Your Infinite Potential: Learn to Listen & Listen to Learn

“When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.” Dalai Lama

Do you feel that you are a good listener? It is something that I am aware I can really improve on. It isn’t that I’m not interested in what someone else has to say – it’s just that I am sometimes too eager to jump into the conversation myself. Maybe I have made assumptions about what the speaker is going to say, or I reach conclusions before knowing the real underlying issue or I haven't taken the time to interpret what the person is really communicating and why. My desire to ‘fix’ the problem can get in the way of hearing the entire message. It is something to work on.

I am not alone. In 2015, management consulting company Accenture surveyed 3,600 professionals from 30 countries–half men, half women, ranging from entry-level to management, evenly divided across all generations. They discovered that listening skills are lacking. Although nearly all respondents considered themselves good listeners, but they also admitted to spending their days distracted and multitasking. Ironically, although almost 100% of people surveyed felt that they personally were good at listening – they did not perceive their colleagues to be.

The problem is that everyone wants to be heard first. When people are striving to be heard and understood first, it's pretty hard for listening to occur.

In today's fast, high-tech, high-stress world, communication is more important than ever, yet we seem to devote less and less time to really listening to one another. Genuine listening has become a rare gift—the gift of time. Yet, it is so important. It helps build relationships, solve problems, resolve conflicts, and improve insights. At work, effective listening means fewer errors, truly understanding the crux of issues and less wasted time. And people know we care for them. Poor listening leads to assumptions and misunderstandings and a missed opportunity for us to understand and to learn.

By listening we are learning. But how can we learn to listen?

Learning how to listen, and listening so that we learn something - I think that the two are inextricably linked to each other. If we are truly interested in what someone is saying, we will listen attentively and we will also learn something in the process.

There is a lot of advice out there about how to be an active listener, such as look the person in the eye, think of interesting topics to discuss in advance, look, nod and smile to show that you're paying attention, repeat back what you just heard. But, I agree with Celeste Headlee in her 2015 TED Talk – “There is no reason to learn how to show you're paying attention if you are in fact paying attention.” So, if we are genuinely present and engaged in what the other person is saying, we don't have to employ any 'listening techniques'. However, it's worth thinking about some strategies about how we can better pay attention because we can still get destracted, despite all our good intentions.

I was fortunate enough to attend a lecture this week featuring Richard Mullender. He spent 30 years in the UK police force and then went on to spend five years as a hostage negotiator, working in Afghanistan and the Middle East. He has the power of persuasion to talk someone out of jumping off a bridge or to prevent an armed kidnapper from killing the person they are holding captive.

I learned so much from the session– but I am a firm believer that if we try to implement too many lessons at once, we end up accomplishing nothing. So, the first lesson I am going to practice right now is:

• When trying to understand an issue, stay on the other person’s agenda, without interjecting my own. This means using minimal encouragers (such as, ‘go on’, ‘tell me more’, ‘and…’, etc). In that way my questions do not hijack the conversation and put it on my own agenda. Sometimes, when letting a person ramble a bit we get past the superficial and into the values and beliefs that underpin what the other person is saying. Richard uses the example of someone telling us, “I am going on a last-minute holiday next week.” The first question most people would ask is, “Where to?” (our agenda, directing the conversation). However, if we used a minimal encourager, such as “tell me more”, they may respond with, “I have been under a lot of stress lately and need to take some time off.” (their agenda). We have learned something. This gives us intelligence, (content, meaning and feeling) and not just information.

This technique isn’t appropriate for every conversation, but it is worth experimenting with it whenever we can, and note what we are learning in the process. This will help us understand and support. 

How is your listening? And and idea of how to be a bit better.

Here is a little quiz on Listening Skills. It might help you think about what is a key blocker to you becoming a better listener. I completed it and found that for me it was patience.

To help with patience in listening, I came across this little experiment in Huffpost: When talking with someone, play a mental game of waiting one full second before responding to anything they have said. That’s it. Just one second of silence, no matter what you’re talking about. This is a long, long time in a normal conversation. During this second of silence, don’t think about what you are going to say, think about what the other person has just said. Give it one long, second of your full attention. Then respond, saying whatever it is you have to say.

One second could make a big difference. By actually giving the other person’s words a moment to sink in before you respond, your connection with that person and the depth of your conversation will be very noticeable. Because humans love to be heard, it will have a positive impact on the speaker if they have not been interrupted and there is a pause for reflection, indicating you have listened and are not just 'taking your turn' with what you might have said anyway. And you will feel yourself understading and connecting with the person in a new way.

Thinking of your response while trying to listen is juggling, and causes you to lose a lot of concentration. By improving your listening skills, you will actually feel more focused. Your mind is doing one thing at a time: listening when it’s time to listen, and responding when it’s time to respond.

All of us want to be listened to, all of us want to really be heard. When someone senses you are really listening to what they have to say amazing things can happen. Solutions can be found that were never imagined. Understanding can be reached that had seemed impossible.

Diane is Head of People Development at Newton Europe

This is the 11th in the Series: Your Infinite Potential:

1. Your Infinite Potential: Living to the Max
2. Your Infinite Potential: Prune for New Growth
3. Your Infinite Potential: The Power of Morning Ritual
4. Your Infinite Potential: Lies Outside Your Comfort Zone
5. Your Infinite Potential: Making the Most of Your Time
6. Your Infinite Potential: Are you Holding You Back?
7. Your Infinite Potential: Through Helping Others
8. Your Infinite Potential: Stay Curious
9. Your Infinite Potential: Be Less Busy Being Busy
10. Your Infinite Potential: Recharge Yourself