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When it comes to leadership, listening is not just about nodding your head and people thinking that you hear or understand them. Listening is about hearing the words being said, understanding what's underneath the words, and then responding to that unmet need of the people you're leading or influencing or stake.

When you just listen to words, and you listen to respond, or you listen to interpret through your own lens, or you hear what it means about you or how it's going to impact you, you're completely missing effective listening. Effective listening is listening to the overt, apparent words and the unmet, probably not so obvious need underneath the words.

Look for the lens that the other person is speaking to you from and stay with that until you can move through to a place.