Notes from the Field: Ego and Listening Skills
People with big egos, by nature, are poor listeners. No news there. So let’s look at how having an over-sized ego can influence one’s ability or desire to listen.
Following are factors that cause ego to overshadow listening.
- Attachment to one’s own needs
Here’s a situation I recently witnessed that exemplifies this statement. I was visiting someone in a medical rehabilitation facility. When I arrived, the patient, a highly regarded professional, was hopping mad and anxious to tell me about the incompetence of the night nurse who did not listen to him. The night nurse, a person who says she’s devoted to helping others, took me aside to say the patient was uncooperative.
His position: “I’m an important person and I expect others to listen to me and do what I want.” Her position, “I’m the authority here and I expect patients to comply with my orders.”
A clash of egos.
It was not my place to intervene, so I watched two people talking past one another. He kept explaining his own needs and she kept throwing policy at him. Eventually, the nursing supervisor was brought in, and the first thing she did was ask the patient, “Can you please tell me from your standpoint, what’s the issue?” After he explained, she followed with, “What is it you want that you’re not getting?” When he responded that he wasn’t being heard, bless her, she asked him to explain what being heard would be like. Together, the supervisor, night nurse and patient developed some very simple solutions that satisfied him and were agreeable to the facility.
- Belief that one’s opinion is more valid than another’s facts
My brother is a judge and he often says that one of the most challenging parts of his job is to help people understand that opinions and anecdotes are not facts, regardless of who says them. But people with big egos often think that their opinions are as valid as any scientifically based or evidenced facts. They don’t listen when the facts don’t fit within their schema of beliefs.
- Need to be right
There’s a difference between wanting to get to a right answer, something that problem-solving listeners do well, and wanting to be right. Being right usually means someone or something has to be wrong. If the Being Right person’s ego is questioned, s/he usually shuts down and listening stops.
In the rehab facility situation, the nurse stopped listening to the patient when he questioned a practice. Her response was, “Because that’s what the rules say.” How often do you hear some variation of that remark, when it’s really an excuse to be in the right rather than to listen fully and consider options?
- Desire to compete
Some people love to exercise their egos by entering into battle. They don’t care so much about the outcomes as they do the fight. They parry and thrust, which means there’s precious little time left in an interaction to listen to the other person, especially if the other person has valid points and can also compete. The competitive person has no time to listen because s/he’s busy thinking of the next strategy that might win both the battle and the war.
I think I was much like this competitor as a teen. I entered many interactions, especially with my parents, intending to wear down the other side. The more exasperated my parents became the more my ego was fed with a sense of triumph. Fortunately, I got older and the rewards of collaboration were more ego-satisfying.
- Intimidation equals compliance
People with big egos often force others into agreement, or at least what they perceive to be agreement. Some people use their organizational power and position to intimidate, others use their persona and still others use knowledge to maneuver people into saying they agree. The person with the big ego walks away satisfied that others are in agreement with him/her. But, if s/he checked up on actions taken, s/he’d see that few actions were executed. All the people wanted was for the haranguing to stop, so they said yes without listening; therefore hollow promises were made with little intention of acting on them.
In this case, not only the bombastic person wasn’t listening, the audience wasn’t either. The egoist was in his world convinced there was agreement from others who actually just suffered in silence.
What other ego factors would you add and how do they impact poor listening?
Hi Marian. You hit on the main culprits, I see in my world. One additional: people who are more open to change are better able to put their egos aside and listen. People who do not take time to work through change are less open to change and less likely to listen.
Francie, I wonder if there’s a ratio between willingness to listen and how close to home the change is? Thanks for your comment.