Are You Listening?

Have you ever been told that you’re not a good listener? Do you need me to repeat that for you? Have you ever been told that you’re not a good listener? I’m sure we all have, and the reality is, sometimes we’re not.

Sometimes we’re really not paying attention the way that we should be paying attention and obviously for service, for relationships, for success in life, we need to become much better listeners than the average. So, let’s look at what the most common listening mistake traps are and let’s not fall into them.

Now the first one is one that I will confess I work on every single day. I’m a chronic interrupter. I finish people’s sentences for them. Now I don’t mean to do that; it’s not intentional, I’m not trying to be rude. It’s almost like my brain goes, “I know where you’re going, and I can get there faster.”

I can blame it on all kinds of reasons but at the end of the day, it’s a really bad habit that I need to fix so perhaps those of you who can relate to me, we can work together on not finishing people’s sentences. If you say to yourself, “Oh if I don’t tell them right now, I’ll forget.”

My thought is, if you can’t remember it three seconds from now, it’s not important. We need to really pull back, bite our tongue on interrupting and finishing other’s sentences. It’s a very, very bad habit. Shows a lack of respect, and we don’t want to send that message to anyone.

The second most common habit comes from when we are in situations where we are unsure of ourselves, and it’s almost like we are afraid to give the wrong answer, so it’s the fear of not knowing the answer. It goes back to almost when we’re in grade school, and the teacher would say, “Rhonda, what’s the answer to number three?” And we’d go blank. We just couldn’t remember it. Nobody wants to look or feel stupid. The fear of not having the answer causes us to panic when we’re answering a question.

Someone may start to ask a question, saying “I have a question about the contract that I’m about to sign,” and then as soon as your brain hears contract, it immediately goes, “Contract, contract,” and it finds a fabulous answer. It’s just not the answer to the question they were about to ask.

It also happens when we’re dealing with the CEO or when we’re dealing with a very important client, or when we’re talking about something that we’re not quite as comfortable with. So, it’s us, jumping so quickly to get to an answer because we don’t want to look stupid. Nobody wants to be put on the spot and not have the answer. And what we’re not doing, is listening to the whole question. If you listen to the whole question and you get comfortable with even one or two seconds of silence before you answer, you’re going to let the whole question get to your brain, and you’re going to give a much better answer, and it’s going to be respectful because you didn’t jump too quick, either. Don’t let your fear of being wrong cause you to jump to the wrong answer.

The third one is very similar to that. We jump too quickly, but it comes from a place of ego, and that’s where you know what the other person is going to say, and you’re just going to answer them to show them how smart you are. You know, your kids come home from school, and they yell at the bottom of the stairs, “Mom, can I …” And before they even finish the sentence, you say, “No.”

Now that’s not just interrupting, that’s interrupting with the assumed knowledge of what they were going to say. Well, you’re not always right, right? And so, you don’t want to make sure that you assume you know what they are going to say. Because first of all, you can be wrong. Second of all, it comes across as very condescending and slightly egotistical on your part, as well. You want to make sure, again, they get to end of the question, even if in your mind it’s, “No,” show them that you are listening.

The fourth poor listening habit is overreacting. Now, if you are honest with yourself, you’ll say that there are times when you do this. Maybe you are sitting watching the news and you hear just a sound bite, and you’re ready to jump all over whatever is on the news. Or you’ll get the CEO of your organization stand up and make an announcement, saying, “We need to do more with less,” and you think, “I’ve been hearing that for 20 years,” and just completely overreact. The overreaction is just getting a little bit of the message and then running with it. You’re not listening to what the entire message is.

Your child comes home and says, “Mom, I had a car accident,” and you overreact. You don’t even get to find out that there was no damage and everybody was fine; you’re just off on the deep end or imagining the worst that could happen. Overracting is also not listening to the entire statement.

Now you’ll notice that the first four steps so far have all been not listening to the entire statement. We’re jumping in too quickly; we’re panicking, whatever it happens to be.

The fifth mistake is not quite the same as the first four where we’re not listening to the entire statement. The fifth mistake is not listening at all. It’s pseudo-listening. And for those of you that are in relationships where you’ve been in them a long time, you pretend to listen to your significant other. That’s what pseudo-listening is.

You’re sitting on the couch, you’re chatting away, you’re going, “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh,” and here she looks at you and says, “You’re not even listening to me, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

And you’re not; you’re pretending to listen. We do that at work and we do that on the phone because we may be distracted doing something else. We do it with our friends, we do it with our family and it really is a distraction or a disinterest; either one of those are not what you want to communicate to the other.

We want to really show the person that we’re communicating with that we are a good listener. We’re not going to interrupt them. We’re not going to jump to conclusions, both positive or negative – we’re not going to, and we’re not going to pretend to listen, either.

Your challenge this week is to remain engaged while you’re listening, making sure you let others finish their sentence. They’re going to wonder what happened to you because you are making sure that you leave a couple of seconds of silence at the end of whatever it is that they had to say before you respond. Really show those that you work with and those that you love, that you really care what they’re saying, by listening.

Keep on the right track this week.

You can follow Rhonda Scharf by following the attached link: https://www.on-the-right-track.com/subscribe/