Give every man thine ear, and few thy voice. Polonius' injunction never rang so true as it does in today's corporate world: a three-ring circus of aggressive talkers, whose rise to success is hampered by their inability to hone their listening skills. Business Today presents a guide to keeping those ears open for that innuendo, that inflection, and that shift in posture for the CEO of You Inc..

By Roopa Pai

In that famous speech that he made, circa 44 BC, Mark Antony, in the best traditions of orators worldwide, began with a thundering verbal suckerpunch designed to keep his listeners riveted: "Lend me your ears." There were two elements implicit in this sentence. The first was a veiled order: listen with your head. The second--and more important--an impassioned plea: listen with your heart.

Today, Antony would have made a path-breaker of a management guru. For, he had realised then what New Age corporate messiahs have taken years to perfect as a theory: either kind of listening is almost pointless unless complemented by the other.

That listening is a vital skill in the day-to-day functioning of an individual in an organisation is a fact nobody is willing to contest. But most people concede that it is a dying art. Says Y. Shriram, 42, general manager (HRD), ABB: "Historically, the world has always been unkind to listeners. The talk-think-talkers are seen as the doers, and the think-talk-thinkers as the passive ones. In the e-mail and Lotus-notes age, where every individual can go right ahead and say things without waiting his turn, the situation is far worse."

But it is a skill that needs to be revived, for, as Rajesh Kapoor, 40, the managing director of the human resources training and consulting firm, Centre For Growth Alternatives, says: "Listening is one of the most basic of HR skills. If you are not willing to listen, you will never be accepted as a leader, or as a team member."

The Need To Listen

That should be motivation enough--if motivation is needed--for the most persistent talker to shut up once in a while. But there is more. Good listening skills can help you negotiate the best deals with customers, close sales with the most unlikely prospects, unerringly hire best-fit people for your firm, and climb that ladder to success within the company by negotiating the best deals--raises, promotions, transfers, even vacations--with superiors.

Fundamentally, good listening forms the bedrock for good negotiations. And everyday life--as most people will agree--is really a series of negotiations. So what is good listening? Defines C.N. Kumar, 42, the CEO of Advantage, a Bangalore-based consulting organisation specialising in human resource management: "Hearing is simply a physical response. Listening is the ability to interpret and understand what one hears."

R.K. Anand, 38, vice-president (human resources) at Samtel, puts it in perspective: "The purest form of listening is active silence. Ever observed lovers?" On the Net, an anonymous author writes that good listening requires humility. For, it presupposes that you believe what the other person has to say is important. Simply put, the best listeners in any conversation are, usually, the ones in control of the conversation although that might not be immediately apparent. Not letting the other person speak his piece first means that you miss out on valuable information. Says D. Kannan, 36, senior marketing manager, Timex Watches: "When you are negotiating a deal, letting the other person commit himself first could be to your advantage."

Active Listening

If you have to speak, ask questions that refine and focus the information you are getting so that you are firmly in the driver's seat. To do this, of course, you should listen with a clear goal in mind. Almost all the experts Business Today spoke to put forward the example of the over-enthusiastic salesman, who embarks on his sales-spiel without first finding out what the customer's needs are. At the end of the session, he is surprised and hurt that he hasn't managed to close the deal.

The same holds in a hiring situation. Kartik Chopra, 26, one of the two partners who started the Indian arm of the Hong Kong-based executive search firm, Executive Access, narrates a real-life tale of what happened to a company that was looking for a person to fill a senior position. One particular candidate made a great impression, and was taken through the entire battery of interviews. This candidate had mentioned, at the very outset, that he had a loan component from his previous job that he wanted carried over to this one, but this had been brushed aside as irrelevant at that stage of the negotiations. At the end of the final interview, when it was all over, the candidate brought up the subject again. The panel was aghast; it was completely against company policy to take on a loan.

The situation is more tricky when the interaction is one-on-one, and, ironically, when a relationship has already been forged. For, while people are usually wary and keen listeners when they are dealing with strangers, trying to suss them out, as it were, they are more relaxed when dealing with friends. Cautions Gautam Puri, 31, a partner in the hr consultancy firm, The Career Launcher: "People who already know each other tend to work on trust, and assume that they know what the other person means when he says something. It is in such situations that miscommunication is rife."

Take the case of a performance appraisal, where your supervisor, with whom you share a drink on weekends, is making it amply clear that there are some areas where you simply must pull up your socks if you want that raise. And you miss the obvious message because you feel safe with him.

Smart Listening

The thing to do is not only to listen with blin-kers off, but also to listen between the lines. Says Vandita Saran, 25, associate, Noble & Hewitt: "You've got to listen to the subtle nuances in speech, to giveaway phrases "We'll see," "This is the most I can do," "There are other people in the race," "I'll get back to you" et al since they are clear signals to start getting worried, and begin planning accordingly."

Other important pointers: listen beyond the verbal clues to the non-verbal ones. As Kumar puts it: "Listen to the how of what is being said, not just the what. The tone, the body language, even the emotion behind what is being said are things to watch out for." Which is why, say experts, the best listeners are the objective ones who put themselves in the talker's shoes, and try to guess at the emotion that prompted the verbal message.

But guessing is an iffy game at the best of times, and the only way to get things absolutely clear is by completing the listening loop by playing back what you hear. Sachin Gopal, 37, vice-president (marketing), ispl, calls this recording the fourth stage of active listening--the first three being hearing, absorbing, and extracting. Says Gopal: "The whole process of listening requires 100 per cent concentration, but this is not always possible. Which is why clarification and verification, and getting what has been said down on paper, becomes really important."

If you want further motivation to hone those listening skills, lend an ear to M.R. Singh, 45, general manager (HRD), Usha International, who says pithily: "God gave man two ears and one tongue, thereby dropping a very obvious hint as to what he was expected to do more of." Surely, some of his inspired listeners must have got around to telling old Mark Antony that.