Page 142 - Leadership Secrets of Hillary Clinton

MAKING YOUR WORDS COUNT

ness, and words were responsible for only 7 percent! As you
can see, listening is a pretty complex skill.
When I say that as a leader, it’s important for you to lis-
ten to learn, I’m really talking about listening with the
intention of better understanding someone or something.
In order to do this, you have to practice active listening.
Hearing what someone says isn’t enough. You need to be
constantly discerning two key things: meaning and feel-
ings. What is this person really saying, and how is she really
feeling about it?
To do this, you must be able to suspend your judgment
while you are listening and replace it with curiosity. You
need to be asking yourself the “w” questions—who, what,
where, when, and why—in order to truly understand. For
example: Who all are involved? What is really happening
here? Where are we being affected? When does this occur?
Why is this important? And finally, you need to be asking:
So what? What are the implications? What can we do
about it?
Hillary does this extraordinarily well. Her colleague
Kristin Mannion shared with me that when Hillary is listen-
ing to someone, she focuses totally on that person and
spends a great deal of time questioning him in order to truly
understand what he is saying so that she can make an
informed decision or advance the mission that she is work-
ing on. She listens with intention. Kristin said, “She
earnestly wants to learn as a listener. And, you can disagree

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