My partner said, You weren’t listening, were you? and I thought, that’s a weird way to start a conversation.
A common misperception
I’m a pretty good listener, is a commonly-held self-perception. But when given skilled support to closely examine and self-assess their actual habits, few people are comfortable with the results.
Many are surprised or dismayed to discover how far from ideal or adequate are their practices, even in unexceptional conversational circumstances.
Those who understand the potential of greater competence are impatient to begin upskilling.
Because my coaching services include giving close attention to dialogue practices and the mindsets which drive them, I have many examples of missed opportunities – my own and others’ – for understanding, collaborating, navigating across differences or through conversational complexity, and building relationships during everyday conversations.
In the vast majority of them one behaviour towers above others as the cause: inadequate, insensitive or incompetent listening.
Listening is the communication skill first learned and most often used. Yet it is the least taught and least mastered. [Eastwood Atwater]
The central, everyday importance of listening
How important is this? Consider which of the following intentions and activities are important in your contacts with other people:
- developing trust in relationships
- joining or initiating and enjoying social conversations
- responding to distress
- growing and nurturing teamwork
- helping people learn from experience (e.g., within supervision, training, coaching or mentoring)
- reducing unwanted behaviours
- facilitating meetings, interviews; group discussions, problem solving and decision-making
- supporting people to address stress, difficulties and challenges
- generating collective innovation and action-plans
- promoting or selling ideas, products or services.
In fact, all those activities and more, call for proficient listening. But to say Obviously they all do, isn’t true for everyone. There are very many people for whom the critical role their listening habits play in everyday engagement with others is not at all obvious. I was in my mid thirties before I understood it.
Many years later I still need vigilance to avoid the vestiges of my worst listening habits: Turning conversations into self-promotional Me-too opportunities.[1] Trying to ‘be helpful’ and to ‘fix’ people’s challenges without fully understanding what causes them. Underestimating the importance of a speaker’s probable emotional state while being fully focused on their logic. Reacting to criticism by explaining and justifying myself instead of remembering that I’m simply being asked to listen to someone’s problem.
[1] I’d learned that ‘conversational narcissism’ habit within my original family and early schooling, where listening in order to tell one’s own story – preferably a better story – was often the very point of listening.
Although all those unhelpful habits remain within my conversational repertoire, I’m now able to notice as they occur, my urges to introduce them, and in most cases take corrective action with more constructive behaviours.
Few of us know how to [listen] . . not because we are bad people, but because no one has taught us how and few have listened sufficiently well to us. So we come to social life greedy to speak rather than listen, hungry to meet others, but reluctant to hear them. Conversations degenerate into socialised egoism …
Check your intentions
Stephen Covey has pointed out that … Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with intent to reply. In similar vein he could have also observed, Most people when complained about, listen not with intent to understand but to defend and justify themselves.
When I am criticised for something to do with a personal ideal I’ve yet to perfect in practice (there are a few of those), I’m still tempted to decide that it’s vital I defend myself against attack; if I do that, it has become the intention of my listening. Unless I quickly change my mindset (manage my attitude) to enable a constructive response, I can easily take it personally and react with anxiety or annoyance.
What do you notice if you reflect on your habits or pay attention to them in real time, about how well and you listen in various circumstances? What are your listening intentions?
Here’s help
My recent book has a comprehensive chapter focused on developing situational awareness, the ability to closely observe, assess and moderate our behaviours as we apply them.
The book will help you easily figure out the current status of your listening practices, verify and affirm those which support genuine collaboration, and locate competency gaps. Should you find any deficiencies, it will guide you along practical and very rewarding paths to remedying them.
It includes two full chapters about developing attitudinal awareness and mindset management, for truly collaborative dialogue.
You’ll find some reviewer comments about the book here, and more at Amazon.com or Amazon.com.au. Better priced purchases (NZ only) can be made direct from the author.
See also: Our Own Part in Conversational Problems, Do You Respond or React to Criticism? and Don’t Take it Personally.]
Tom Watkins
Tom has owned a number of professional training and consultancy business, coached several other consultant trainers and facilitators into successful careers, and authored a range of well-respected publications.
