The truth about good listening skills

The truth about good listening skills Powerful people do not have good listening skills. They hate to listen. They succeed by getting good at faking it. Heres how I know. There are sixteen Myers Briggs personality types. Only 4% of people are ENTJs, but almost all Fortune 500 CEOs are ENTJs. Each type has an Achilles heel. The ESFP  cant stand being alone. The INTP cant get their head out of the clouds. The ENTJ cant listen. Which means that listening skills must not be essential for major success in the corporate world. So maybe instead of building your listening skills, you should buy the book How to Talk so People Listen. If youre an extrovert, you think while youre talking. And its impossible to listen to someone if you are thinking of the next thing you want to say. As an ENTJ I get bored with the idea of becoming a better listener. Why would I do that when interrupting people is so much faster? And anyway, there is great advice on how to deal with the people who wont listen. Forbes magazine says that if you want people to listen to you, you should  cut to the chase. Thats great advice. If you could just get your idea out faster, I would listen to it. Ask Men has some advice on how to practice listening. We talk about practice a lot in my house because learning an instrument is about practicing an instrument.  You play like you practice. Even baseball stars like A-Rod. It doesnt matter if youre gifted if you dont have good practice skills because you wont be able to leverage your gifts. This seems true enough that I am sure I cant handle this level of conscious practice for good listening. So instead Im going to have to become the maven of the world of bad listeners. It is no coincidence that I married someone who is an ISTP, which is the personality type that speaks the fewest words each day. At first I found that frustrating, because how could I know if he is being persuaded by all my great ideas if he is always silent while Im talking? I realized, though, that he is great at figuring out whats going on by way of silence. I have tried silence, by the way. Ive started gardening. At first it was just some garden beds around the house. Then it was lots of garden beds. With a bulldozer. Then, when it got cold, I planted some bulbs, and then I planted about 500 bulbs a day. For months. I ordered bulbs online, in wholesale quantities, every other day so I always had some to plant. And when I was shopping locally, buying 500 more bulbs because I was scared Id run out,  someone said to me, Wow. Youll have an amazing garden next year.   I smiled and thought: If she only knew As it got cold, in the snow, the dirt was still soft. You can plant until the dirt freezes. Global warming is on my side. As the days got shorter  I planted bulbs in the dark until the night I was tearing apart grass to make my bed wider and I accidentally tore apart the carcass of a dead rabbit. I threw out my clothes and kept planting, but only in daylight after that. I started to worry that my artistry was gone. After all, its hard to not dig up bulbs when you are planting 15,000 bulbs. Which is about how many I have planted. In layers: early spring, mid spring, late spring. I told the Farmer I planted too many bulbs and people will think I have no talent for garden design. I told him that if it looks stupid and unplanned then I will tell people its a pick-your-own bouquet farm and Ill let the kids run it as a business in the spring. The Farmer said, This is not a garden; this is a monument to maintaining sanity. I was so surprised by his insight, but hes right. We never talked about it, I never even told him what I was doing day to day. But he sees that Im planting bulbs for some other reason than the spring fireworks. Its beyond that. Something else is driving me. We didnt need to talk. Which I guess is good because he doesnt really talk. I did a webinar last week where I taught people how to write about themselves, and then the last night the Farmer fielded live questions from the chat room about what its like to have someone write about you on a blog. I was nervous about the night he did the webinar with me. I was completely in control the other nights. Its my sweet spot, because we are sort of having a conversation because the chat room is always full of people saying stuff that I respond to. But also, people cant really talk to me because I really am lecturing, and I really just like to hear myself talk. Because its how I think. And we all need thinking time, right? So I worried that if the Farmer is taking the questions, then how will I control the conversation? My first line of attack was quizzing him. What would you say, I asked him, if someone said, doesnt it bother you that you are the Farmer instead of a real name? Thats so disrepectful. I actually get a reprimanding email once a month saying that. Which I do not listen to, of course, because Im a bad listener. So he said, Its fine that she calls me the Farmer but I cant believe it took her three years to use a capital F. The Ex got a capital right away. That was a good answer. I relaxed. Until the night it was scheduled. But you know what happened? I listened. He was so sweet and earnest and even when someone asked him What are the benefits of having someone blog about your relationship? He said None. There are no benefits. But I still kept quiet and listened. And heres what I discovered: its very intimate to listen to someone. Its intimate to calm down your head from ideas and just receive their ideas. You have to be really in tune with that person to keep your mind from going somewhere else. And its so intimate to wait to hear what the person says next. People were shocked to hear me so quiet. Me too. Because I wasnt thinking. I was listening. I was feeling what it feels like to have the Farmer reveal all our secrets. Thats usually my job. But this time I listened and it was like we were having date night. Live. I loved hearing what hes thinking, and I dont think hed have bothered talking if I hadnt shut up. Thats why intimacy requires listening. And thats why its so hard.