Let me ask you a question: Do you think you’re a good listener?
Take some time to really think about your answer. And be honest with yourself.
Because chances are, you’re not as good a listener as you believe yourself to be. In fact, if you ask your peers or significant other about the quality of your listening skills, the response may not be as flattering as you’d hoped.
Don’t despair, though. Despite our best intentions, most of us are actually pretty lousy at listening. We listen with our ego. In other words, we evaluate the speaker’s words for mistakes, get defensive, grow judgmental, jump to conclusions, or prepare a rebuttal instead of engaging with what is being said.
Listen Up
Good listening skills help in all areas of life: at work, at home, in relationships, and even during everyday transactions.
However, listening skills for major gift officers are not just “nice to have.” They are operational. If you want to become the next CEO or simply build durable donor relationships, donors must feel respected, appreciated, and heard. None of that happens if you sit there nodding silently or cut people off to steer the conversation back to your agenda.
Instead, strong listening requires a two-way dialogue. You listen more than you speak, and you demonstrate that you are there to support the donor, even when there are differences to work through. In addition, forget the performative version of “active listening” where you nod, lean in, and say “uh huh.” If you’re truly listening, the donor will know it.
Can You Hear That?
It’s the sound of your endowment growing when your donors feel heard. So how do you listen well? Most experts agree on a few fundamentals. Moreover, these are practical skills you can practice immediately in donor meetings.
- Ask good, relevant questions. This signals that you heard the donor and want to understand more. Often, you can simply repeat the last few words the donor said, raising your inflection to turn it into a question.
Donor: “My husband always said that someday, we’d be part of finding the cure. That had been his dream since childhood.”
Officer: “His dream since childhood?”
Donor: “Yes, ever since he lost his favorite uncle to cancer.”
Believe it or not, this simple repetition technique is used in high-stakes conversations because it encourages the speaker to expand. Consequently, it forces you to stay present, and it invites the donor to add meaning and detail without you interrupting.
- Make suggestions. Use discretion. Sometimes the donor wants reflection, not solutions. Therefore, wait for cues such as, “What do you think?” Other times, donors are testing ideas and want input. In that case, your suggestions can act like a trampoline, adding clarity and energy to their thinking.
- Be empathetic. Tune in to the donor’s emotions. Your job is to be supportive and nonjudgmental, and to validate feelings as real. That does not require agreement; it requires acknowledgment.
- Maintain eye contact. Eye contact communicates focus and forces attention. You do not need to stare, but you should remain engaged.
- Don’t fidget. If you squirm, tap a pen, or doodle, you will look bored. As a result, the donor will feel unimportant.
- Look for non-verbal cues. Facial expressions, posture, and gestures provide context that words may not. Therefore, they help you understand what the donor is truly communicating.
- Leave preconceived notions at the door. Assumptions, anxiety, and anger undermine listening. If you cannot set aside personal biases or emotions, reschedule or send a different fundraiser.
- Picture what the donor is communicating. Create mental images that match the story. This improves both recall and comprehension, especially during complex philanthropic discussions.
Easy Listening
Good listening skills are essential to fundraising success, whether you’re pursuing annual, planned, or major gifts. Luckily, they are learnable. They require awareness and practice, not charisma.
Once you improve your donor listening skills, you will see a difference. You will close more and larger gifts, move faster into leadership, and reduce friction in meetings. In addition, you may even strengthen the same time management skills that make your calendar feel so compressed in the first place.
All you need to do is listen.
Make sharpening your listening skills part of your 6-month plan to change your life.
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