If you treat speaking as a competition, you will definitely lose.
Many people find it difficult to be good listeners because they are emotionally unstable. Unconsciously, you approach speaking like a race, aiming to win, feeling justified.
However, you cannot be an effective listener if your primary goal is to attack your opponent and boost your ego in the process.
Check your ego at the door for a better conversation. Before you jump into a conversation where you want to be a good listener, ask yourself these simple questions:
Is the purpose of this conversation to help you, support you or make you feel better about yourself?
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Doing a quick self-analysis before your interview can boost your confidence. And that confidence is often enough to shift you from a competitive mindset to a profitable one.
Instead of seeing conversations as competition to be won, you start to see them as acts of service that have nothing to do with you. Approaching conversations in this way will quickly improve your ability to be a good listener. Just because someone has a problem doesn't mean they are the problem.
Most of us are problem solvers at heart. All day long we identify problems and mistakes and use our brains to find creative solutions.
In fact, most of us have been trained (and rewarded) to be very good problem solvers for over 20 years. And for good reason:
Problem solving is a very valuable skill.
The problem is this:
In some situations, problem solving can backfire spectacularly.
Often, when someone "wants to talk" they don't actually want the problem solved. They just want to feel understood.
The best conversations are about connections, not information.
When we are struggling with a problem, it is easy to get overly involved and feel like we are the problem. Make sure the other person understands that you won't do that.
The way to do this is to resist the urge to solve problems or give advice and just listen and offer support. This "works" because it helps others realize and understand that they have more than their own problems.
To become a better listener, focus on the person, not the problem.
Pay attention to the person sitting next to you - how they are feeling right now, how the world looks through their eyes. it also subtly communicates that they are okay.
By resisting the urge to give advice or solve problems, you are giving the other person a much more valuable gift: the gift of validation. Help them realize that their problem is more than the sum of its parts - much more.