Ep. 39 | Ears : The Soft Power of Listening | Part 2 | The Secret Sauce of Great Conversations

Highlights: Ep. 39 | Ears | Part 2 | The Soft Power of Listening - The Secret Sauce of Great Conversations

Curiosity...it’s the single most important factor in listening well. It’s the secret sauce. Great 

conversations are driven by curiosity. So follow your curiosity.
The obvious tool of my trade is the tape recorder, but I suppose the real tool is curiosity. 

(Studs Terkel) 

Curiosity is not an involuntary impulse. It’s a quality that we can choose, if we want to. It’s a muscle that can be exercised and grow stronger. Curiosity is a habit that can be intentionally developed. 

Questions are an essential tool for fueling curiosity and generating great conversations.
 A good question asked at the right time is worth its conversational weight in gold. Like a pick- 

ax to a frontier miner, questions uncover buried treasure. 

Three types of questions: 

1. Practical Questions - Are necessary, but they will not take a relationship very far beyond the superficial. 
2. Open-ended Questions - Are questions that cannot be answered with one word. They are questions that don’t limit the speaker. They invite people to tell more of their story. 
3. Follow-up Questions - If questions are pick-axes to uncover buried treasure, then follow- up questions will get you to the seams of conversational silver and gold faster than anything. Unfortunately, too many of us stop at the first question. But this keeps the conversation from going deeper. It keeps the person talking from peeling back the layers of their story. It prevents more personal feelings and thoughts from coming out in the open. It doesn’t give curiosity the air to breath and the time to go deeper. When we ask, “Well, tell me more?” “What happened next?” “How did you feel?” “So, what changed for you after that experience?” These kinds of follow-up questions invite the person to get underneath their story, to peel back the layers, to dig deeper and share more. 

A shift response: Shifts the focus of the conversation from the other person to you.

A support response: Keeps the other person talking about their own story. Follow-up questions are a good way to provide a support response. 

A good question responded to thoughtfully almost always opens the door to another question...While listening to a response, we re actually listening at several levels: content, emotional charge, tone, word choice, and more. One of the most helpful things we should be listening for is an open door to ask another question. The insight you are seeking is often not behind that first, second or third door but many layers deep into the conversation. The key to each door is another question. ( Smart Leadership: Four Simple Choices to Scale Your Impact, Mark Miller ) 

You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters, Kate Murphy