BRX Pro Tip: Better Show Hosting – Active Listening
Stone Payton: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, under the heading of Better Hosting: Hosting Mechanics, give us your perspective, your insight on the role of active listening.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:16] Yeah. I think this is something that’s really important for hosts, especially if you’re new to hosting a show. You have to be good at asking questions, number one. But you also have to be good at listening. And most people are too focused on the asking of the question part, and they’re not focused enough on the listening part.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:38] I think my philosophy is that a good host talks much less than the guest, much less than the guest. To me, a good host job is to help the guest look good, to help them articulate their message, to give them opportunities to explain what makes them special and different.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:00] That’s all we’re doing is we’re just kind of nudging them along, helping them articulate their message, helping them share the stories that are important to them, giving them kind of soundbites and chunks that they can kind of go off and riff about the good work they’ve done, that they’ve helped somebody and made a difference in someone’s life. We’re there to help them kind of capture that kind of content.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:25] And just like a host of a party at your house, you want your guests to be comfortable as quickly as possible so they can relax. And in our case, create a good piece of content that they’re proud of and will share.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:38] So, if you’re kind of going into the interview with the lens of my job is to make my guest look good, not me look smart. I’m going to benefit just by making my guest look good. If you really believe that, then everything you’re doing during that interview is helping your guest look good, helping them get their message out, helping them create a piece of content that they’re proud of that they’ll share.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:01] If you can do that, then your guest is going to think you’re smart. Your listeners are going to think you’re smart. You don’t have to talk more in order to do that. You just have to be kind of gracious and helpful and then that’ll happen by itself.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:18] So, I think sometimes hosts work too hard to try to make themselves look good by kind of talking too much and kind of demonstrating how smart they are rather than using their time to elevate the guest. Because guess what? It’s your show. You’re going to be on every episode. You don’t have to talk all the time. You get the credential just by being the host.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:43] So, spend more time making your guest look good, and you’re going to have a better show, you’re going to have happier guests, you’re going to have better relationships with those guests, and you’re going to achieve the outcome that you desire by hosting the show in the first place.
