By Aaron Day, Toastmasters International
Recently, at a conference in Ireland where I had delivered a speech, I was asked an interesting question.
“Aaron, what is the most important skill you have developed in becoming a better public speaker?”
I love questions like this, because it encourages you to look deep within yourself and offer value to the person asking the question.
Many people would probably give an answer to do with stage or speechcraft, or that the most important skill learned is to improve body language, eye contact or learning to land a good punchline (which are all good skills to have!).
However, after a few seconds, the answer I gave surprised both me and the person who asked the question… “To me, the most important skill I have learned is to improve my active listening.”
When we think of great communicators, great leaders and, more importantly, great friends, they often inhabit wonderful listening skills. They are interested in your stories; they say the right things (and ask the right questions) that help build and curate wonderful conversations; they actively listen in order to help you come to your own solutions to life’s obstacles and barriers.
Whilst my career in education and public speaking coaching has had potentially different scenarios to you, dear reader, there are three key things I have learned about active listening that will help guide you to become a better leader to those around you, regardless of your career pathway or work sector. However, more crucially, active listening will also help you to become a better learner and award you the tools you need to expand your horizons and reach key goals in your life.
Listen to lead
Active listening involves truly being present in a conversation with someone. When you are in a leadership role, good active listening skills allow you to understand someone’s troubles, to gain clarity on information you perhaps didn’t understand, and to build solutions that show the colleague they are valued, which in turn boosts confidence and self-belief.
Recently, in my role as a teacher, two students were desperate to talk to someone about concerns they had about potentially being kicked out of the college I work in. The college has high expectations regarding punctuality, and these two students had a long string of incidents where they had turned up to lessons 10-15 minutes late. Whilst this isn’t unusual in an education setting (or many work settings!), the college’s leadership team wanted to have a formal conversation with them about this and to remind them about this part of the college’s ethos.
Rather than giving them the short shrift response of ‘well, stop being late to lessons then and you’ll be fine!’, I decided to do the following:
- Learn the story so far: find out as much as I can about the narrative of the situation. Ask open questions, tune in on the person’s body language and maintain strong eye contact.
- Confirm understanding: paraphrase back what I had heard, so that the person can address any potential misunderstandings I had made (you can also use paraphrasing as a ‘mirroring’ effect, that encourages the person to reflect on what they have said).
- Interrupt as little as possible: the only times I interject is when I feel the person speaking is going off on tangents that perhaps don’t connect to the core of the matter.
From doing these three things, I was able to establish the following from the students:
The two students had not lived in the UK for a long time and the importance of punctuality was not as significant in their culture as it is to British education and work settings. I asked open questions that helped to identify their needs (their desire to learn about why punctuality is so important, as they couldn’t figure out why so much emphasis had been put on this behaviour). Through paraphrasing, I took their words and encouraged them to put themselves in other people’s shoes, to understand that punctuality is an important way of demonstrating to others (particularly teachers) your respect for their lessons and the preparation they have made to provide good plans for learning.
The result? The two students went to the meeting with the confidence to acknowledge where things had gone wrong, and they in turn played an active role in building solutions to the problem of punctuality (and why being punctual is culturally important), which demonstrates confidence and self-actualisation. The situation was minimised and the students now have an improved experience of college, because one person took the time to actively listen.
These three principles of using active listening to lead are not abstract ideas and can be easily adapted to your work or life settings. Use it as a structure or framework the next time someone comes to you with an issue or problem and see how it can help you to motivate others and make them feel empowered.
Listen to Learn
Actively listening is critical if we want to feel present with the people that live in this world with us. Whenever I am around people, regardless of age, background or experience, I always maintain the same mantra…“Sometimes a teacher, Always a student”.
This was a mantra I learned from a great friend and colleague, Jeff Douglas. If I am always maintaining a student mindset with the world around me, I am often in a position to embrace my vulnerability, to learn from others and to grow my ‘tool kit’. This mindset has provided me with many fortunes, such as improving my public speaking, improving my work and life skills and improving my empathy for others.
However, a time when active listening played a critical role in my life was in the Summer of 2023, when I noticed a distressed woman sitting on the edge of the cliff paths near where I live. My concern for her pulled me towards her, like a magnet. Using the same structure as in the ‘Listen to Lead’ active listening framework, I learned about her life, her children, what had driven her to the edge of the cliff that day, what brought her joy… and what brought her sorrow that she couldn’t tolerate anymore.
I had remembered reading an article produced by Samaritans UK about how people who are considering suicide may feel a sense of dissociation, of not being connected to others, of feeling so alone that they feel completely within their own ‘bubble’.
My job in that moment was to connect her story to feeling present and in the moment and to attempt to burst the bubble. Helping her to understand her story, paraphrasing certain parts back to her to clarify understanding, then doing my best not to interrupt, all seemed to work and, with the help of emergency services who arrived sometime later, we were able to help that woman recover.
My goal was not to give advice or be a ‘teacher’, but to be a student and to actively listen to someone who had something to teach me. By taking that position she was made to feel valued and empowered to make good decisions. She had taught me something about life and about seeing the world from a different perspective and, in turn, she felt able to take on the barriers and obstacles in her life, one day at a time.
Paul Dix, a school behavioural specialist and author of the book ‘When Adults Change, Everything Changes’, would likely describe active listening as part of ‘botheredness’, a way of showing that you care about the people that you serve.
I encourage you to make active listening a priority in your daily life and see how it helps to change your perspective on the world around you. Whether you’re a leader, a colleague, a friend, or a family member, the ability to listen attentively can have a profound impact on your relationships and your overall well-being.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Aaron Day is an award-winning public speaker from Toastmasters International, a not-for-profit organisation that has provided communication and leadership skills since 1924 through a worldwide network of clubs. There are more than 400 clubs and 10,000 members in the UK and Ireland. Members follow a structured educational programme to gain skills and confidence in public and impromptu speaking, chairing meetings and time management. To find your nearest club, visit www.toastmasters.org