Is Listening Difficult?

Hearing is a part of five senses whereas listening is a choice. You can hear words but choose not to listen. Listening involves understanding and responding to what you have heard. There is a dog barking, music being played and people chatting in the restaurant yet you would be listening to what your friend is saying and ignoring all the other sounds. Hearing is a passive process whereas listening is an active process.

One of the major reasons for communication failure is lack of listening. Listening is always a challenge for everyone. Dr. Stephen R Covey in his book ‘The 7Habits of Highly Effective People’ dedicates Habit 5 ‘Seek first to understand then to be understood’ to listening skills. He said in one of his interviews that he still sometimes finds difficult to listen.

In any organization, people with different skill set and mindset work together. Any action or inaction would be seen differently by people for example, accounts and finance would look from monetary perspective, HR can look from employee engagement and retention, Sales and marketing would see it from the impact it would create on their customers and production would look at from the perspective of productivity. For effective collaboration and teamwork, attitude of win-win and listening skills are necessary. Attitude of win-win keeps your mind open to finding a solution that satisfies both the parties and listening skills helps in understanding the concerns and issues of the involved parties.

Every human’s basic need is to be felt understood. Anyone with good listening skills will be able to form strong relationships. A survey says, most of the customers who call customer care wants someone to listen to their bad experience. 90% of customer complaints can be taken care of only by listening.

Listening is difficult as it requires effort. What makes listening so difficult?

1. Human mind can listen to an average of 210 words per minutes but can speak at around 120 words per minute. In other words, there is a huge gap between speaking and listening. If someone is speaking at a rate of 120 words per minute what happens? Because the rate is slower, human mind wanders away from the speaker. It starts analyzing what the speaker is saying.

2. Human attention span is very small. For an average human, it is less than 9 seconds. It has reduced by 4 seconds in last 20 decades and continue to reduce. Gold fish now has a better attention span. Mind of the listener would wander away from the speaker. It becomes difficult for the listener to be in present.

3. Words have limited ability to express. We cannot express everything through words. Moreover, words can have multiple meanings, for example fast, right, light, Meanings can also change from person to person. Pronunciation of some words are similar, example sun and son, two and too, pray and prey

4. Communication happens more through non-verbal than through words. It is important for listener to focus on body language, facial expression, gestures, eye movement and tone of the speaker to receive complete communication.

5. Beliefs and perceptions play a crucial role in listening. They can interfere in listening process. For example, if a speaker and a listener have different point of views, they would listen more from intent to reply and prove their point rather than to understand. People from different cultures will have different customs and norms and that would interfere in listening.

6. Emotional state of mind of listener affects listening. If he is emotionally disturbed, he will not be able to attend to speaker. Bias can also impact listening. For example, an investment advice would be readily accepted if it comes a rich guy. Conman use this basic bias to cheat people.

7. Physiological state of the listener can affect listening. During a lecture, professor is speaking but one of the students is feeling cold because he is sitting under air conditioner. He would be distracted because of cold from the speaker.

8. Mindreading – Listener knows it all even before the speaker has started speaking. In such a scenario, listening cannot happen because speaker is just waiting for listener to come to the point he is anticipating. For example, it has been an appraisal time. One of the employees HR anticipates, would be unsatisfied. He comes to HR. Since HR already knows and has prepared for it, he would give ready answers without listening and understanding his concern.

Listening is easy as it requires application and intention to understand other person’s perspective. Listening becomes easier when practiced.

Five steps to active listening,

1. Suspend your goals – Keep your intention or communication goal aside. Your goal as a listener is to address his concern. Listen with an open mind without any judgement or past influence. Let the person complete his point of view. Do not interrupt. When the speaker takes time to gather his thoughts, be quiet and patient. Respect silence. Don’t give him words or ideas.

2. Attend to the speaker completely. Don’t do any other work while listening. Humans can do only one thing at a time that requires thinking. Even while you are in a conversation on phone and you are doing something along with listening, the speaker will sense that you are not present. This will put the speaker off.

3. Right body posture – Body posture of listener can make a huge impact on the speaker. Maintain appropriate eye contact. If you are leaning a little towards the speaker, your body language attentive and eager to listen, speaker will say more than he had planned to say. He will open up.

?4. Encourage the speaker – Use non-verbal like nodding to encourage the speaker. Hmmm, yeah, ok, got it can be used to show you are listening. Keep your communication minimum. Do not agree or disagree with the speaker. Ask only clarifying questions. You can ask open ended questions.

5. Paraphrase – Repeat what speaker has said in your own words along with the feelings he had experienced. For example, ‘when you came to know that your best friend had cheated you, you felt sad and not angry?’

Many leaders have open door policy but are unable to listen attentively. That puts employees off. Employees have to gather lot of courage to come and speak their mind to a senior leader. If he does not pay complete attention and would do something else while the employee is speaking, it will discourage him. He will be unable to express himself and the ‘open door policy’ fails.

Another hurdle in listening is know it all attitude. This is true for leaders at the top. They know everything so they are at the top. Right? This can be a big block in understanding different point of views coming from the bottom of the pyramid.

Communication failures cost enormous to any organization as we discussed it in our previous article (newsletter 25, dated 14-4-23, ‘Which is the Most Important Soft Skill?’). it can adversely affect employee relationships, team work and team goals.

Active listening however can improve employee relationships, create positive energies and synergy towards goals, and leads to organizational success.

Thank you.

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