Leadership Podcast Show Notes: Opening Story...   Visit the optometrist - "you don’t have confidence in someone who doesn’t diagnose before he or she prescribes"   Points:  

1. We have a tendency to rush in with our advice
2. "Seek first to understand, then to be understood"
3. Communication is a skill for life
4. People get training on how to speak, but not how to listen!
5. Influence depends on me trusting you. I don’t trust you if I don’t think you understand or don’t care. Both of which depend on listening
6. EMPATHIC LISTENING
7. We typically seek first to be understood
8. “I know how you feel!” Then we read our biography
9. We project our own experiences
   1. When we listen we usually ignore, pretend, or listen selectively
10. Empathic listening means understanding feelings, heart, the person
11. Empathic listening is powerful because it gives you data to work with

  For Practice as a Leader:  

• Practice empathic listening
• make some one on one time with your spouse, a close friend, or your employees to listen
• Wait to reply until you’re convinced you see things through their frame of reference
• Then reply

  Closing Story: My personal mentor Paul Shockley