Engaged! Tip#3 – Listening Skills
“The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention.” -Richard Moss
Unfortunately, few managers know how to be good listeners, and managers who are poor listeners miss numerous opportunities to learn more about their team members’ needs and goals. Statistics indicate that the untrained listener is likely to understand and retain only about 50 percent of a conversation. This relatively poor retention rate drops to an even less impressive 25 percent just 48 hours later. This means that an untrained listener’s recall of particular conversations will usually be inaccurate and incomplete.
The best managers are almost always the best listeners. Why does the correlation exist? Invariably, the best managers observe the communication skills, both verbal and nonverbal, of their employees. They make effective use of word choice and sentence structure. They realize that when they listen carefully to what their employee is saying, they inevitably learn something new. Experts on listening suggest that we all make at least one major listening mistake each day. For managers, such mistakes can be costly.
Three Pitfalls of Listening
Managers frequently run into three pitfalls that can come between them and effective listening. First, many people believe that a manager’s primary job is to persuade their employees to follow their line of thinking. Furthermore, they think persuasion means talking. They see talking as an active role and listening as a passive role. What they seem to forget is that persuasion is extremely difficult when you don’t know what motivates the people you are trying to persuade!
Second, poor listeners tend to concentrate on what they have to say rather than on what their employee is saying, and they use their listening time preparing for their next turn to speak. In so doing, they may fail to pay attention to information that could be vital later in the conversation.
Third, people let their emotional filters or blinders prevent them from hearing what they do not want to hear and seeing what they do not want to see. Words are only a small part of any message. Vocal intonation and nonverbal behavior also play a role. When a man utters the words, “I love you,” a wise woman looks beyond those words to his vocal intonation and nonverbal behavior before deciding whether to believe him.
Good listeners and observers know how to minimize the effect of their emotional blinders so they can honestly evaluate their true feelings of their employees.
Attentive Listening Skills
Great listening does not come easily. It is hard work. There are two major types of listening skills: attentive and interactive. The following attentive skills will help you uncover the true messages your counterparts are conveying.
- Be motivated to listen. Knowing that the person with the most information is usually the one in control should give you an incentive to be a better listener. It is wise to set goals for the amount and type of information you hope to receive. The more you can learn, the better off you will be.
- If you must speak, ask questions. To get specific, useful information and uncover needs and goals, you have to continually ask questions. By moving from broad to narrow questions, you will eventually acquire the information you need to make the best decisions.
- Be alert to nonverbal cues. Although it is critical to listen to what is said, it is equally important to understand the attitudes and motives behind what he says . For example, a person’s verbal message may convey conviction, while his gestures, facial expressions and tone of voice convey doubt.
- Do not interrupt when your employee is speaking. Interrupting a speaker is not good business. It is rude and, furthermore, may prevent the speaker from revealing information that could be valuable later. Even if you hear something you think is inaccurate, wait for your employee to finish speaking. You’ll find that you can sometimes get the most vital information when your employee disagrees with you or shares something that surprises you. If you really listen, rather than interrupting, you will gain valuable insights.
- Fight off distractions. Interruptions and distractions tend to prevent discussions from proceeding smoothly and may even cause a setback. Try to create an environment in which you can think clearly and avoid interruptions.
- Do not trust your memory. Whenever someone tells you something, write it down. It is amazing how much conflicting information can come up later. The ability to refresh your employee’s memory with facts and figures shared in an earlier session will earn you a tremendous amount of credibility and power. Writing things down may take a few minutes longer, but the results are well worth the time.
- Listen with a goal in mind. If you have a listening goal, you can look for words and nonverbal cues that provide the information you are seeking. When you hear revealing bits of information, you can expand on that information by asking more specific questions.
- Look your employee in the eye. Research has shown that, at least in Western culture, a person who looks you in the eye is perceived as trustworthy, honest and credible. If you want your employee to be willing to communicate with you again in the future, you have to convince her that you have these qualities. So look her in the eye and give her your undivided attention.
- React to the message, not the person. It is helpful to understand why your employee says the things he says and does the things he does. Elaine Donaldson, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, says, “People do what they think they have to do in order to get what they think they want.” If your employee says or does something you don’t understand, ask yourself, would you do the same thing if you were in his shoes? If you find it necessary to react negatively to words or actions, make sure you attack the message, not the person.
- Don’t get angry. When you become angry, you turn control over to your employee. Anger does not put you in a frame of mind to make the best decisions. Emotions of any kind can hinder your ability to listen effectively. Anger, especially, interferes with the problem-solving process.
-
Remember, it is impossible to listen and speak at the same time. If you are speaking, you are tipping your hand and not getting the information you need. Obviously, you will have to speak at some point, but first learn your employee’s frame of reference. Armed with that information, you will be in control. And when you are in control, you are the one in the driver’s seat-you are acting and your employee is reacting.
Interactive Listening Skills
Interactive skills ensure that you understand the messages your counterparts are communicating and acknowledge their feelings. Interactive skills include clarifying, verifying and reflecting.
Clarifying
You are clarifying when you use facilitative questions to fill in the details, get additional information and explore all sides of an issue. For example, “What specific information do you need me to provide?” Or “Precisely when do you want the report?”
Verifying
You are verifying information when you paraphrase the speaker’s words to ensure that you understand her meaning. For example, “As I understand it, your plan is . . .”; “It sounds like you’re saying . . .”; or “This is what you’ve decided, and the reasons are . . .”
Reflecting
You are reflecting when you make remarks that acknowledge and show empathy for the speaker’s feeling. To create win-win outcomes, you must be empathetic. Most of us easily feel empathy for a person who is experiencing something we have experienced ourselves. But true empathy is a skill, not a memory. Managers who have developed this skill can be empathetic even with employees with whom they have little in common. To be empathetic, you need to accurately perceive the content of the speaker’s message, recognize the emotional components and unexpressed meanings behind the message, and attend to the speaker’s feelings. Empathy is not the same thing as sympathy. A sympathetic individual adopts another person’s feelings as his own; an empathetic individual understands and relates to the other person’s feelings-while remaining detached. For example, “I can see that you were frustrated because . . .”; “You felt that you didn’t get a fair shake because . . .”; or “You seem very confident that you can do a great job for . . .”
When you are truly practicing reflective listening, you make no judgments, pass along no opinions and provide no solutions. You simply acknowledge the emotional content of the sender’s message. Here are some examples:
Sender: ”How do you expect me to complete the project by next Monday?”
Reflective response: ”It sounds like you feel overwhelmed by your workload.”
Sender: ”Hey, Mary, what’s the idea of not approving my requisition for a new filing cabinet?’
Reflective response: ”You sound upset that your request was not approved.”
The goal of reflective listening is to acknowledge the emotion your employee has conveyed and reflect the content back to your employee using different words. For example:
Sender: ”I can’t believe you want me to do the job in less than a week.”
Reflective response: ”You sound concerned about the amount of time you have to complete the job.”
If you properly construct your reflective response, your employee’s natural reaction will be to provide more explanation and information. You will find the following tips helpful in learning to be empathetic.
- Recognize and identify emotions. Most inexperienced managers are not adept at recognizing myriad emotions. You will find it easier to identify others’ emotions if you can easily identify your own. Make it a habit to check how you are feeling. Are you frustrated, stressed, angry, happy, sad, nervous? Then use these skills to identify your employee’s emotions.
- Rephrase the content. If you restate your employee’s comments word for word, she will believe you are parroting her. Doing so not only sounds awkward; it also makes your employee angry. The key is to restate the content using different words.
- Make noncommittal responses. A good way to start reflective statements is with such phrases as “It sounds like . . .”; “It appears that . . .”; or “It seems like . . .” These phrases work well because they are noncommittal. If you blatantly state, “You are angry because . . .” most people will proceed to tell you why you are incorrect.
A Rule to Remember
If you want to improve your listening skills, consider this: God gave you two ears and one mouth-use them in their respective proportions. To succeed as a manager, you have to understand the needs, wants and motivations of your employees. To understand, you must hear. To hear, you must listen.