[How] Are You Listening?

I was recently in a meeting with a group of researchers from throughout Europe. We were gathered one morning in a conference room in Brussels, each team prepared to present their findings into how digital technologies were changing work. As we reviewed the day’s agenda, our host kindly reminded us to keep our remarks brief: “I know we all like to hear ourselves speak, but we have limited time.”?

I remember thinking, “we don’t want to hear ourselves speak,?we want to be listened to.” We were eager to be heard and acknowledged by others on our team. We didn’t want an echo chamber: we wanted our colleagues to actively listen.?

“We don’t want to hear ourselves speak,?we want to be listened to.”

In my experience consulting primarily to employee-owned firms, active listening is often dismissed as a “basic skill.” The truth is active listening is an advanced communication skill.[1]?It takes lots of practice. And it is foundational to many other leadership skills, like giving and receiving feedback, developing others, building psychological safety and trust, engaging employees and creating inclusive teams.??

Contents

1. Active Listening
2. Active Listening Mindset
3. Active Listening Dos
4. Active Listening: Why it Matters
5. Get in Shape: Your 5 Day Active Listening Workout

Active Listening

Think of a time when you were in conversation with someone and you felt that you were fully listened to. Now think about?what they?did?that made you feel listened to.

Perhaps the person set aside distractions (they closed their laptop, they put their cell phone away). They likely made eye contact with you and provided verbal and non-verbal cues (nodding their head, saying things like “uh-huh,” or “tell me more”), which told you they were interested in, and following, what you were saying. Maybe they also checked for understanding by paraphrasing what you said to them, giving you the opportunity to correct them where they might have misunderstood something.?

The listener may have also used empathy, putting themselves in your shoes, to imagine how you might have felt or reacted. They likely did not pass judgment. They probably?did not?interrupt to tell you about a time that something similar happened to them.?

Active Listening Mindset

We listen at different levels. Each level reflects a different mindset and requires varying degrees of attention, empathy and care for the listener. On one end is “non listening” (physically present, but mentally absent; something my six-year-old daughter has fully mastered). On the other end is “active listening.” In between is where we spend most of our time: “marginal” (listening selectively) and “evaluative” listening (listening to categorize, judge or respond: “right/wrong,” “agree/disagree”).[2]

The point is not which is the?right?kind of listening, but what kind of listening is called for in the moment: this depends on context, who you are listening to and what the stakes are. (For example, it is highly effective for first responders to use evaluative listening when responding to an emergency. However, when conducting an after action debrief, those same first responders should shift to active listening.)?

When we feel fully listened to, it’s not just because the listener has mastered the techniques of active listening (more on those shortly).?Fundamentally, good listeners start with a special mindset: a belief in listening and a sincere interest in the speaker.?Active listening is about helping others develop, to solve their own problems, and achieve greater autonomy. As the fathers of active listening, Carl Rogers and Richard Farson, wrote:?

“To be effective at all in active listening, one must have a sincere interest in the speaker. We all live in glass houses as far as our attitudes are concerned. They always show through. And if we are only making a pretense of interest in the speaker. he will quickly pick this up, either consciously or unconsciously.”[3]

Effective listeners have a genuine belief in the worth of the individual, in the validity of their experience and ideas, and in the speaker’s capacity for self-direction.[4]?You simply can’t fake it. (For a humorous example of what happens when you try,?check out this clip from the sitcom Superstore.)?

Active Listening Dos

Active listening requires that we[5]:

• Listen for total meaning (the content of the message and the feeling or attitude with which it is communicated), as well as what is “between the lines” – what’s not being said
• Respond empathetically by acknowledging the speaker’s feelings??
• Pay attention to verbal and (especially) non-verbal cues from the speaker (body language, posture, tone of voice and cadence, etc.)

There are some specific techniques that facilitate active listening:?

• Minimize distractions (close the laptop, put away the cell phone, turn towards the speaker, maintain eye contact); if you can’t minimize distractions (or your mind is elsewhere) schedule the meeting for a time when you can
• Use verbal and non-verbal cues to let the speaker know you’re engaged, interested in what they have to say and are tracking the conversation (“uh huh,” “go on”)
• Be aware of and manage your own emotional responses (not necessarily sharing them but using them as “data” to understand what is being said)
• Use questions, sparingly, to help you better understand what the speaker is saying
• Use paraphrasing to check for understanding: by putting what you’re hearing into your own words, you give the speaker a chance to correct you where you’re wrong or on what you may have missed

Active Listening: Why it Matters

Think back to the example that came to mind when you thought of a time you felt fully listened to. Now think about?how?that made you feel. When we ask this question during trainings, we commonly hear words like “heard,” “seen,” “respected,” “recognized,” “cared about,” and "valued.” One participant’s response to that question, that I will never forget, was: “I felt like I had a voice.”?

Now think about the opposite of those words: “ignored,” “invisible,” “not respected,” “anonymous,” “under-valued,” “voiceless.”?

“I felt like I had a voice.”?

In organizations where active listening is the norm (especially when those with authority actively listen) employees are more likely to feel heard, seen, respected, valued and included. In organizations where active listening is not practiced, employees are more likely to feel ignored, undervalued, excluded and voiceless.?

Which type of organization will do better at retaining talent and creating a culture of inclusion that gets the best out of people? Which type of organization will be more effective at learning from its mistakes and continuously improving? Which type of organization will be more capable of responding to and anticipating change? Which type of organization will better tap the knowledge and experience of all its members? In which organization would employees feel a greater sense of ownership? Where would you do your best work??

Get in Shape: Your 5 Day Active Listening Workout

Ready to get started integrating more active listening into your leadership and work style? Here are some tips to begin.?

First, set the intention of spending more time actively listening. Reflect on how this could be valuable to you, your team and your organization. What do you hope to learn through active listening? How would you like to help others? Why is it important to you? Write down your thoughts in a journal.

"Active listening is all about the speaker, not you. It takes practice to resist the urge to jump in and fill those awkward silences, express judgment and propose solutions."

Now, pick one week to really tune into listening to others. Each day, you will practice one, specific technique for listening. Each day, make notes on your experiences in your journal. Pay special attention to how you felt while listening. Reflect on what you found challenging, awkward, encouraging and how your listening impacted others.?

As you review the workout instructions below, you’ll notice that it isn’t until day three that we ask you to respond verbally. This is because active listening is all about the speaker, not you. It takes practice to resist the urge to jump in and fill those awkward silences, express judgment and propose solutions.

Ready to give it a try?

1. Day One:?Today, try and spend at least 80% of your time listening, and no more than 20% of your time speaking. Focus on using non-verbal cues (making eye contact, nodding, saying “uh huh”) to let the speaker know you’re engaged. As one client put it: “let the silence do the heavy lifting,” by deliberately creating moments of awkward silence. By?not speaking?in those moments, you’ll create more space for the speaker to do the talking.?
2. Day Two:?Today, work on listening for total meaning. Pay special attention to mood, emotion, tone, cadence and non-verbal cues like eye contact, posture and body language. What are these cues telling you? How do they better help you understand the total meaning?
3. Day Three:?Focus on getting in touch with how the speaker feels about what they’re sharing. Use empathy and put yourself in their shoes. This can help you respond appropriately verbally and non-verbally (e.g., using a facial expression that mirrors the speaker’s emotional state). Pay attention to your own emotional responses to what you’re hearing. Notice when you form a judgment, or when you get an idea about how you can help, then?let it go.[6]
4. Day Four:?Today, practice asking questions. Questions should be used sparingly, and should focus on helping you better understand what the speaker wants to communicate: “Can you explain more about that?” “How did you feel?” Questions like, “Then what happened?” “What did you next?” “How did they respond?” can help the speaker keep going. This is not the time for the third degree, or for leading questions to guide the speaker to where?you?think they should get, or to give advice in the form of a question (e.g., “Did you try….”).Your only goal is to truly understand the speaker. Full stop.
5. Day Five:?Today, try out paraphrasing (and not “parrot-phrasing”) by putting what you’re hearing into your own words and playing it back to the speaker. Don’t worry about “getting it right.” The goal is not to test your memory, but for you to better understand the speaker by giving?them?the opportunity to correct you where you’re wrong.?

If this type of listening is not the norm in your conversations, it is likely that you will feel awkward at first. But with practice, and a commitment to an active listening mindset, it will come more and more naturally. And the impact on your colleagues and subordinates will reinforce this commitment. Greater active listening has been linked, through empirical studies, to employees experiencing lower levels of psychological stress at work, feeling more autonomy and greater perceptions of being supported socially.[7]?(Taken together, stress, autonomy and support are essential components to achieving high performance in the workplace.) And you’ll begin to notice those you work with sharing more creative ideas, as the increased psychological safety engendered by active listening helps team members feel less afraid to speak up.[8]

If you tried the five day workout, let me know how it went, either by posting in the comments or dropping me a line directly (matt @ matthancock.org). I’d love to compare notes.

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[1]?Robertson, Kathryn, “Active Listening: More than just Paying Attention,” Australian Family Physician Vol. 34, No. 12, December 2005.?

[2]?Hunsaker PL, Alessandra T, Alessandra AJ.??The new art of managing people, updated and revised: Person-to-person skills, guidelines, and techniques every manager needs to guide, Direct, and Motivate the Team.?Simon and Schuster Inc; New York NY, USA: 2008, cited in Jahromi VK, Tabatabaee SS, Abdar ZE, Rajabi M.?Active listening: The key of successful communication in hospital managers. Electron Physician. 2016 Mar 25;8(3):2123-8. doi: 10.19082/2123. PMID: 27123221; PMCID: PMC4844478

[3]??Rogers, Carl R. and Richard E. Farson, “Active Listening,” in?Communicating in Business Today,?R.G. Newman, M.A. Danzinger, M. Cohen (eds) D.C. Heath & Company, 1987.

[4]?Rogers, Carl R. and Richard E. Farson, “Active Listening.”?

[5]?Rogers, Carl R. and Richard E. Farson, “Active Listening.”

[6]?Thanks to the Liberating Structure “Heard, Seen, Respected” for this excellent tip.

[7]?Mineyama S, Tsutsumi A, Takao S, Nishiuchi K, Kawakami N.?Supervisors' attitudes and skills for active listening with regard to working conditions and psychological stress reactions among subordinate workers. J Occup Health. 2007 Mar;49(2):81-7. doi: 10.1539/joh.49.81. PMID: 17429164.

[8]?Castro, D. R., Anseel, F. J. C., Kluger, A. N., Lloyd, K. J., & Levi, Y. T. (Accepted/In press).?Mere-listening effect on creativity and the mediating role of psychological safety.?Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts,?12(4), 489-502.?