Archive for the ‘Barriers to Listening’ Category
Building Your Listening Abs
I counsel people to think of listening in the same way as they think of their abs—if you want tight and strong abs, develop a program and work at it with rigor. Looking at photos of models won’t change a thing.
No matter how many books you might read about listening, or even surrounding yourself with superb listeners won’t build your listening abs. Following are some exercises that will develop your listening muscles.
1. Close your eyes and listen to sounds. First, listen to and identify the sounds outside of the room. Second, listen to and identify the sounds inside the room. You should be able to get better and better at differentiating where the sound is coming from and provide some details about what it is.
2. Instead of listening to the sound and rhythm of a song, listen to the lyrics. I’ve noticed I can sing along with songs I grew up with, but have little idea about the words to new songs; yet, my grandkids can sit in the back seat and sing in sync with the radio. When I really focus on the lyrics, I stop hearing conversations, tires on the road, and traffic. That could be dangerous, so work on hearing lyrics in a safer place than the car.
3. Similarly, listen to a news piece on the radio, and pick out the key points. It’s similar to being in school and selecting what to take notes on, or listening intentionally to what’s important. It’s quite a surprising experience when two people listen to the same news story and tell one another what they got out of it. Often there will be differences of opinion and interpretations of the content. That mirrors most interactions, still people will insist they were listening and understand what was said.
To be a well-muscled listener, you have to be able to pick out the same key points as the other person in the interaction. In other words, you have to understand what the other person listens for, as well as what’s important for you. It’s like being able to lift equally heavy weights with each arm. If you only listen for what matters to you, you will never have well-developed listening abs that you need to be agile and strong when making decisions and collaborating with others.
The Golden Rule Doesn’t Apply to Listening
From the time we’re little kids the Golden Rule is recited to us as the model for how to behave:
Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You
I can still recall an elementary school teacher, probably in third or fourth grade, making us write it over and over to practice penmanship (remember when penmanship was a line item on your report card?). I’m not sure I understood what it meant in the grand scheme of things, but I was sure it meant I was supposed to be nice to everyone.
As I became involved in the world of true listening, it dawned on me that The Golden Rule does not describe the best way to listen. In fact, it might be the worst way to listen. When we listen to others through our own filters and habits, we’re not open to how they take in information and what they’re interested in. The Golden Rule for listening might better be:
Listen to Others as They Want
When we look at the four Listening Habits, it’s obvious there’s disparity among them.
Inner-personal listeners want you to focus your messages on what will be personally meaningful to them. They aren’t too interested in what matters to you. They’re trying to learn from you so they can expand their knowledge and experience.
Extra-personal listeners want you to focus your messages on what will be meaningful to others. They’re trying to uncover the relevance of your information for other people or processes.
Problem-solving listeners want you to focus your messages on an issue they care about and include lots of facts and details. They’re trying to gather accurate information to support their decision-making
Conceptualizing listeners want you to focus your messages on possible options and alternatives. They’re trying to generate ideas to develop innovative ideas about the subject at hand.
The Listening Golden Rule requires you to:
- remain silent and observant to determine how others listen
- ask questions that echo the kinds of words and body language the listeners display
- tailor your listening to what matters to others
Be a generous and respectful Golden Rule Listener.
Review of The SOLER Model
I recently received an email from an individual who attended a conference where I spoke asking me if the SOLER model would be good to use with his staff. I answered that I have no idea what that model is, don’t want to be put on the spot of evaluating someone else’s work, and believe any efforts towards better listening is a positive sign.
The emailer wasn’t satisfied, “After I heard you speak at the conference, and after I took Hear! Hear?® [the listening assessment we designed], I think this model is too simplistic. That’s why I want your opinion.”
I agreed to look at the model, without learning the developer’s name lest I might seem swayed one way or the other by a personal connection. Actually, I know only a few people in the International Listening Association (ILA), some neuroscientists, and people whose research I follow; but I wouldn’t want to offend or overly praise someone rather than the work.
Following is the model. It’s straightforward, simple, and somewhat easy to remember (ROLES would be even easier and more connected to the subject):
Square – facing the other person, not facing someone else or talking over your shoulder
Open – open posture, not crossed arms, crossed legs, face hidden in hand
Leaning – leaning slightly forwards, not leaning back or slouching
Eyes – good eye contact, not avoiding the other person’s eye, but not staring without blinking either! In some cultures making eye contact with someone you don’t know may be considered rude; find out about the person’s culture if you don’t know.
Relaxed – natural, not fidgeting, fiddling with objects, or being tensed up (e.g. tight, raised shoulders)
After I saw the model, I asked the emailer about his reservations about it. He said, “From what I know about the four types of listening habits that you present, not all of them would actually follow the model, especially Inner-Personal Listeners. And not all cultures are comfortable engaging in these ways; all, not just eye contact. Am I on the right track?”
I congratulated him on his astute observations and agreed with them. This model, like active listening, works well for Extra-Personal Listeners. They do listen for meaning for and impact on others, so it’s natural for them to use body language to connect with others.
For people with the other three listening habits, the hints in this model won’t resonate. For example, Problem-Solving Listeners rarely use Open. Their posture is much like Rodin’s The Thinker. They often look pained when they listen because they’re concentrating. Telling Problem-Solvers to look more open will most probably change their focus and the opposite of truly listening will occur.
“Thanks, I guess I won’t give this SOLER model to everyone as a blanket set of rules. Will you help me create three more for the other habits?
“You have a good grasp of the habits. How about you take a stab at it, and I’ll comment?”
From now on, we’ll spend more time on Body Language when certifying people to become Listening Impact Practitioners.
Listening Feedback Loop
Listening is the ultimate feedback loop. Your ears bring in information, your brain processes it, your body responds, the person who’s talking knows if you’re paying attention, and eventually you do something with what you’ve heard.
There’s room for success or failure at each step of the way. Let’s look at some of the things that might go wrong:
- ears bring in information
- hearing dysfunction
- noise distorts ability to hear
- speaker unclear, too soft, thick accent
- brain processes information
- neural pathways over/under-developed
- attention drifts/listening stops
- brain centers not attuned to presenter(s)
- body responds
- physical problem/low affect
- listener/speaker disassociate
- response inappropriate for what was said
- speaker knows if you’re paying attention
- unfocused facial expressions
- disconnected body language
- mismatched tone-of-voice
- use what you’ve heard
- say/do something other than expected
- incorrect replies to sender
- others cannot grasp response
The beauty of a listening feedback loop is that you can correct it at any stage of the interaction. Some tips to do that:
- Take a hearing test
- Avoid holding an important interaction in noisy places
- Get close to the speaker without being offensive
- Experiment listening to different types of speakers to exercise your brain
- Wear a rubber band on your wrist and snap it when attention wanes
- Ask more questions than give opinions/answers
- Check for understanding
- Pay attention to the non-obvious signals coming your way
Translators, IT Professionals of the Future
Robin Miller, a journalist, posed a thought-provoking question: What skills will IT professionals need in the next decade?
My initial response was to examine task-related skills, but that’s not my field, I’m an executive coach and trainer, so I looked inside my knowledge-base. Two clients immediately came to mind to help form my answer:
Let’s call them Matt and Stephanie. Matt is the CIO of a non-tech company, and Stephanie is a project manager in a hi-tech company.
When Matt and I were setting his objectives for coaching he listed:
- Get senior leaders on board with his recommendations
- Switch employees from old programs to new ones without a lot of hand-holding
Stephanie’s first objective was exactly the same as Matt’s. Her second one was:
- Win support for her projects when there were so many initiatives competing for the same resources
They both talked about the importance of their work, how what they were doing would make everything easier for employees, and the details of their program(s). I asked for a profile of their customers. They said there were various customers, each as having different degrees of technical intelligence, with management possessing the least. Matt even said, “The top two executives basically tell me what they want done and send me on my way. The problem is they have no idea how complex their requests are. Then they ask every day if we’re done.”
Rather than diving into answers, I took a side road and compared their situations with getting healthy. Stephanie was overweight, inactive and high-strung (she talked very fast and her eyes darted during conversations). Matt was skinny, always with a diet soda in hand, and a weekend, athletic warrior (not all weekends though). They both, in their own ways, wanted to be healthy without doing anything to make themselves that way. They didn’t really know much about nutrition, and under-estimated the amount of time and discipline it would take to get to their health goals. I assigned them to talk to a health professional within the week, and note what the person did that was effective.
Matt and Stephanie reported back with a comprehensive list of what the health professional did that was effective. But, what was most impressive is that they both realized they held similar roles in the jobs. Stephanie said, “We’re translators. It’s our job to help people understand technical information and adapt it to fit their needs.
We set about creating a the list of behaviors for IT professionals as Translators:
- Speak in the language of the client, not the techies. Technical language is offputting and separates us from our users. But, we’ve got to know the IT code to be credible with colleagues.
- And related: Watch for the intimidation factor. The world of hi-tech can cause people not in it to feel dumb.
- Senior management holds the key to resources, so they need to know exactly what resources we need, how long and to what end. In other words, what bang will their proverbial buck provide?
- Know our clients’ thinking and listening styles to talk to them in a way that fits with their preferences.
- Inquire more than we advocate. The goal is to consult and educate, not tell or sell.
- Learn how to be an arbitrator who listens to one entity, checks for understanding, and interprets the information for another entity. Continue that process until both sides are on the same page.
- Model patience and respect.
After a lot of effort to heed their own advice, both Matt and Stephanie have become strategic partners with high value in their organizations. Matt’s been invited to join the executive committee, and Stephanie’s project was funded for another year.
Listening at the Airport—Notes from the Field
I’m so inured to air travel that I don’t pay much attention to what’s going on around me. But tonight, in the Minneapolis Airport on my way home from working in NC, I did lift up my head and listened around me.
One man talked on-and-on without pausing, asking a question, or seeming to be in conversation with anyone else. Nearby, a couple sat next to one another, held hands, and made no other connections. When he stood up, she scowled and seemed indignant. He stretched, but didn’t wander as though he knew the limits, beyond which it would not be all right to stray.
Many people were on mobile phones, some talking so loud that anyone who cared to could hear every word of their interactions. I eavesdropped. One woman was helping an offspring work through a homework problem. One woman was gossiping about an errant family member. One man was berating someone over a business decision. One man was talking on the phone and poking his nearby wife’s arm to emphasize a point. And more than one person was talking, typing, and doing yet something else such as filing nails, eating, reading, and putting on makeup, all simultaneously.
I kept on wondering if any one of the people was listening. If so, what were the indications—laughter, raising or lowering of voices, pauses, or even silence? The one couple didn’t even need to say a word to one another to be able to read intent and expectations.
I’d love to ask each of the people I watched if their interactions were satisfactory and if they felt heard. Short of that, I looked for positive or negative signs. But, for the most part, people were blank and went on to whatever was next.
My conclusion is that listening is elusive and hard to describe even though it’s a huge part of our every day.
I Dare You!
If you’ve never gone to the Harvard Implicit site to take one of their many tests, you are missing an opportunity to learn about yourself, or at least, confirm what you already know or suspect.
All the tests I’ve seen are set up similarly, so after you take one or two, others might seem redundant. The power is not in the process, but the content; so ignore how the tests are set up, and pay attention to your responses.
Note that I got confused on one of the tests I took last night and I did not receive any results because there were too many mistakes. Make sure you understand the instructions before proceeding.
The first time I came across this site was when I attended a diversity conference and one of the speakers had us take one of the many tests to open our eyes about what kind and degree of biases we held. She made it clear that we all have prejudices and act on them, often unconsciously. The point of taking the test(s) was to develop awareness of our biases, manage our biases, and develop cultural competence.
The results were memorable and prompted the majority of attendees to want to talk about diversity at a much deeper level than when they walked in the door.
I know that there’s a strong correlation between our biases and listening. If, for any reason, conscious or unconscious, the speaker triggers a prejudice, that directly influences how attentive we are to that person. I wonder how seriously a listener who tells dumb blonde jokes takes the information delivered by a Marilyn Monroe look-alike?
Case in point. Many moons ago I ran a learning center at a college and we had a tutoring program. The faculty was very good at recruiting student tutors who met our criteria. A professor said he was sending over the top student in all of his science classes. About fifteen minutes later a beautiful young woman with curly blonde hair piled on top of her head, wearing knee-hi boots and rather seductive-looking clothing came to my desk.
As was customary, I asked how I could help her, I’m sure in a somewhat patronizing tone. As I started to reach for a tutoring request form, she introduced herself and said Professor Jennings suggested she come talk to me about becoming a tutor. Her favorite subject was physics, but she felt confident she could help students with most science subjects. She probably accounted for 25% of our tutoring load with great success for those students who looked past her looks and listened to her brilliance.
Let us know, if you are comfortable, what tests you took and how what you learned about yourself influences your listening.
Harvard University’s Implicit Association Test, which gauges prejudicial attitudes or beliefs about certain groups of people:
Make Your Sales Numbers
We recently conducted a workshop for sales reps and when we showed them the results from Hear! Hear? Your Listening Portfolio®, they were both shocked and enlightened. Their individual and group reports revealed them to be more interested in hearing themselves than listening to their customers.
Their comments ranged from: “Are you sure you tabulated these results correctly?” To: “Holy smokes, no wonder we don’t have such great relationships with our customers.”
The following day we showed the group report to their managers, without divulging anyone’s individual results, and there was a lot of head nodding. The managers, rather smugly said things such as, “I tell them over and over to listen to their customers, but they’re in too much of a hurry.” Or “Maybe that’s why they struggle every month to make their numbers.”
It would have been very easy to let it go at that, but we knew the managers were part of the problem. They had taken Hear! Hear? as well. We asked what they expected their results to look like. “Just the opposite of our reps. Our Extra-personal listening will be much stronger. We listen to others.”
That’s not what their results indicated. They were equally Inner-personal focused-listeners who cared more about their own interests than their customers, in this case the reps, not external customers. While there’s nothing the matter with being an Inner-personal listener, especially for technical people who have to connect new information to what they already know, that modality was not most fitting for those sales folks. The reps had to fully comprehend their customers’ needs, and the managers had to know what was going on with the reps.
We brought everyone together, managers and reps, to examine their listening habits and their impact on sales performance. No need to go through the whole process here with you, but let me tell you the three techniques we taught them to practice with clients to improve their sales numbers by being more flexible when they listened:
- Inquire.
- Check for Understanding.
- Go slow to move fast
Inquire: Clients are always flattered when you ask about their business goals, challenges, and history. It shows you’ve done your homework when you go into a sales call with some excellent thought-provoking questions already prepared. Most customers will gladly answer intelligent questions. If you show up with good inquiries, you will most likely be seen as interested, smart, thoughtful and on their side.
Check for understanding. Far too many sales people jump off an interaction too early. They think they “get it” when what they’ve gotten is their own interpretation of the task or problem, not necessarily what the customer has to share. “Let me see if I understand” should be the sales person’s mantra. Reiterate what the customer said, but in your words, not parroting, but paraphrasing. Both the rep and the customer should walk away from an interaction with clarity and confidence.
Go slow to move fast. What the sales managers said about the reps being in a hurry is the downfall of many sales pros. They want to Make the Sale, but that’s a transactional view of selling rather than being relationship-oriented, which is the more satisfying way to work with customers. We show our participants how to use body language to control the speed of an interaction and create comfortable space-sharing. It might take an up-front investment of time to establish a relationship, but it’s definitely worth it to become the go-to person down the road. Sales people who take time to get to know their customers build trust, which is a powerful sales tool.
The salesforce and managers in this anecdote are working on using all four of their listening modalities to gather the most information possible from customers, establish real relationships, and use well-vetted information to provide first-rate solutions.
Wasted Words: Do We Make It Harder to Listen than Necessary?
Recent research conducted by Rom Schrift, of Wharton, and Oded Netzer and Ran Kivetz of Columbia University shows that when a decision is easier than people expect, they often make it more difficult.
Do people do the same when listening?
I thought about that when I sat in on a meeting of a team. I was there to observe their communication patterns and identify how those patterns influence the quality of their decisions. I asked myself: Are they making decisions with the appropriate kind and amount of information and does their pace of decision-making fit the problem they are addressing
While that might be an excellent dissertation topic, I needed to make my observations and provide counsel pretty fast. Armed with the Wharton/Columbia research, I looked for listening waste. Here are some of my findings:
- When someone spoke and there was agreement among the listeners, the listeners went on and on about their points of agreement. Waste of time, attention, rigor. It would have been far better for the points of agreement to be noted, and the majority of time spent on points of disagreement.
- When a speaker provided a lot of details and data, rarely were there questions or pushback from the listeners. Waste of learning, clarification, intellectual conflict. It would have been much more effective if there were debate or Q&A to provide a platform for discussion and to increase the grasp of the content.
- Different people commanded different levels of listening attention. Waste of collaboration. The team needs to listen to everyone, regardless of position, authority or expertise.
- They used poor listening hygiene. That is, people talked over one another, held side conversations, didn’t acknowledge the speaker’s points, and failed to show attentive body language. Waste of available information and team cohesion. The team needs listening ground rules, training, and reinforcement for how to listen well.
- There was a race to the finish. Rather than acknowledging the breadth and depth of a problem, they tried to fit the decision-making process into the time allotted for a meeting. Waste of quality decision. They need a decision-making process to avoid the current free-for-all, or loudest voice wins, form of deciding.
It is easier to listen when the outcomes are established, when people actually know how to listen, and when there’s a problem-solving process in place. As the researchers point out, we often complicate decision-making because we misplace our efforts. If we set about listening with good intention and good skills, our focus can then be on garnering meaning and information from an interaction that will lead to high quality decisions.
Cognitive and Listening Fluency
Just what does the adage “In one ear and out the other” mean? Does any listening occur or is the information treated like water flowing down a slide at an amusement park—fast, fun and recycled without adding any benefit or outcome?
Or does it mean the listener is so adept that the information is grasped with little effort? My guess it’s the former, but there is something to be said about being aware and facile.
What is fluency?
Cognitive Fluency means that people prefer things that are easy to think about. For example, companies with easier to remember names tend to outperform those with more obscure ones (thus Listening Impact rather than The Impact of Good Listening for our organization’s name).
Listening Fluency means that people can grasp meaning from one listening habit to another with equal ability. For example, a person can hear as accurately in the mode of an Inner-Personal listener as in the mode of a Problem-Solving listener.
What’s enough fluency and what’s too much?
We can dummy down cognitive fluency to such a degree that there won’t be enough interest to challenge even the laziest of minds. There must be something that sparks attention.
Following are some examples of where cognitive and listening fluency intersect:
- You’re in a meeting and the presentation is full of details, new concepts, and technical words. That’s stretching your cognitive and listening fluency beyond your capacity, so you tune out.
- You need to purchase a new TV and the salesperson tells you the three major features of the set you’re looking at. You can take in the information without a problem and are confident the salesperson can answer any questions you have. Neither your cognitive nor listening fluency is overly challenged, so you stay engaged.
- Your customer, in an industry that you’re familiar with, tells you about her business and their needs. Because you know the industry you have cognitive alignment, but your Extra-Personal listening skills must remain sharp to listen to the particulars of her situation.
How do you know if you’re being fluent? Here are some questions you can ask yourself?
- Am I using simple words that most people will know?
- Do I make no more than three clear points?
- Do I use descriptive language to illustrate my ideas?
- Am I addressing all four (4) listening habits?
What other questions would you suggest that people use to check their cognitive and listening fluency?