Management Skills:Listening

Listening

Listening is both the most important and the most neglected part of communication. It is the most important part because without it, communication does not happen. The most articulate speaker will run aground trying to deal with someone who does not listen, while the good listener will extract meaning from incoherence that is all but pathological. Although communication depends on both parties, only the listener can evaluate whether or not it worked.

Listening is also the most neglected part of communication. When we listen, we are supposed to assign meaning to the words we hear. Unfortunately, we tend to prejudge and interpret without much examination of what the speaker really intended. Most of us have heard an exasperated, "No, no. That's not what I mean." When the meaning the listener assigns is not what the speaker intended, communication did not happen.

Good listeners have acquired a set of behaviors that they can carry with them into any situation to improve the quality of their listening.

Adopt an Inquirer's Expectation

You take many expectations with you when you meet someone. You may expect to be bored because you have heard this problem before and you understand it already, and the only reason you are getting together is political. You may expect confrontation because the other person is a jerk or will be defensive about your proposal or will attempt to impose a solution that you already know will not work. You may expect applause because you have solved a major problem and saved the company time and money, for which it should be grateful.

The problem with these and similar expectations is that they set up blocks to communication. Any deviation from your "script" either will confuse you or will not even register. You will be too overwhelmed by your inner voice shouting that something is wrong to hear what others are saying.

The appropriate expectation is that of an inquirer, someone whose purpose is to learn. This attitude sets you up in a discovery mode, seeking new information, so that when new information comes, not only are you ready for it, you welcome it. The question that animates this attitude is, "What can I learn here?"

But, you may object, in some meetings, the purpose is for me to provide answers to them. I am the communicator, and they should be doing the listening. Wrong. As you present your material, they, in disregard of your careful agenda, will respond. If your attitude is that you are the expert and they are there to listen, you will be unpleasantly surprised by questions that seem to challenge your grasp of the situation. If, however, your attitude is that of an inquirer, then their responses become information, not a sign of a vendetta. We are all always listeners because somebody always has something to say.

Search for Uniqueness

We are a species of classifiers. We look for, and usually find, similarities in all situations that confront us. This is one of our strengths; we call it learning. However, there is a risk that we will decide too quickly that "we have seen this before" and begin to act without recognizing where the situation is different.

All situations are unique. Until you understand how a situation is unique, you do not understand the situation. For example, you have just been told that a critical activity is two weeks late despite the programmer's assurances, up to last week, that there were no problems. This situation is similar to numerous others you have faced: a late activity, no forewarning of problems, and an endangered project schedule. If you handle this as you are accustomed to, you will make a fool of yourself when you discover that the team leader decided to incorporate another function into the activity, extending it by two weeks but eliminating a four-week task later in the schedule.

You look for uniqueness by adopting the attitude that this situation, despite its similarities to others, is unique and that the uniqueness matters. The question to ask yourself and others is, "How is this situation different from ... ?"

Look for Concerns

Everybody you speak to has concerns. If you do not hear them and respond to them, people will repeat them with different variations until you, and they, are exasperated.

The barrier to recognizing concerns is that they are usually not yours. For example, if your project includes a new technology that you do not fully understand and that is consuming your attention, it will be hard for you to empathize with your client's concern about a relatively simple month-end report. If you do not hear the concern, you will miss the points that the report is far from simple, that additional data elements are needed, and that the report is required by a government regulatory agency that will suspend the company's business license if the report is not delivered. Clients have good reasons for their concerns.

The question to help you uncover concerns is simple: "What are this person's concerns, and why?" Once you think you have identified them, follow the next behavior.

Reflect Back

Listening is not simply allowing sound waves to impinge upon your eardrums. Nor does it mean passive absorption. The childhood injunction "Keep your mouth shut and listen" is bad advice and worse psychology. Listening is an active process (hence the redundant term "active listening") because it requires you to extract meaning from someone else. The most effective listening behavior is to reflect back to the speaker what you think you have heard.

Reflecting back does not mean bullying. If you say, "Oh, you mean that... ," you are not listening, you are imposing your opinions on the speaker. Similarly, reflecting back is not parroting the speaker's words. Reflecting back is your personal statement of what you think the speaker said.

There are some key phrases that help to soften the process of reflecting back. Nobody will object if you say, "As I understand you, your problem is ... ," or "Let me summarize my understanding of your position," or "If I can paraphrase what I heard," or "If I understand you clearly.'' Most of the time, you will see heads nodding and, if you are attuned to the emotions of the room, feel relaxation. Sometimes you will hear, "No, no, no. That's not at all what I mean. Do I have to go over it again?" You may wince, but it is better to wince now than to be tortured later.

Reflecting back is not reserved for the wrap-up of a meeting or for major break points, it is an ongoing process. If a statement is worth understanding, it is worth double-checking now.

Stay Neutral

We value involvement the sense that there is another person hearing us and responding and we tend to steer our comments according to the feedback we get. When we see a frown or a tightened face, we back off. When we receive a smile or a bright expression, we push forward. We have learned to become sensitive to nonverbal signals and to direct our conversation accordingly.

Unfortunately, in business or other formal interactions, nonverbal feedback is not always desirable. The last thing you want is for your reactions to suppress what someone else intended to say. It is valuable, in other words, to cultivate the art of neutrality, not because you don't care what the other person says, but because you do. You need to provide the psychological environment to allow that person to say what needs to be said. If you find it difficult to be neutral, there is an effective training exercise called "neutral listening."

Choose a friend, someone with whom you are willing to share confidences, andfind a quiet spot. Sit opposite each other in upright chairs in an open posture (arms and legs uncrossed, hands resting in your lap) while your friend talks about anything he or she chooses.

You must remain completely passive and nonresponsive. Do not speak or utter any sound at all. Keep a relaxedface. Do not smile, frown, raise an eyebrow, flare a nostril, clench a jaw, shift in your chair, cross your arms, tap your feet, or issue any other

nonverbal signal, encouraging or otherwise. Continuefor afixed time, but no more than three minutes. At the end, observe how your nonresponsiveness affected the course of yourfriend's talk. Then switch roles and notice how your friend's nonresponsiveness affects you. Observe that without normal social feedback, communications go where the speaker wants, not where you both mutually decide.

You will not use neutral listening in all or even most of your interactions with others. However, it is a tool to help you become and stay neutral when someone else needs to say something that may be easily deflected.

Listening is not merely the process of receiving another person's thoughts; it helps to shape those thoughts. For example, a team leader is explaining why an activity will be late. If you simply listen, even if you hear what the team leader has said, the best result will be that you now know the reason for the delay. However, reflecting back allows the speaker access to another source of thoughts. Consider this brief dialogue between a project manager and a team leader.

Project Manager: As I understand you, the activity will be late because Fred is in the hospital and everybody else is busy. Is that correct?

Team Leader: Yes.

PM: I also assume, from what you've said, that there's nobody else who can do this activity. Right?

TL:Well, not exactly. Mary could, but she's working on the integration project. But, now that you mention it, George could fill in for Mary, and, because he has database experience, integration has been asking for him. Maybe we could work a trade.

You have not only extracted your team leader's thoughts, you have helped take them a step further.

Listening also provides a valuable cutting tool for eliminating the useless detail to which some are addicted. These are the people who tell you that the activity was late because "we found out last Wednesday, or was it Tuesday, no, Wednesday because Tuesday was garbage day, anyway, we found out that Version 2.1 of the DBMS does not run under Version 4.2 of the operating system, or is it Version 4.1, yes, Version 4.1 because that's the version that's compatible with Version 5.2 of the GUI tool unless you have the Supercharged version, in which case Version 5.3 will also work . ." until you want to commit homicide.

This kind of situation is made for good listening techniques. Wait for the speaker to pause for breath (which with an accomplished rambler may take a few minutes), then ask,

Project Manager: As I understand you, we have a version incompatibility problem. Right?

Team Leader: Yes, because Version...

PM: That's OK. I don't need the details. How do we fix the problem?

TL: By getting an upgrade of the DBMS, and for that, we need ...

PM: That's OK. Has the upgrade been ordered?

TL: Yes. In fact, we received it this morning, although I think it actually arrived yesterday afternoon and it took half a day to get here from the mail room. We've got to do something about the internal mail delivery. It's...

PM:That's OK. When will the upgrade be installed?

TL: It's up now, but only because ...

PM: Good. How much time has the delay cost us, to the nearest day?

And so on. By involving yourself in listening to the speaker, you have quickly isolated the problem, trimmed the irrelevancies, and gotten the information you need.

To summarize, good listening is a continuous process of molding your attitude, extracting meaning from a speaker, reflecting back what you have heard, and assisting the speaker to progress in a manner that will lead to a solid conclusion