On your path to excellence, finely honed listening skills are integral to your progress.

Listening is not just waiting for your turn to talk.

Strong and concentrated listening can save you time, money and relationships.

The benefits can be substantial.

Here are three practical and powerful strategies to improve your listening and help propel you towards more success.

Withhold judgment and get curious.

Premature judgment is a significant barrier to being an excellent listener. We judge people on what they say, on how they look and on how they sound.

If you withhold judgement you can learn very valuable things from all sorts of people. When you listen, think like this: ?Everyone knows something I don?t know? my job is to listen long enough to find out what that information is, and then use it.?

■<B>Plan to listen</B>

Identify the 20 people who are most important to your business and listen to them at a highly focused level. Put the names of those people on a piece of paper or in your diary. Put the list in your line of gaze at your desk or where you can readily access the list. Revise the list often.

Listening at this focused level is really stepping into the other person?s shoes. This type of listening can take significant energy so use it selectively with people on your most important list.

Choosing the most important 20 people doesn?t mean you can?t listen well to other people. You can also change the names on the list and have a list for your work, and for your away-from- work life.

When you listen to someone? don?t be anywhere else. You never get a second chance to listen to someone for the first time.

If you?re daydreaming, that might be the precise moment the person is sharing key information.

You can also use prompts to help you be in the moment. If you bring a notepad to meetings refer to it as your listening pad. Use a specific pen for meetings and refer to it as your listening pen.

Your listening is a skill that can be developed with practice to become a very profitable tool. Remember this Scottish verse.

?His thoughts were slow; his words were few, and never formed to glisten.

But he was a joy for all his clan? for you should have heard him listen?.

Happy Listening!

<B>by Sandhya

LUCHOOMUN BOYGAH</B>