Learning Important Information and Building Reputation Through Effective Listening
Winning through listening, wisdom on rocky roads, being "right" and reputation security offering, and the undervalued
"Listening is an incredibly underrated leadership skill and yet all leaders I admire are both really curious and then listen, synthesize, process and take on board what they are hearing.''
"Employees, all humans really, want to be valued, to be seen, to be understood, above all. The single best thing you can do to continue progress and make change when things aren't working is to truly listen."
Cory duBrowa
VP of global communications and public affairs for Google/Alphabet
Comments from Ken Jacob's Taking the Lead feature
PRSA's Strategies and Tactics publication
Reputation Notes: Listening well is a hard-earned skill and if you don’t already know, trust me, exhibiting to other people gets noticed, appreciated and recognized.
That means the person showing the discipline and respect to engage in it is going to be experienced and judge favorably. Expert listening is made difficult thought due to our energy levels, responsibilities, emotions and psychology.
Yet if we can learn to do it at a high level (a commonly used phrase by an attorney that I picked up) and then discipline ourselves to do it, then we are going to have and display one more trait that people will respect and like about us.
Listening skillfully is an action that will help us greatly in human interactions.
The rocky, rough roads in adversity can appear in our mind to be impossible to exit.
Often by trying to get off these roads, figuratively speaking, we instead remain on them and continue on the same problematic, dangerous path. How so? By choosing distractions, ignoring the danger, or engaging in dysfunctional and possibly egregious coping mechanisms.
Frustrating, stressful, painful and at times, reckless and foolish.
So being willing to boldly seek out someone wise and more clear headed than us in the time of trouble and ask for and accept vitally-important assistance, is a sign of intelligence and strength.
Reputation Notes
Short-term success, especially of a great magnitude, is richly rewarding. Instant gratification is a rush. Yet the costs to the future to achieve those returns can be extreme. Any kind of lust = powerful impulses. Balance the long term to some degree along with immediate goals.
Reputation Notes
"If you're always right, you're not learning... The objective is to be right. The objective is to succeed."
James Clear
Decision and performance specialist and author
Think just how important it is to be receptive to learning and making sure our confidence is not really overconfidence or worse, ego in overdrive.
Choosing to be humble and curious, we can achieve more and protect against mistakes and bull-headed errors that harm us and others and improve the odds of how we are viewed and judged.
A brand new half-day learning engagement is now available for executives.
Its name?
Executive Education: Reputation Security. It’s an informative, interactive experience that provides invaluable knowledge, valuable insights and smart conversations and a roundtable discussion that will show you specifically how to build, protect and keep strong, your reputation security. The result?
You will gain the critically-important clarity and understanding for protection against the worst of expensive, painful reputation outcomes, so you can exhibit what many don’t, risk management excellence.
“An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure.”
Benjamin Franklin
Learn more here and write Michael.Toebe@Reputation-Quality or call me directly at 316-226-4071 for answers to your questions and to get started. This can be a one-on-one offering or a small group offering for an organization.
Twitter Highlights at @RepQuality
Narratives catch fire and burn uncontrolled. Confirmation bias becomes entrenched. Defusing negativity with logic, facts and evidence — and overcoming bias — can be difficult, tedious and dangerous work.
Yet it can be done with very painstaking work, skill, suffering and patience.
Reputation Notes
If people like you or at least can empathize with you as a stranger, it becomes possible to receive the benefit of the doubt and compassion after making an error at work. If you're deemed unlikable, benefit of the doubt and compassion are highly unlikely, even if it seems worthy.
Reputation Notes
A simple mistake, from lack of sufficient thought and carelessness, can cause long-lasting discomfort, pain and suffering. It's valuable knowledge to remember this when making decisions and taking action to lessen the probability of living with something you don't want.
Reputation Notes
Interesting comment that I ran into and wanted to share as food for thought:
“History lasts longer than the passion of the moment.”
Worth a pause and a little thinking.
The Final Say
“Sometimes, it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine.”
Alan Turing
English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist
“In 1936, he developed the idea for the Universal Turing Machine, the basis for the first computer. And he developed a test for artificial intelligence in 1950, which is still used today.”
The undervalued can surprise us at times. Their reputations might not be BIG yet their capacity for accomplishment and important outcomes can prove to be significant.
Michael Toebe is the creator of Reputation Notes and founder and specialist at Reputation Quality, a practice that serves and helps successful individuals and organizations in further building reputation as an asset — and when necessary, ethically and responsibly protecting, restoring or reconstructing its health.
You are invited to subscribe or contact me at LinkedIn.