The Listen Up Blog

Have you ever found that if you ask two people who you trust for some advice, you tend to get two completely different answers? Both people are sincere, and as far as you can tell, genuinely want to help you. But their advice differs completely. Most people find this experience extremely frustrating. A simple ask for advice has now become a problem to solve. ‘Who's right?’ you think to your yourself. But here's a different way to look at it: the contradiction isn't something

"Houston, we've had a problem." These famous five words were radioed back to the Mission Control Centre on 13 th April 1970 from Jack Swigert, who found himself 200,000 miles away in a spacecraft that had just blown its oxygen tank. What followed over the next 87 hours wasn't a Hollywood moment of sudden brilliance. It was the most intense clarification conversation in human history - a masterclass in how listening builds understanding when lives depend on it. Here's wha

The American radio DJ Larry Elder hadn't spoken to his father in over a decade. From age 15 to 25, he avoided him, feared him and resented him. In Larry's mind, his father was cold, ill-tempered and cruel - a man who ruled through fear and violence. The childhood memories were dominated by the sound of his father's belt and the feeling of walking on eggshells, never knowing when the next eruption would come. But at 25, Larry decided to confront him. He drove to his father's

The fate of every opportunity you get in life hinges on whether you listened or not. This simple statement cannot be better explained than the story of the invention of those yellow, sticky pieces of paper which hold your notes - the Post-it note. In 1968 the Senior Chemist at 3M, Dr Spencer Silver, was trying to develop a super-strong adhesive for spacecraft. He failed. Instead, he created something seemingly useless but somewhat peculiar - a weak adhesive that barely stuc

Listening is a tool which can give you influence over others in your life. It can give you the power to get people to be influenced by your opinions and ways, and to get them to do things you want. Influence is all about getting people to think of you when you are not around - that's the simple difference between persuasion and influence: persuasion happens when you're there and influence occurs when you're not there. Once you have someone thinking of you when you are not t