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Leadership Lessons: Listen Up!!

Guest post by: Sylvia Lafair

Article Overview: When a leader is making a point and wants what he or she is saying to register in another person's brain, the most important thing to do is check out what is said - often what is said is not always what we really hear.

Leadership Lessons: Listen Up!!

We all hear each other, can't help that. Even when we put our fingers in our ears, much of the sound bleeds through. It's easier to close our eyes and black out the view. With sound it is much more difficult.

When a leader is making a point and wants what he or she is saying to register in another person's brain, the most important thing to do is check out what is said - often what is said is not always what we really hear. Let me repeat.........Often we say things thinking we have gotten through to others, and they stare at us blankly. The sounds went in, not the meaning.

To get your point across, you must be consistent, clear, and credible. Listen up! To get your point across you must be, let me say it again --- consistent... clear... and...... credible.

Now let me take what I said even deeper. Research by the Pritchard Group indicates that to really, and I mean really, really prove your point, you need to repeat what you have said eight times. Yes, that is correct eight times.

When you repeat concepts with consistent words and actions eight times, your chances of getting key points across increase exponentially. You see, repeating what you want heard eight times gives your nervous system time to fire the neurons in a repetitious way.

Now, most of you never heard of Hebb's Law, yet it will help you right now. Hebb was a neuroscientist who came up with a great sound bite. He did this in an era when sound bites were uncommon, and so he was a real pioneer in science and in marketing. His law states that "neurons that fire together wire together".

If he were alive today, he would encourage you to repeat your important statements eight times. My guess is that Hebb would also suggest that when you repeat your statements eight times, you need to be along with consistent, clear and credible. And, he would assure you that by the time you get to your eighth repetition, you will be known as a consistent, clear and credible leader.

This really works. Today we would call it pattern repetition. And what we want to do is reinforce healthy patterns like: courage, collaboration, and cooperation. That's what we do in our Total Leadership connections program (repeat this last paragraph seven more times please!

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Article Tags: brain, cooperation, courage, healthy, leadership lessons, pattern repetition



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