Listening is one of the most difficult skills. Very few people have ever had training in how to listen. It is estimated that most of us only listen at about 30 percent of our capacity. That means we are missing 70 percent of the message, or 70 percent of all the messages sent to us. Listening is such a difficult skill to acquire mainly because of three factors:
Committee of People. I know you are earnestly reading this article right now and concentrating on the information being given to you. But I would bet at this moment you are thinking about many other things as well. You may be thinking about what you’ll have for lunch or dinner, how your afternoon meeting will go, who’s picking up the kids today, or you’re thinking about whether he or she will call later, sex, or your recent or upcoming vacation. This is normal behavior, and our psychologist friends tell us it is very healthy as well. What is happening is that there’s a committee of people (not real people, of course) traveling with us wherever we go that’s always trying to take us away from the situation. Our committee of people is particularly with us when we are bored or uninterested in the situation or conversation at hand. But the committee is also with us at the most opportune or important listening times in our lives.
For example, years ago I was listening to a television news program where Barbara Walters was interviewing former presidents. She was asking them all different types of questions. One of the questions was, "When you were taking the oath of office for the president of the United States, what were you thinking at that time?" Now, on one hand, I cannot believe what these presidents admitted to. On the other hand, I realize it takes great self-assuredness to admit your thoughts. I remember one of the responses quite well. President Carter said that the day he was elected president his wife gave him a new attaché case with his initials on it. When he was taking the oath of office a few months later and listening to the Chief Supreme Court Justice, he was trying to remember where he had put the attaché case, because he wanted to take it to the Oval Office on his first day of work. This story illustrates the reality of, and the power of, the committee of people. Some of the other presidents spoke of even more minor things. So when you are talking to your team members and they are telling you about a new business opportunity or a major glitch in the computer system, be careful; your committee of people may have taken you away.
Human Brain Physiology. The human brain is too developed or sophisticated for the listening process. It can do so many other things at the same time. This is another reason why listening is so difficult. Unless we have been trained, or have practiced a lot, it is difficult for most of us to focus on one person or one conversation at a time.
Noise Factors. Noise factors are barriers to listening. They are the specific things that prevent us from listening to others. Noise factors can be either internally (our own personal barriers) or externally (from the other person or the environment) generated. There are literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of these noise factors. Here’s just a partial listing of these noise factors:
Internal Noise Factors
- Your emotional state (e.g., angry, anxious, depressed, stressed)
- Your physiological state (e.g., hard of hearing, poor eyesight)
- Illness or well-being (e.g., backache, the flu, overly tired)
- Personal biases, prejudices, perceptions, assumptions
- Thinking about what you will say instead of listening to the speaker
- Preoccupation with your own issues or situation, having your own agenda
- Mind reading what the other person is thinking or feeling
- Searching for the right kind of advice or recommendations to give
- Going to any lengths to avoid being wrong
- Placating because you want people to like you
- Personal values and beliefs
External Noise Factors
- Language differences
- Difficulty understanding accents or word pronunciations
- Speaker’s use of slang or jargon or acronyms that you are not familiar with
- A boring subject or topic, or a topic you have heard a hundred times before
- Monotonous or monotone voice of the speaker
- The workplace environment (e.g., room temperature too hot or too cold)
- Background noise (e.g., machines running, pagers going off, phones ringing, alarms, or sirens that impede your ability to hear)
- The personality, grooming, appearance, or attire of the speaker
- The speaker’s title or position within the organization
Let me share a few real examples from employees as to how these noise factors can be barriers to listening effectively.
Example 1: Multiple Meanings
Fiona works in a department store in Boston. Recently she was in her boss’s office discussing the store’s merchandise return policy. In the middle of the meeting, the boss received a phone call. She told Fiona to come back in a short time and they would resume the meeting. Fiona did as she was told. She came back in twenty minutes. The boss was furious when Fiona walked into her office. She said, "I told you to come back in a short time. Where were you?" Fiona said, "I gave you a short time to finish your call, twenty minutes." The boss yelled, "You don’t know what the word short means. It means five minutes!" Because both Fiona and her boss had different meanings for the word short, it caused their communication problem. The noise factor at hand was vocabulary. One word can be a noise factor. The unclear meaning of this word affected the listening process between Fiona and her boss. In order to have avoided this barrier, the boss could have been more specific about the time frame or could have arranged to notify Fiona when she was finished with her call. Fiona could have been an active listener and asked what her boss meant by "a short time," or she could have come back periodically to see if the boss was ready.
Have you ever received an e-mail that read, "I need this ASAP?" What does ASAP (as soon as possible) mean to you? Do you drop whatever you are doing or get it to the person by the end of the day, or the end of the week? As managers, we need to be very careful about the words we use and make sure we are being clear, concise, and precise when we are communicating. Often our team members are embarrassed to speak up or ask for clarification when they do not understand something or are confused. It is our responsibility to encourage them to do so. In fact, if you want to prove this point about the perils of not speaking up and have a little fun at your next meeting, make up an acronym, say PACS, and use it in the explanation of something. What do you think will happen? Most likely nobody will respond or question you about the meaning of the acronym. In today’s work environment, no one wants to appear that they are ignorant or not familiar with the latest company buzzword.
Example 2: Values
Values are our strongly held feelings and thoughts about right or wrong. We believe that our values are the right ones to have, when in reality, they are just our values.
Jennifer, a new sales manager at a hard-disk manufacturing company, had a difficult decision to make. She had to select one of her four sales associates to go overseas for a two-month business trip. All four of her staff members were at productivity stage 4, so it was an especially tough decision. Jennifer almost immediately eliminated Jon. At the outset of their conversation about the upcoming assignment, he mentioned that he and his wife had planned for the possibility of his traveling for the job and they would make alternative arrangements for child care since Jon’s wife worked evenings. Jennifer believed that someone with young children cannot and should not be away from home for long periods of time. Jennifer immediately stopped listening to Jon during the meeting. She never heard that Jon had experience working in that region of the world and that he also spoke the language. Jennifer’s values on family life and business travel became a barrier to her effective listening. It is possible that Jon was the best candidate for this assignment. If she was wrong, Jennifer’s decision may hurt Jon’s career. He may be viewed as someone who does not travel for the organization, and Jennifer, because of her strongly held values, may have eliminated him from other projects that involve travel or working late.
Managers are often unaware of how their values impact their managing. The manager’s values and beliefs influence what projects team members are assigned to, what clients they get to meet, which presentations they are allowed to make, how their performance is appraised, their promotional opportunities, and anything else that might influence their success within the organization. The manager’s values ultimately affect the success of the organization.
Example 3: Personality
Patrick works for a Management Knocker (one of the types of "worst" managers from The All-Time Worst Manager List). The Management Knocker continually complains about the job of managing and the upper management of the organization. For months now that is all Patrick hears when he has his monthly meeting with his boss. The meeting is intended to make sure projects are on track. But his work progress and whether he is meeting his goals is a small part of the meeting. Once the boss begins to complain, Patrick finds it very difficult, if not impossible, to actively listen to her. He finds her personality to be annoying and negative. When she does mention something more relevant to him about one of his projects, he often does not hear her because he has stopped listening. Patrick has allowed his committee of people to take him away from the situation.
These three examples demonstrate the power of noise factors or barriers and how they can influence the listening situation. As managers, we need to recognize which internal noise factors we are guilty of and what we can do about them and what we can do to reduce any external noise factors. The more we can reduce the impact of these barriers, the more motivating the listening experiences of our team members will be. The more motivating these experiences are for them, the easier it will be for them to advance to or remain at the higher productivity stages.
Because of noise factors, human brain physiology, and the committee of people, listening is a difficult skill to master. Being aware of the challenges to effective listening is the first step toward becoming an active listener. But being able to use the right listening style at the right time, using nonverbal-listening strategies, and being aware of cultural differences in communicating will also enable managers to be effective listeners.