In his classic book How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie talks about an experience at a dinner party. Throughout the whole evening, he had spent his time in conversation with another person. He offered very little about himself, however. Instead, he simply asked a lot of questions and listened to what the other person had to say. To his surprise, by the end of the evening the other person confessed that Carnegie was the greatest conversationalist he had ever met—and he had hardly even said a thing!
There is great power in listening. The problem, all too often, is that we aren't really listening. As the saying goes, we listen to reply rather than listening to understand. In order to take advantage of the full benefits of listening, we must take a genuine interest in what other people have to say. When we do, they will trust us enough to open up to us ... and we just might learn something.
As a leader in the mortgage industry, becoming a better leader is absolutely essential. We run into a variety of people attempting to communicate a large amount of information to us throughout the course of every single day. Sometimes, in our haste to get on to the next thing, we'll disregard what people tell us. We'll cut people off or we'll be thinking about something else while they're talking. Developing the strength of active and engaged listening can save us a lot of headaches down the road. If we just take the time to listen, we never know how much we might learn.
David Lykken, a 43-year veteran of the mortgage industry, is president of Transformational Mortgage Solutions (TMS), a management consulting firm that provides transformative business strategies to owners and “C-Level” executives via consulting, executive coaching and various communications strategies. He is a frequent guest on FOX Business News and hosts his own weekly podcast called “Lykken On Lending” heard Monday’s at 1:00 p.m. ET at LykkenOnLending.com. David’s phone number is (512) 759-0999 and his e-mail is [email protected].
