I have a friend who is an exceptionally good listener. In fact, she’s such a good listener that people in her life always want to talk to her. Not just talk, actually, but confide and vent.

That’s mostly a good thing, a tribute to her personality and compassion and willingness to focus and give feedback. But imagine when everyone in your life wants a piece of that goodness.

Something’s got to give.

I am proposing a solution: More of us should become exceptionally good listeners. It is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves and those in our lives.

As a life coach in training with Results Coaching Systems nine years ago, learning to become a better listener was part of our curriculum. Not only did that translate to me being a finer, more tuned-in coach, I have since felt a major difference in my relationships with family and friends and even just day-to-day casual encounters. It also seeped into the journalist side of things, as virtually all of my interview subjects tell me our exchanges feel like conversations; that’s because so many people don’t know what it feels like to have someone actually listen to what they’re saying.

“Oh, Master grant that I may never seek … to be understood as to understand,” goes the song, Make Me a Channel of Your Peace.

That is the core of listening. Not waiting your turn to speak. Not tolerating what the other person is saying. Not simultaneously watching television or checking your Blackberry. Not raining down judgment on what they’re saying under the guise of being helpful.

No, the core of it is understanding that person in that moment. It’s not making yourself understood. It’s doing all the things that make for good listening. Goodness, you can do a Google search and get seemingly endless suggestions, but they boil down to a few:

~ Cultivate patience. While this has never been one of my strongest areas, I have come a long way, baby, and what a difference it has made. Hear a person out.

~ Connect with body language. This is about eye contact so the person knows you’re with them. It’s about nodding to signal understanding of what they’re conveying. What a great compliment when someone thanks me for being intently focused on them.

~ Stop for occasional verbal check-ins. This involves repeating back what the person is saying in summary form simply to make sure you’re understanding them correctly. This will put the person more and more at ease as they continue talking to you. The more comfortable they are, the more they will open up to you. It also allows them to clarify in case you didn’t understand what they were saying.

A funny note comes to mind on that last one. I have a friend who prides himself on his listening skills and they are indeed very strong. However, time and again he falls down on the verbal check-in. When I tell him a story on the phone, he is so silent that I have to ask, “Did you hear me?” or “Are you with me?” He then responds with an almost haughty, “Yeah, I’m listening.” I laugh every time because of how literally he takes it.

When in doubt, think about what you want when you’re talking to someone about something meaningful to you. Haven’t we all been in the business meeting that is supposed to be generating ideas, only to have one person shooting down concepts before anyone has heard them laid out? How many parents say no before really listening to the problem their teenager is expressing? How many journalists step all over their interview subject’s words before they’ve expressed a full thought?

Listening is the secret to Oprah Winfrey’s success. It makes her a strong interviewer. It helps her tap into what jazzes and inspires her audience. It has led her to a level of self-awareness that allows her to “hold” all that is her life’s work.

A while ago I interviewed Brian Scudamore, the founder and CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, and that story was all about listening. Not just to his family’s sense of business know-how while he was growing up, but to his current customers’ feedback. His ear is pivotal to the phenomenal growth of his business.

We see the power of listening in movies all the time, and not necessarily just in the “deep” flicks. In the first Sex and the City movie, the main storyline was about Carrie getting jilted on her wedding day by Mr. Big, but in the end she realized she hadn’t been listening to him through the wedding planning haze she was in. Another light favorite of mine, What Women Want, is all about the male main character being able to hear women’s thoughts. He learns to listen and then uses the insights to live a richer life.

“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer,” Henry David Thoreau said.

Perhaps we can all join my friend in sharing that kind of goodness.

Nancy Colasurdo is a practicing life coach and freelance writer. Her Web site is www.nancola.com. Please direct all questions/comments to FOXGamePlan@gmail.com.