In a Nutshell
Almost everyone sincerely
believes that he or she listens effectively. Consequently, very few
people think they need to develop their listening skills. But, in
fact, listening effectively is something that very few of us can do.
It's not because listening effectively is so difficult. Most of us
have just never developed the habits that would make us effective listeners.
Research has found that
by listening effectively, you will get more information
from the people you manage, you will increase others' trust
in you, you will reduce conflict, you
will better understand how to motivate
others, and you will inspire a higher level of commitment
in the people you manage.
In This Issue
You
Probably Don't Listen as Effectively as You Think You Do ... and You Probably
Don't Know It
A study of over 8,000 people
employed in businesses, hospitals, universities, the military and government
agencies found that virtually all of the respondents believed that they
communicate as effectively or more effectively than their co-workers.1
(Could everyone be above average?) However, research shows that the
average person listens at only about 25% efficiency.2
While most people agree that listening effectively is a very important
skill, most people don't feel a strong need to improve their own skill
level.3
Why Effective Listening Matters
To a large degree, effective
leadership is effective listening. A study of managers and employees
of a large hospital system found that listening explained 40% of the variance
in leadership.4 That's a big correlation by social science
standards (like r = .63).
Effective listening is a
way of showing concern for subordinates, and that fosters cohesive bonds,
commitment, and trust.
Effective listening tends to reduce the frequency of interpersonal conflict
and increases the likelihood that when conflicts emerge they will be resolved
with a "win-win" solution. In addition, if you listen to the people
you manage, you will learn "what makes them tick." When you know
what makes them tick, you will be more effective at motivating them.
You can encourage them when they need encouraging, and you will know what
kinds of things they value as rewards for a job well done (e.g., additional
responsibility, public praise, autonomy, etc.).
What Effective Listening Is
Effective listening is actively
absorbing the information given to you by a speaker, showing that you are
listening and interested, and providing feedback to the speaker so that
he or she knows the message was received. Delivering verbal communication,
like writing a newsletter, involves trying to choose the right words and
nonverbal cues to convey a message that will be interpreted in the way
that you intend. Effective listeners show speakers that they have
been heard and understood.
How
the Most Skilled Communicators Respond When Listening
The most skilled communicators
match their responses to the situation. In discussions with the people
you manage, it helps to differentiate the coaching situations from the
counseling situations. Coaching
is providing advice and information or setting standards to help your employees
to improve their skills and their performance. Counseling
is helping subordinates recognize and address problems involving their
emotions, attitudes, motivation, or personalities.
The most common mismatch
of response types to situations is the tendency a lot of us have--myself
included--to give advice or deflect in a situation where counseling is
appropriate. When you are counseling, "reflecting" and "probing"
are usually more appropriate responses than "advising" or "deflecting."
Reflecting.
As mentioned above, when we listen we should show the other party that
what they are saying to us is being heard. Since we can think at
about four times the speed that speakers can speak, our brains have a lot
of capacity that can be used to process the meaning of what's being said.
Reflecting is paraphrasing back to the speaker what they said. One
of the things a lot of us find when we try to use this technique is that
it's real a challenge. We don't want to just parrot back what was
said; we want to paraphrase. It takes creativity to think of appropriate
ways to paraphrase what we've heard.
Reflecting can take other
forms than paraphrasing back to someone what was just said. For instance,
a listener can summarize what he or she heard and also take the conversation
a step further by asking a question for clarification or elaboration.
One of the things we often
notice when we reflect during a conversation is that the meaning we have
ascribed to what we've heard has missed the speaker's intended meaning.
When speakers hear us reflect, they get a chance to correct any misunderstanding
that we have. That proves that this technique does truly clarify
communication.
For most of us, it takes
a lot of practice before we become natural and effective at reflecting.
Our first few efforts may sound forced, phony, patronizing, or as one of
my MBA students put it, "moronic." However, that doesn't mean we
should give up learning how to reflect.
Probing.
In addition to reflecting, the most skilled communicators' responses in
counseling situations involve a lot of probing. Probing means asking
for additional information. Not all questions you might ask will
be effective. Avoid questions that challenge what has been said because
that will put the speaker on the defensive (e.g., "How could you have thought
that?"). In addition, a question that changes the subject before
the current subject is resolved isn't effective communication. Effective
probing is nonjudgmental and flows from what was previously said.
Good probing questions ask for elaboration, clarification, and repetition
(if, for instance, an important question you asked wasn't answered).
Deflecting.
Deflecting responses shift the discussion to another topic. When
we deflect from what we've been told, rather than acknowledging it, we
can unintentionally communicate that we haven't listened and that we aren't
interested. Deflecting shows that we're preoccupied with another
topic.
Many of us deflect unwittingly
by sharing our personal experiences when we should be focusing on the other
party. Think about this from the speaker's perspective: You don't
feel like you've been heard when you share a concern with someone and they
respond by telling you about themselves. The responder gives you
the impression that they aren't even listening, and that they just want
to talk about themselves. Sometimes we mention our own experiences
as a way of saying that we can relate to the speaker's experiences.
Our intention is to say, "Your not alone." But, when we tell our
stories we risk sending a message that we aren't listening and don't care.
Don't be a topper--the kind of person who can tell a story to top
any story that they're told. We all know a topper, don't we?
In a small way, toppers communicate that they are superior. That's
not supportive!
This is not to say that
sharing your experiences is never a helpful. On the contrary, mentors
often help their protégés by relating their own experiences
as a way to reassure their protégés that their concerns are
normal and that their problems are solvable. But, in counseling situations,
be careful to use deflecting only at appropriate times.
Speakers may not know that
you have heard and understood what they have said if you deflect by moving
on to another topic or shifting the focus to yourself or your own experiences.
Advising.
It can be insulting to give advice to someone who has shared his or her
problems with you. I used to work for a guy who would ask me daily,
"How are things going?" On the days when I would groan about a problem
I was wrangling with, his response would be to suggest what I should do
about it. That really bothered me. I value self-reliance and
I like solving puzzles, so I don't like someone telling me how to solve
my problems. Maybe I'm hypersensitive. But, I actually felt
like that manager didn't respect my ability to solve my own problems.
I wanted the self-satisfaction for finding the solutions myself, and I
wanted him to respect my problem-solving abilities. His communication
style didn't support that. I'm sure the advice my manager was giving
me was well intended. Nevertheless, I didn't want to hear it.
So, I stopped telling him what was bothering me. If he would have
just listened instead of advising, I would have shared more and we would
have built a stronger bond. Instead, his advising caused me to clam
up and it undermined his ability to understand what I was going through.
Perhaps I was being too
sensitive. Nevertheless, reactions like mine are common enough that
you will want to be careful to avoid giving unsolicited advice if you want
to be an effective listener. In fact, Deborah Tannen has found that
this problem is particularly common between men and women in the workplace.5
Women often discuss their problems and concerns with men just as a means
of developing interpersonal bonds. When men respond by giving advice,
they may believe they are being helpful to their female counterparts.
But, if no advice is solicited then providing it is a little presumptuous,
and it actually undermines the opportunity to further develop a cohesive
bond with that female coworker.
I, as a man, have a real
problem keeping my advice to myself. When someone is telling me about
a problem they're having, I can barely control the impulse to tell them
what they should do. But, I ought to know that people usually don't
want my advice. On average, people probably ask me for my advice
about two or three times a month--that's it. All the other times
I give advice it is just because I like to. When I give my unsolicited
advice, I've stopped listening and started to dominate the dialogue.
(Imagine how frustrating that is for my wife and my students.)
If you're like me and you
like to give advice, try fighting the urge as long as you can. Just
reflect what you've hear and probe for additional information. Then,
when you think the time is right to provide your words of wisdom, say something
like, "Let me know if you'd like some advice. I've got some thoughts
about that." You might be surprised by how few people take you up
on that offer.
Typical
Objections to These Effective Listening Techniques
As I teach these principles
to managers on and off campus, I hear a lot of objections to using them.
Here are three common objections:
Practicing This Management
Skill
Fortunately for those of
us who want to develop our listening skills, we get lots of opportunities.
To develop your listening skills, plan to use the response type that you
think you need to emphasize (e.g., reflecting) and plan to avoid using
the response types that you want to de-emphasize (e.g., advising).
Then, after you have a conversation, evaluate how effective you were at
giving good responses as a listener. Identify what went well and
where the opportunities for improvement are. Think about what that
challenges to being an effective listener were and how you can deal with
those challenges more effectively next time.
Monday mornings are a perfect
time to practice your effective listening. Just start a conversation
with a co-worker or employee by saying, "How was your weekend?" From
there, just probe and reflect. In ten minutes, you can actually get
to know the other person a little better and show that you're interested
in them.
Kids seem to be willing
to let us practice our effective listening. Seems like if you ask
kids questions, reflect their answers back to them and probe a little further,
they really open up. It's like you're their new best friend because
you've shown an interest in them. They'll forgive us if we sound
a little patronizing--they're used to it.
Making a tape recording
of a conversation, if you can find a willing partner, can also help you
evaluate your performance. With a tape of a conversation, you can
examine each response you give in detail, without relying on your memory.
Notes
1. Haney, W. V. (1979). Communication and interpersonal
relations. Homewood, IL: Irwin.
2. Husman, R. C., Lahiff, J. M., & Penrose, J. M. (1988).
Business
communication: Strategies and skills. Chicago: Dryden Press.
3. Spitzberg, B. H. (1994). The dark side of (in)competence.
In W.R. Cupach & B. H. Spitzberg (Eds.), The dark side of interpersonal
communication. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
4. Kramer, R. (1997). Leading by listening: An
empirical test of Carl Rogers's theory of human relationship using interpersonal
assessments of leaders by followers. Doctoral dissertation, The
George Washington University.
5. Tannen, D. (1995). Talking from 9 to 5: Women
and men in the workplace: Language sex and power. New York: Avon.
Additional Sources and References
Robbins, S. P. (2000).
Managing
today!, (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Whetten, D. A., & Cameron,
K. S. (2002). Developing management skills, (5th ed.).
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
About the Newsletter
and Subscriptions
LeaderLetter is written
by Dr. Scott Williams, Department of Management, Raj
Soin College of Business, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio.
It is a supplement to my MBA 751 - Managing People in Organizations class.
It is intended to reinforce the course concepts and maintain communication
among my former MBA 751 students, but anyone is welcome to subscribe.
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E-mail Your Comments
Whether you are one of my
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Let's keep the conversation going.
A Good, Clean Joke
Two blond guys were working
on a house. The one who was nailing down siding would reach into his nail
pouch, pull out a nail and either toss it over his shoulder or nail it
in. The other blonde, figuring this was worth looking into, asked,
"Why are you throwing those nails away?"
The first blonde explained,
"If I pull a nail out of my pouch and it's pointed toward me, I throw it
away 'cause it's defective. If it's pointed toward the house, then I nail
it in."
The second blonde got very
upset and yelled, "You jerk! The nails pointed toward you aren't defective!
They're for the OTHER side of the house!"