Hey, Listen Up!
The other day I had a “disagreement” with my husband. I was saying one thing and he was hearing something else. I tried explaining, but because he came to the conversation “believing” that he already knew what I was going to say, he couldn’t really listen to what I was articulating. As a result, he was so fixated on what he thought I was saying, that we could not have a real conversation. Has that ever happened to you? Or how about this: It’s the end of the day, and your colleague is “trying out” a sales pitch to a prospective customer with you, but your mind has left the building and you’re thinking about the drive home and what to pick up for dinner. You smile, nod, in all of the “right places” in her dialogue with you, but you really haven’t listened, and so you can’t tell her that a similar pitch was made to another prospect – and it failed.
Great listening skills are underrated. We talk about the need to speak up, speak out, be assertive - be heard. But what about the soft skill of listening? Our days are filled with chatter – lots of it, in fact. Research suggests that we hear between 30,00 and 40,000 words per day. What’s more, while the average person speaks between 125 and 175 words per minute, the human brain can process 800 words per minute. You can see how, with all that space in between talking and hearing, it’s easy for our brains to wander and for us to get unfocused: we are able to process words at a much higher speed than a person is able to speak. That’s why while we hear all that may be said, we don’t always listen to it (especially if it’s a topic we don’t completely understand or do not agree with!)
Real listening not only takes a willingness to concentrate, but also to suspend judgement while the other person is speaking and to be curious about what they are saying. It means listening both to what the person is actually saying and listening for what they may be trying to say. There has been increasing discussion about “active” and “social” listening: I like to think of concentrated listening.
A concentrated listener is focused. She makes the person speaking feel like they are the only one in the room with you. Concentrated listening creates empathy that generates both an emotional and moral connection between you and the speaker. It makes them comfortable talking, which in turn makes them more willing to share thoughts, feelings and ideas. Strong leaders, for example, will listen more than speak. They want to gain insight, information, understanding and to form connections.
Listening to someone - a family member, a colleague, a customer - and doing so without preconceived “barriers” (unlike my husband’s approach…”I know what she is going to say…”) provides insight, the opportunity to learn something new, hear another perspective, broaden our own horizons, and even improve our businesses.
When Starbucks listened to their employees’ need for healthcare, the company began offering it – decades before the Affordable Care Act. Employees were happier, and that reflected not only on the corporate culture, but in happier customers, which in turn helped generate greater loyalty and, for Starbucks, a more profitable company.
Listening for something means to listen “between the lines”. What is not being said? That doesn’t mean to doubt what the speaker is saying. It means showing empathy and encouragement so they will say what they really mean, and not feel threatened to “speak freely”. When I asked my son the other day how he was feeling, he responded “I’m OK, mom”. But the sound of his voice, his tone and cadence told me he wasn’t. Listening for what he was/wasn’t really saying allowed me to probe and get to the root of what he was dealing with. (It turned out he wasn’t as prepared as he thought for a math test). Listening for something also means listening for something specific – a particular detail about your competitor, a date that you need to note in your calendar.
How many times has someone told you something, but you don’t really listen until it’s too late? Within a family, that behavior is annoying. In business, it can demoralize a team, and render you, as team leader, ineffective.
As for my own situation, my husband and I regrouped, agreeing to sit down and really apply the notion of concentrated listening to one another, without judgement but with complete empathy for one another. Disagreement over.