small smidge of a level of leadership, a modicum of leadership, that I tried to lead people the way that everybody else had led me.

And I learned quickly that everybody's eyes got a little bit dimmer. You know, nobody liked that type of a leader, right?

And so quickly, I was like, well, I don't like this. I was too much of a people pleaser back then. This is back in the early nineties. I was too much of a people pleaser for me to allow that.

So instead, I realized, hey, if I'm the smartest person in the room and nobody else is smart, then they're not needed. And surely all of these people are needed, and I do know that they are smart.

So let me try and tack you. And I didn't call it tax in the collective intelligence back then. That came later. But I just started asking questions so I can find out what they knew and what they thought, right?

I wanted their perspectives. I wanted their. The diversity of their minds, you know, their thought processes, so I could make the best decision I could.

And as I started treating people with dignity and I started caring about them, an amazing thing happened. They started opening up and sharing information, and all of a sudden, I was an okay guy again.

So, you know, I was back to being loved, which, for our people pleaser, that was great. But it became a very important piece of my leadership.

From what is that, 30 plus years ago, right, of making sure that I tax the collective intelligence because other people are smart. And guess what?

Maybe you're really smart compared to somebody else, but their perspective is different. What if their values are different? What if their motivators are different?

You know, if you've got somebody who's a high Individualistic or a high Aesthetic, they're always looking at everything different than you.

And by the way, if you've not done your DISC and Values, get it done. Get your team DISC and Values done. This will change the way you do communication.

Go to the store, get it done. But if you understand that, you know, I love looking at somebody who's a high Aesthetic or high Individualistic and knowing there's no way they're going to come back with the same answer that I've got. Right.

They've been looking at things too differently their whole life to see things the same way I do. So I love finding out what are they thinking?

What are they experiencing? Right. High theoretical is going to have some information that I may not have on this specific situation. I want to see what they've got.

So instead of just having my perspective, one of the great things about being a great listener, if you will ask the right questions, is you get diversity in perspectives, you get greater creativity, you get greater problem solving.

This is huge when it comes to making the best decisions. Now, did I just tell you that? You've got to do you know that you got to get everybody's opinion and then.

And then, you know, make decisions based on what everybody is saying? No, that's not what I'm saying at all. Not at all.

What I'm saying is tax the collective intelligence, see what information you can get, and then make the best decision possible. Everybody who knows me knows I have no problem asking questions.

I love, you know, we've got the ridge going on, and part of the ridge is the farm that's happening. And when we do our mastermind Q & A, we do a Mastermind Q & A call once a month. And Richard Gesell.

Yes, his last name is Gesell, and he is a fantastic vet out in Texas. But I love it when we get on and we're just chitchatting for a few minutes while everybody else is coming on.

I'm like, Richard, question for you. What about this over here? What about this? I don't have a problem asking questions. You shouldn't either. You should be working to gain perspective.

Well, I already know the answer on this thing. What if. Let's say you do know the answer. What if somebody gives you just enough perspective that changes your decision? 10%? Is it worth it? I think so.

What if somebody gives you a piece of perspective and you're like, oh, okay. I never saw it from that angle. Well, let me just adjust it this way, then.

That happens in my life all the time. All the time. There's plenty of times I get no new information. I don't get anything that's going to change my decision.

There's plenty of times I get lots of information, and I'm like, okay, I don't think any of that's going to help me, but there is a lot of time. I get information. I'm like, good to know.

Never thought about that. Oh, I needed that. I'm so glad I've got that information. And it helps me to make decisions.

Not only does it help me to make decisions, but as a leader, it helps my team to make decisions, because what my team understands is that I'm willing to tax the collective intelligence, and I have no problem being vulnerable in that.

There's no fear for me about, I'm not losing worth. I'm not trying to control something. So there's no. No issue there. So they realize that they can do the same thing.

They spend time asking questions. What about this? What about this? What do you think about this? Let me put this out there for you. I'd love to get your opinion on this. Right.

So not only does it do me good in decision making, but it helps my team to discover how they should be operating as well, how they should be asking questions as well.

So if you are going to focus on, you know, really getting diverse viewpoints to help out decision making and teaching your team to do so, then this is the way to do it.

Informed Decision-Making

Enhancing Decision Quality Through Active Listening

What else is so beneficial of active listening? What else is so great about empathetic listening? What else is so great about taxing the collective intelligence?

As I just shared, this can be some of your best leadership and mentoring, especially with intention.

You need to be using active listening to mentor and develop your team members, period. I will tell you, for our leadership team, you know, my leadership team, it's great. We-- there's not a whole lot.

My leadership team has just been phenomenal for years. Just absolutely incredible. And there's not a whole lot that we have to dig into for them to grow greatly. We've put in a lot of the hard effort early on, and so there's constant teaching.

There's always teaching. There's always new stuff. But it's. It's amazing how in the early days, it was so much more heavy, so much more, you know, impactful.

But we put all the heavy work in, and so my leadership team is phenomenal. They are. They are great. They are incredible. Anybody would love to have this level of a leadership team.

They are all active listeners. They all take active listening to their teams and help them to do the same. They understand how to listen so that they can, you know, identify the needs of a team member or potential needs of multiple team members.

They understand that, you know, when they are actively listening, that if they're in a mentoring situation, that it helps them to help the team member feel like they're being heard.

You know, a great part of active listening is repeating back something that you've heard the team members say so quite often, if I'm actively listening and I'm empathetically listening and I understand the person I'm speaking to, what I may come across is somebody who really struggles with needing to be heard.

They don't even need to be. Right. They just need to be heard. And if I find that person with that value system, then what I'll do, and my team does this is, I will say, so here's what I'm hearing you say.

I'm hearing you say this, this, this, and this. And the moment they recognize they've been heard, they can drop that value. Right. It's not so important, that moment, okay.

This is somebody who's listening to me. I don't have to be, you know, heavily focused on, because a person who does have that as a value is waiting to tell you that you're not listening to them. Right? 

They're waiting to find out that you didn't get them, you didn't understand them, and then they're going to put it on you and say, you didn't listen to me. So if I see that, I just cut it off at the pass. Right?

My leaders cut it off at the pass. Hey, so here's what I'm hearing you say, bing bing, bing bing bing. Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's. Yeah, definitely. Is there anything I missed? Nope. You got it. Okay. Well, then let's move forward, right?

That will help you to cut down so much of the miscommunication and confusion in a conversation. Think of how many conversations you've had where somebody is like, well, you're not listening to me.

And you're like, I absolutely am listening to you. And you go back and forth, back and forth, and it just kind of unravels and becomes a mess. How much time can you save?

If you recognize, because you're empathetically listening, you recognize the person in their value system, and you're like, okay, this is what this person is probably struggling with. Let me just do this. Let me just repeat back to them.

Even if you haven't recognized, it's their value system, how great is it for you to repeat back to somebody?

Hey, here's what I'm hearing you say so that they can hear that you're listening, but you can find out whether or not you've got everything that they've said correct. Maybe you don't. So, just a powerful tool for you in mentoring your team members.

Nurturing Quality Communication

Creating a Culture of Feedback and Growth

Another great thing is, in that mentorship process, a great tool, a great strategy is to ask them to elaborate, elaborate more on their thoughts, elaborate more on their feelings.

Now, as I say this, you're probably going, why do I want more of their feelings? Because there's quite often times when a person is communicating with a leader that they may be full of fear.

They may be struggling, they may be losing worth. And unfortunately, what they tend to do in those situations is not give all the information. In fact, they may just drop out little bits and pieces.

And so if you're not going after enough of the information to make the best decisions, you may be thoroughly confused. You may have to start asking a ton of questions because none of this stuff is making sense.

That happens to me a lot where somebody is like, well, Chris is busy. I don't want to. I don't want to give him too much information. So here's the information. And it's just like bits and pieces.

And then I've got to go, you know, hunting. I've got to go on an adventure to find the rest of the information. Well, if I will just ask them to, hey, could you elaborate on that? What's your thoughts on that?

What do you feel about that? What are you experiencing? You know, when you talk about this, this and this?

If I will ask those questions, then what I find is, is that they will settle down, they will feel comfortable, and they will feel like they can be vulnerable.

So they will begin to give me even better information instead of me spending way too much time trying to figure all this stuff out by, you know, minute pieces of information.

So another great aspect of guiding and mentoring with intention through this concept of being a phenomenal listener is that you start creating a culture of feedback.

You start creating a culture of growth. And man, oh man, oh man, I can't pound home enough how important that is. You should really be desiring your culture to be one where feedback is given.

And I'm not talking about controlling remarks or I manipulative stuff. I'm talking about people who are willing to say, hey, can I. Can I give you some feedback on that? You know, you.

You will commonly hear me say that if we're in a long enough discussion about something and something comes up, there's a really good chance I might say, hey, can I give some feedback on that or can I give some input on that?

You can. Sometimes I'll just say you. You can absolutely say no, because if somebody doesn't want it, that's the last thing I want to be doing, is giving them a feedback or input.

When you do this style of active listening, then you create this culture that realizes that it's okay. If somebody's listening and they're giving quality feedback and they're helping team members to grow, that's okay.

That becomes a feedback rich environment which helps people to grow like crazy because they all know that this is okay.

This is what we do. It's okay to be vulnerable. It's okay to. To trust this person. I've been in situations with this person before. Um, so, yeah, bounce things off on me, give me feedback, give me input.

This is incredibly important for your culture. Well, if the culture you desire is one that we're getting to the best perspective we can, or at least a lot of perspective, and we're helping people to personally grow, then this is a phenomenal, phenomenal aspect.

Addressing Common Communication Pitfalls

Things that you can do regular one on one sessions. Regular one on one meetings. You know, we talk about this a lot about how you need to be having meetings with your team members that aren't just about them.

Have meetings about them giving feedback to you. How are they experiencing your leadership? You know, how are you doing? You know, what do they need from you? What are they, what would help them to be a better team member? Right.

You know, those things that you can. You can do that through regular one on one sessions if you want. You can do that with a team.

You know, hey, team that's working on this project, what do you need from me? You know, how am I doing leading you in this process? How's the whole process going?

Whatever it is, the more that you gain perspective from your team on how you're doing or how you're leading or giving feedback on things, then the more they will do that with themselves.

Now, is it possible that sometimes it's going to suck? Yes. Is it possible sometimes you're going to get information from somebody that, you know, you could tell that they're just doing it because they want to take you down a notch?

Yes, that's definitely possible, but hopefully that's the minority. Hopefully you've got good team members that are mature enough to give quality information.

Leveraging Active Listening for Leadership Success

Another thing you need to be doing if you're going to create this culture of feedback and growth is, again, as I've said, you've got to lead by example.

If you're not doing it, there's no possible way I'm gonna do it. If I'm your team member and I'm not experiencing you doing this, well, then why in the world would I just start doing it?

I'm not gonna do that. But one thing I tend to do is I have an open door policy now. I have not had an office 14, 15 years. I think always use the event space. Tends to be my office.

I do have a, an office space that I do Next-Level Lives in. I don't even call it an office space. It's just, it's a, it's a room, um, for privacy and all that kind of stuff.

Uh, but I still consider it to be an open door policy. If my door is open, you can come bug me, right? You can come talk to me.

If my door is closed, then you need to set an appointment so that we can discuss things. What does that mean? That means that there are times that I need to be approachable.

I need to be available. There's nothing worse than a leader who is never available. I mean, it just sucks when somebody needs something. But at the same time, if I have to get stuff done, leave me alone.

I have to get things done right. I have to have a time to knock stuff out. One of the things you may have heard me talking about is batching your work, right?

There's certain times I will batch all of these things together because I could knock them all out at the same time with great momentum, no interruptions.

And then I can move on to this over here, or move on to leading people over here, or answering questions over here, returning calls over here.

Whatever it is, I will batch my work at times that allows me the momentum to knock things out a heck of a lot better and a heck of a lot faster.

So I suggest, you know, if it's possible for you have that open door policy, you know, where if your door is open, people can come and talk to you. Now here's the caveat. Make sure that you don't die a death of a thousand slashes.

So if somebody keeps showing up in your door frame, you know, every 15 minutes, that's a problem. That's unacceptable. So somebody's taking advantage of the situation.

So instead what we do is we make sure that they understand, hey, go ahead and set an appointment, you know, in the afternoon or something, and then bring all of these questions that you have for me to that appointment, and I'll just answer all of them at one time.

You will find a couple of things. One, there's a good chance they're not going to set that appointment because they know that they can handle all of their questions themselves.

Or they will set that appointment. And instead of it being 20 questions, it's like two or three. Because in the time that it took for them not rushing straight to your door to get an immediate answer, to actually solve the problem on their own.

So trust me on this. It's very important to make sure that you don't die a death of a thousand slashes. Okay?

Leveraging Empathy to Build Trust and Rapport (Continued)

So another thing you can do in leveraging empathy to build trust and rapport is to demonstrate to team members that you are being proactive with their needs, with, you know, anticipating struggles or challenges they might face. If a team member sees that you care enough to step up and offer help before they even ask, it builds trust and rapport.

For example, you might say, "Hey, I’m sensing you might need some additional support on this project. Is there anything I can do to help?" This kind of proactive approach helps team members feel valued and understood, knowing that you’re invested in their success.

Being Approachable: Maintaining an Open-Door Policy

Another key aspect is being approachable. Make sure that team members feel they can come to you whenever they need to. An open-door policy doesn’t mean you’re always available for every little issue, but it does mean that your team knows when they can approach you and that you’re genuinely open to hearing them out when it matters.

Balancing Intuition and Data-Driven Insights in Decision-Making

Let’s now shift into how listening can enhance decision-making quality. Active listening uncovers critical information that may influence key decisions. By balancing intuition with data-driven insights and the perspectives gathered through empathetic listening, leaders can make well-rounded decisions that are both informed and aligned with team needs.

Nurturing Quality Communication

Implementing Communication Frameworks That Promote Active Listening

To nurture quality communication within your team, it’s important to establish frameworks that promote active listening and engagement. Encourage dialogue that is inclusive and respectful. For example, ensure that during meetings, everyone gets the opportunity to share their perspectives, and that the focus remains on listening and understanding, rather than just responding.

Addressing Common Communication Pitfalls

Common communication barriers often arise from poor listening, assumptions, or a lack of clarity. Poor communication can lead to misunderstandings, conflict, and a breakdown in team collaboration. By fostering an environment where active listening is prioritized, leaders can avoid these pitfalls and create an open dialogue culture where feedback flows freely.

The Consequences of Poor Communication

When communication is neglected, team dynamics suffer. Issues like gossip, backstabbing, or team members operating below their potential become prevalent. Poor communication is a business killer; it’s vital to address it head-on by implementing tools like DISC assessments and regularly reviewing communication strategies.

One thing I recommend is to check out an episode we did called "The Ultimate Guide to Improving Your Communication" (Episode 153). It’s an older episode but still highly relevant, offering strategies to build better communication practices within your team.

Additionally, consider a quick read like "5 Ways to Be a Better Listener," which outlines practical steps for improving listening skills.

Unlocking Leadership Potential Through Active Listening

Hopefully, this episode serves as a clear call to all small business leaders, emphasizing the transformative power of active listening and empathetic leadership. By embracing these foundational skills, leaders can unlock new levels of understanding, build stronger connections, and propel their teams toward greater success.

Active listening isn’t just a minor leadership skill; it’s a game-changer that can revolutionize how your team communicates, collaborates, and grows.

Thank you for joining us on today’s episode of The Chris LoCurto Show. We want you to take all of this information—yes, it’s a lot, but it’s powerful—and use it to change your leadership, change your business, and ultimately, change your life.

Join us again next time for more insights on leadership, life, and success. See you in the next episode!