Active Listening Is a Networking Superpower Nobody's Using

Everyone thinks they're a good listener. Almost no one actually is — especially under the pressure of a networking conversation when your brain is busy loading your next line. JP breaks down why active listening is the most underused relationship-building skill in oil and gas, energy sales, and founder circles — and exactly how to use it to make people walk away from conversations feeling like you're the most interesting person in the room.

Transcript

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Welcome to Lee with Confidence. I'm JP Warren. Every episode we take a theme from our Monday morning leadership call and apply it to real life scenarios. So you can build your confidence, crush your imposter syndrome, and step into the leader you actually want to be. Short, real, straight to the point. Let's get into it. Welcome back to Lead with Confidence with your host, JP Warren. If you're just finding out about us today, these are episodes that are 10 minutes or less on soft skills frameworks to help you navigate your career with more confidence. And why is it so important? Because soft skills is 85% of our career success. The other 15, that's the technical side of information. That's how you do your job. The soft skill side, there's so much to it. That's why it's a soft skill because your skill sets that can be learned, practiced, and mastered. Okay. Today we are actually talking about active listening, how it's a superpower that not a lot of people have whenever they're at these networking events. Okay. So let's kind of give kind of like the kind of the reality of what's going on right now. Normally, when people go to two networking events, they're thinking about themselves, right? This is what I do. This is my the services I provide. This is who I help. And the next thing you know, they get in conversations, and it's very natural whenever you're in a conversation with a stranger that you just met, you people are often thinking about what do I have to say next? Okay, this person's talking right now, but what's my story after this? What's my what's my pivot to this? Or how can I match this story? And how can I maybe one up this story, right? When you start doing that, you're really not engaging in the conversation. You're just kind of waiting for the other person to finish so you can start chiming in your thing. All right. And you got to think about this. Our networks and how we network at these networking events, you gotta think about like dating, okay? Your date's gonna go horribly if you're not listening. Your dates can go horribly if you're just kind of talking about yourself the entire time, right? Put yourself in the other person's shoes, have some empathy and think about what this other person will want to hear uh when they're engaged in this conversation versus what you think they need to hear, okay? And I often find this once we start shifting, I remember there's a time in my career where I felt that I had to feel every silence or I had to match every conversation with my own story, or you know, I had to feel the silences and conversation just with me talking. I've left those meetings or I left those uh networking events so much more drained than I would have if I actually just sat back and listened and just gathered information about this person. Because at the end of the day, you can't have a good follow-up if you don't know anything about this person, right? You can't have a good relationship that evolves if you're just kind of stuck talking about yourself, you're really not connecting or listening to this other person. So, how do we actually flip that script? And I will say this you're gonna walk out with a lot more information, a lot better context, and your battery, your social battery, is gonna be way more charged up than if you felt that you actually had to match every story or kind of pivot on everything they were talking about, to kind of what you're what what's going on in your world, okay? So let's dive into this. The first step of active listening is um I'm actually this isn't even a step I'm gonna put in here, but number one, get rid of your distractions, okay? It's so easy to default to pulling your phone out and checking your phone whenever you're in a conversation at these big networking events, a lot of strangers in the room. That's kind of your safety blanket, that's your security blanket, your phone. Put your distractions away. Put your phone on, do not disturb, don't check that until after the event, okay? All right. So the first thing is, the second thing is, I guess, whenever you are in a conversation, hold back, right? Don't be thinking about what do I have to say next, right? Or once this person's done talking, I'm gonna start talking about myself, right? Hold back, allow pauses, allow space, because chances are if you do allow a little bit pause, that other person is gonna notice that and they're gonna keep on talking. And when they're when they're talking more, you're gonna learn more about them. You're gonna learn more about their jobs, their careers, their family life, what they like doing on their time off. And once you start kind of getting those, once you start getting kind of in that depth of a conversation, it is way beyond the transactional conversation. So, so hold back, allow for space, allow for some pause, okay? So uh welcome the pause inside your conversation, okay? This is the third thing that we can do is engage with our body. So when you are active listening, have your shoulders facing them. I see a lot of people, hands in pocket, looking around the room, looking to who else they can talk to. Make eye contact, right? Smile, nod your head, tilt your eyebrow up when you know you're listening that shows that you're actually listening to this person, right? You're not just kind of like this person's talking, I'm looking around distracted, okay? So be locked in, be listening, and utilize your body language, right? What did we talk about a couple episodes previously? Executive presence isn't being the one that knows everything in the room. Executive presence is the ability to have other people feel comfortable around you. And that's exactly what you're doing with your body language. Our body language is 55% how we communicate. Our pitch, tone, cadence, and pause when we're talking, that's 38. Words are only 7% how we communicate. So don't worry about the words whenever you are engaging with people. It's your body language, your pitch and tone, it's how you carry yourself, okay? And then the fourth thing that you need to do is whenever they do kind of wrap up their point, all that stuff, don't pivot the conversation. Don't pivot the conversation to a new topic. Stay engaged with that person and actually ask deeper follow-up questions. You know, how, you know, what was that experience like for them? What's the biggest challenge of that experience? So whether they just moved from Chicago to Houston, hey, what was that move like? What's the biggest challenge? How are your kids uh settling and all that stuff? Have you all found a school? Once you start learning more and more about this person, or whether it's the challenges or stuff that they're going through, you're gonna be able to connect on a lot deeper level, okay? And then at the end of it, reflect back, right? So chime in like, man, that must have been difficult for you to move from Chicago to Houston. How so how long have you been here? So reflect back on the conversation, right? So have them kind of put a bow on it. That way, whenever you are following up, we just talked about this in the last episode. When you are following up, you have those personal pieces of information from the conversation they had with you. That shows you were listening, that shows you were engaged, and that shows that you care about this person, right? Versus kind of shifting the entire conversation and you're talking about yourself, okay? So try to start active listening at these network events, but often try that in your own personal lives too. So whether it's with a spouse, whether it's a girlfriend, boyfriend, start practicing active listening because you're only gonna get better at it. Okay. It's a skill set, right? Don't try to own the conversation. Don't try to one up the other person that's talking about it. Don't try to pivot it to kind of your business, why you're there, what are you trying to do, the transactional side of things. Be engaged, be curious, be distraction-free, put that phone away and have fun communicating. All right. So that's what we have on this episode of Lead with Confidence. I'm your host, JP Warren. Again, if you are liking this, you can find this on YouTube, you can find me on Instagram, you can find me on TikTok, all that fun stuff. I try to provide everyone out there with short frameworks on how to level up your communication skills and your soft skills so you can lead with more confidence. So thanks for tuning in out there, and we'll talk to y'all soon. That's your framework for the day. Go lead with it. I'm JP Warren, lead with confidence.