It’s no secret that Dean and I embrace and promote Web 2.0 and social media as powerful opportunities for networking, building relationships, and moving your message of value to potential clients, employers and business affiliates. This new trend and paradigm shift in how business is done is being embraced at the highest levels of our new government. The Obama team has launched Whitehouse.gov, their platform to communicate with the people through blogs, video that delivers the President’s weekly address, and a “contact us” page to support Obama’s commitment to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history.

We have shifted into an age of transparency, where the focus is on building relationships first, with the understanding that selling something comes from the development of the relationship.

What does this shift mean to you as a job seeker or business owner?

• You need to make yourself accessible in Linkedin and other social media sites.
• You need to get involved in the conversations available, not sit back passively collecting connections.
• You need to show up as a caring human looking to engage authentically. Remember, it’s no longer about “me”; it’s about common good.
• Stop the hard sell. Promote your expertise by sharing it, not selling it.
• Create more tightly targeted prospect lists and personalize your messages to meet the unique needs of each prospect.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about how you are making the shift, or the obstacles that are holding you back.

Listening is defined by Princeton.edu as the “act of hearing attentively.” BizJobs.com supports a business glossary definition that states that Listening is “a key selling skill, in that without good listening skills the process of questioning is rendered totally pointless.” From these definitions come the need to recognize one factor that is so often ignored it leads to a breakdown in the process of conversation: listening requires a strategy. Before you can choose a strategy, you must first understand your goals in a conversation.

Strategy #1 Define Your Goals

Often times before we enter a conversation we understand, due to the setting or people involved, the purpose of conversation we are about to engage in. Due to this advanced knowledge, it is best to define your goal(s) in having the conversation. This recognition will help you choose the best listening strategy for the situation.

4 Purposeful Types of Conversations

The following purposes for having a conversation were outlined by Bruce Wilson editor of businesslistening.com:

1. Exchange Information: these conversations are about discovering what a person “needs, or is offering.” You may be probing in order to understand whether you have synergy, “complementary offerings or needs.” As Bruce states “part of the exchange of information is often about whether someone accurately understood what they heard.”
2. Building Working Relationships: developing and maintaining a positive business connection or positive personal relationship can be a very important factor of an ongoing business relationship. Examples of these instances are “customer-supplier conversations, employer-employee conversations, networking conversations, and team communications.
3. Feeling Good: this is simply the act of conversing with someone in a productive and/or enjoyable exchange. As Bruce notes, these purposeful conversations “can be a key component of having a good day or even a good job.”
4. Make Someone Feel Good: whether you have a vested interest in a friend or business associates’ “state of mind”, good conversations can have a positive effect on others around you, bring them joy and solidify your position as a valued connection.

Purpose, your passionate interest(s) that brings joy to you and people around you, is the path to fulfilling your life’s meaning and ultimate value. Unfortunately in most cases, you utilize your analytical mind to make decisions rather than “giving credibility to your feelings and accepting their messages as valid.”

Why is it that most of us think of our hearts as an irresponsible force that is only looking for fun when it is the greatest tool to unlocking purpose?

4 Steps to Trusting Your Heart

1. Acknowledge: that your feelings contain messages. Being unhappy is an idea that begs for change. Your inner feelings, subconscious stream of thought, are always expressing how you really feel about something. Often times these feelings are expressing ideas that you may not yet be willing to accept.

2. Credibility: Give credibility to your feelings and accept their messages as valid Do you discount your feelings and try to rationalize “why” you feel a certain way?

A good example is boredom. Boredom is a syndrome in someone who is not passionate about their work. Rather than understanding this as a valid sign, people discount this sign and suggest that they may cure this syndrome by finding a new work environment. The same job in a different place is only a short term fix at best. Changing workplace locations or environments is not going to cure the fact that you are bored with the work itself; instead this thinking serves to prolong the syndrome rather than cure it.

3. Believe: Believe that your heart will lead you to a better way of life than your analytical mind. Recognizing and giving credibility to messages from your heart is a key step to happiness in all areas of your life.

4. Act: act upon the messages! If you act upon what you trust then it’s important to make the shift to trusting the messages that come from your heart just like you trust your analytical mind.