Page 141 - Leadership Secrets of Hillary Clinton

LEADERSHIP SECRETS OF HILLARY CLINTON

you, it will be very difficult. Also, you should flex this mus-
cle slowly so that you can learn what works best for you as
you go along. Just being aware of this need to adapt will
move you in a better direction and cause you to be more
sensitive to the needs of the other person, which is what
being a resilient leader is all about.

x SECRET 4: LISTEN WITH INTENTION z

I can’t understand why listening isn’t taught in elementary
school, high school, college, and even graduate school. The
reason can’t be that the skill isn’t critical—we all know that
it is. Nor can it be that we do it so well intuitively—because
we don’t. Nor that we don’t know how to break listening
down into teachable elements—because we do. Maybe the
academic world thinks that we will learn it by osmosis.
And we probably won’t.
Yet listening is one of the most essential skills that we
use in awesome communication. In addition to under-
standing the meaning of the words that are spoken, listen-
ing involves such things as reading nonverbal messages,
discerning the emotional implications that are carried in
the tone of the voice, interpreting what is not being said
and why, and surmising meaning from the context of the
situation. The list is long, and here is something that might
surprise you: I saw a study once that reported that tone was
responsible for 38 percent of our communication effective-

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