Use effective listening to motivate people

1. Listen Attentively

Listen without interruptions. Lean forward, face the person speaking directly, nod, smile, and be agreeable.

When you nod and smile, you encourage them to keep speaking and to expand on their remarks.

You can notice the positive benefits of effective and attentive listening when practicing it.

Initially, it takes discipline to use effective listening skills without stopping someone who is speaking.

2. Pause Before Replying

In many cases, the listener is not listening at all. Instead, they think of remarks and getting ready for what they are going to say when the other person takes a breath to then jump in.

Instead, make it a habit to pause for three to five seconds before replying.

So you can avoid the risk of interrupting the speaker, you can show the speaker that you are carefully considering what they have just said and you hear the other person at a deeper level.

3. Question For Clarification

Instead of jumping in with your ideas or opinions, you could pause and ask, “What do you mean exactly?”. This is building trust.

The better you listen to another person, the more they trust you, and the more open they are to being persuaded by you.

4. Feed It Back In Your Own Words

It is only when you can briefly summarize what the other person has just said, in your own words, and feed it back to them, that you tell the speaker that you were genuinely listening.

When you thoughtfully reflect the other person what they have just said, and they agree, “That’s it! That’s what I meant.” You tell them that you were listening.