Episode #71: How To Be A Better Listener

There is a tremendous amount of noise buzzing around in the world of business today. The noisiest portion is the bit going on between our ears, inside our brains. We are so busy, so immersed in what we are doing, we are forgetting some of the basics.

The blue screen addiction we have all become hooked on, means there is barely a minute of slow time anymore. We are texting, reading, surfing, jumping around all over the place. We are running our lives as a meeting conveyor belt, moving from one topic to the next, multi-tasking like demons on speed.

The upshot is that we are no longer really concentrating on what is happening around us, as we totally self absorb. The skill of communication has become a one dimensional activity, where we are getting out what we want to say, but not really listening to what our counterpart has to say. We go through the motions of pretending to listen, but we are only involved in partial listening. Even worse, we are mainly specializing in selective listening. Seeking the content we agree with, we filter out the delivery and all the hidden codes therein.

We are also so quick. We are second guessing the conversation and rapidly forming our next intervention, well before the speaker has gotten to the point of the story. Significantly, the point of the story may not be only in the words. The delivery of the story has tremendous meaning, but if we are concentrating on what we want to say, we may be missing that part of the communication.

We are also pretty deadly when it comes to cutting off the story, as we believe we have cleverly guessed where the speaker was going with it, even if that is not the case. The central points of the discussion can easily get bogged down in some minor aside to the main point, because we have zeroed in on a minor element, imagining it was key, when it may not have been. If we are habitual interrupters, we may be breezing through life existing on half conversations and never really plumbing the depths of what others are trying to convey to us.

Reflecting on these observations, do you feel you are a good listener, a gold medal winning listener? As we say in Japanese can you “Kuki wo yomeru” – can you read the atmosphere of the conversation, beyond the words being spoken? Do you feel you might need to improve your listening skills? According to experts, "good listeners" display a pattern of distinctive behaviors and these can be easily practiced and mastered. Here are some simple guides on how to better at the art of conversation by being a better listener.

1. Stay focused. Minimize external distractions and pay close attention to what others say. A classic example is the fact that we are often guilty of complaining we can’t remember the names of people we have just met. Part of the reason for that is we probably did not focus well enough to clearly catch the name in the first pace. Maybe we were distracted by what was going on around us. Maybe we were so busy thinking about what we wanted to say, we were tuning the speaker out. Maybe the person mumbled their name or fired it out like a bullet and we couldn’t catch the sounds. If we can’t even get their name right we are at a big disadvantage. We need to really focus on the person and get their name right as a starting point of business discipline.

Staying focused also means suspending the desire to say anything and just let the other person speak. Everyone loves to talk, especially about themselves, so let them. Focus on them and they will appreciate it. Ex-President Bill Clinton is renown for his ability to charm the people he meets. The common thread amongst those making the “charming” comment is that he spoke to them in a way that they felt they were the only person in the room. He would ask them a question and get them talking and the result was they felt they were having a one-on-one conversation with Bill, despite the noisy, crowded venue and the hordes of on-lookers. He was absorbed in their answer to the exclusion of all else for that brief interlude. That is the type of focus we need to adopt.

2. Interpret both words and emotions. The words people use are just one part of what they're saying. You can capture the whole message by also paying attention to the emotions behind the words. Japan is particularly challenging in this regard. The suppression of emotions or the disguising of the real emotion is well entrenched in the culture, so it can be very hard to gauge what is really behind the words. Foreigners sometimes complain that Japanese are “two-faced”. They haven’t yet understood how the culture tolerates the subtle difference between tatemae (public truth) and honne (real truth). This distilling of what is behind the words requires full power of concentration on that person and a total visual interrogation of every morsel of body language and voice inflection that we can muster.

3. Do not interrupt. Interruptions decrease effective communication. We assume we are smarter than the person speaking, because we have super powers that allow us to anticipate where the conversation is headed, even before it gets there. Maybe we should be more humble and polite and let them finish. This type of attitude shows respect and courtesy, two commodities which are in rare supply these days. Another reason people interrupt us is because they are nervous and can’t control their emotions. This is a fatal flaw and says a lot of negative things about you, that perhaps you don’t want to broadcast to the entire business community.

4. Resist filtering. Be open-minded; don't judge what someone says by your values only. Offense is often taken in error. We attach a certain interpretation to something said which was never thought or intended. This does not stop us though from reacting and reacting quickly. We get ourselves into knots and lots of trouble because of this tendency.

Pathetic attempts at humour or sardonic wit can also become socially combustible when they are way short of the mark or the cultural differences are too great to understand the joke. Very few Japanese ever get the sardonic, ironic, self flagellating style of humour, because the cultural context is missing or because the comedian is fundamentally hopeless in the first place.

Having spent 12 years here working in the international trade arena, I noticed that my fellow Aussies were notorious at this use of incomprehensible humour, in a failed effort to lighten the atmosphere. Actually, it does work a charm, but it needs to be preceded by the consumption of large amounts of alcohol after business hours. During the day it tended to bomb badly.

5. Summarize the message. Be sure you've heard something correctly by offering a quick summary of what the other person has said. This need not apply to all parts of a conversation or to all conversations, but when we are getting down to it, this is the time to clearly indicate you have fully understood what you are being told. The military worked this out a long time ago and even though we don’t have to adopt their jargon, roger that, we can adopt their basic idea of repeating the key information as a checking mechanism to eliminate future problems.

6. Try not to jump in too soon with your own opinion. Be sure to “wait your turn” to speak. Japanese is a great language for teaching us to be patient and wait until the punch line. In Japanese grammar, the verb comes at the end of the sentence, so as we are listening, we don’t know if the statement is going to be positive or negative, past, present or future. No point jumping in and cutting someone off when speaking Japanese, because you have no clue where they are going with the story. This is a good discipline to adopt for ourselves in general. If you are an ardent interrupter, an unreformed impatient, a spirited replier, a seasoned sentence finisher, then ease up. Purse your lips together and let no sound emerge until the other person has stopped. This may be killing you to wait, but your listening skills will skyrocket in proportion to your degree of patience.

The lost art of listening needs to make a comeback and we need to be the poster children for the revolution. Let’s get back to business basics and listen our way to great success.