A great deal of time spent in human relationship is taken up by listening. But do, we really listen comprehensively to what others have to say? Here we look at a much neglected function, and at how we might better perform it. Plus how we can make it easier to listen to ourselves.
“All this has been said before, but since nobody listened, it must be said again.” Nobody listened, it must be said again. Nobody listened how often in this case and how often must messages be reported, because they were not heeded in the first place. In business, family and other personal relationships, the failure to listen properly is responsible, at the very least, for an enormous waste of time.
Yet scant attention has been paid in the past, to the listening side of communication. Academic courses in communications still tend to place the emphasis on how to speak and write effectively, rather than on the effective reception and assimilation of ideas. Recently, though, some large Corporate Companies have started courses in listening skills for their employees. This is mainly because it has been authoritatively estimated, that only about half of the oral messages passed around in the course of a day’s work are fully understood.
Big businesses are naturally concerned about communication, because it plays such a key role in their operations. Oral communication, especially to a major extent, the fuel of the managerial machinery of a Company is the spoken word. Surveys have indicated that the senior officers of major corporations spend up to 80 per cent of their working time having discussions, either at meetings, in face-to-face conversation, or over the telephone. Assuming that they listen more than they talked and good executives usually do listening to other people, account for about half of their business day.
The volume of listening to be done on the job, diminishes somewhat on the way down the managerial ladder. Still, listening remains an essential function from the executive suite to the shop floor. It is central to getting things done and it strongly influences morale, which in turn affects productivity. Again and again, the same phrases crop up in surveys of the attitudes of employees towards their superiors. A man who is happy with his boss will say: “He listens to me”, or “I can talk to him.” Those who are unhappy will say the reverse.
A situation arose in a manufacturing plant a few years ago, which clearly illustrated the consequences of bad listening in industry. The plant had a serious quality control problem, which took months and relatively huge amounts of money – to identify and to solve. Then a young tradesman, on the brink of resigning, told the Personnel Manager, he had known what was wrong from the beginning. Why hadn’t he said something about it? Well, he said, he had approached both his foreman and the plant engineer, “but they wouldn’t listen. I stopped trying to tell them when they made me feel like a jerk.”
If this story suggests that listening habits in business (and not only big business) could be improved, it also suggests a prerogative to better listening in society in general. This is nothing more than a willingness to listen – a disposition that is lacking in people, more than they would care to admit. In his novel “Daniel Martin”, John Fowles writes of a man who divides his conversation into two categories: “when you speak, and when you listen to yourself speak.” That may sound extreme, but who doesn’t know a person like him? And who, on occasion, has not indulged in a one-sided conversation himself?
It is almost a cliché in marital disputes that the partners “can’t communicate”. It is certainly a cliché among parents that their offspring “won’t listen to sense”. On the other hand, young people complain that their parents don’t take what they have to say seriously. Clearly, the emotional messages people send out to their intimate are not being adequately received.
THE MIND DARTS AHEAD LIKE RUNAWAY RACE HORSE:
As Samuel Butler observed, “it takes two people to say a thing – a sayer and a sayee. The one is just as essential to any true saying as the other.” We are all “sayees”, but most of us afford little thought to our performance in this vital role in human affairs. We confuse hearing with listening, believing that, because hearing is a natural function, then listening must be effortless. According to an American speech communications expert, it is anything but: “Listening is hard work and requires increased energy – your heart speeds up, your blood circulates faster, your temperatures goes up.”
So listening is a kind of activity. Those who aspire to be good listeners must turn it from an unconscious activity to a conscious one. What makes a good listener? It all begins with concentration. We listen to other people through a thick screen of physical and psychological distractions, which can only be penetrated by deliberately applying the power of the mind.
Physical distractions are often easily enough dealt with, although few people bother to do so –shutting a door or window, moving out of hearing range of other people, cutting off telephone calls. The distractions generated within one’s own head are far more difficult to manage. For the act of listening has a built-in dilemma, which is that the speaker cannot keep pace with the workings of the listener’s mind.
The average rate of speech is about 125 words a minute; the average person thinks at a rate nearly four times faster. With all that slack time at their disposal, people on the listening side of a discussion are likely to be carried away by their own thoughts.
It is said that “the mind wanders” while one person hears another talks, actually it starts ahead and off the track like a runaway racehorse. This helps to explain why people jump to conclusions. They anticipate what is going to be said, instead of following what is going to be said in the present. In this regard, we might do well to remember the admonishment of a rough – and – ready tycoon as he started a meeting: “Now listen slow”.
It takes a concerted effort of will to deal with some of the other impediments to listening, that clog the mind and more so, since they spring from perfectly normal human feeling. For example, everyone’s range of interests has its limits, so we all have a tendency to resist ideas that are of no personal interest to us. It is natural to conclude that complex thoughts outside of our own fields of experience are beyond our comprehension, so we make no effort to digest them. Once one is immune to boredom, the first couple of sentences uttered by a dull speaker are enough to make us want to “time out” all the rest that he says.
It is difficult to suppress the emotional responses to another person’s words, triggered by our own attitudes and opinions – difficult, but necessary to good listening. Human nature makes us want to hear only what pleases us and to reject that which does not. We are therefore prone to listen carefully to ideas, which accord with our own point of view and to discount or mentally argue with those we find disagreeable. To listen effectively, we have to guard against the tendency to exercise emotional censorship – to bland out or skip over ideas, which we would rather not hear.
THE MEDIUM IS THE PERSONALITY OF THE PERSON DOING THE TALKING:
“The medium is the message.” This may be so of the electronic and print media, but it is not so in face – to – face conversations in which the medium is the personality of the individual talking at the time. You might not like that type of person, you might object to his or her appearance or mannerisms; but it is what is being said that counts, not who says it. The same applies to positive emotional responses; you might be so favourably impressed by some personalities that you take what they say for granted, and fail to hone in on the meaning of their words.
At the same time, however, you should listen with more than your ears. People give out non-verbal signals as they talk, as lovers know when they look into each other’s eyes. The look on a man’s face, his stance, his gestures, his pause and hesitations, may tell you more about his real message than the words he is saying, not just what he thinks.
CHECK UP ON YOUR CONCLUSIONS AND YOUR GRASP OF THE FACTS:
Parts of the difference in the speed of speech and thought, mentioned above may be employed by the listener, in practising such visual observation. Another part of the extra thinking time accorded by the workings of the mind, can be used to mentally summarise and analyse what is said. One way to prevent your mind from leaping ahead of the words being spoken, is to periodically check up on your conclusions and your grasp of the facts by asking questions. This clarifies misunderstandings and allows you to digest the other person’s thoughts, one stage at a time.
The full capacity of the mind may also be brought to hear on the task of listening, by training it to scan like radar for key ideas. In this way, the listener can get straight to the point, when it is his or her turn to talk. Some people have a prodigious capacity for details, but most of us are in danger of becoming confused, if we try to remember every detail in a long discussion. Our comprehension is better served, by identifying the points that make up the theme of the other message and then attempting, through questioning, to make our understanding of them clear.
Needless to say, the responsibility for effective discussion, does not rest solely with the listener. The disparity between speaking and thinking puts the onus on the speaker to ensure that his thoughts do not get lost in the gap between words and thoughts. Psychologists who spent many years studying listening problems, made the following suggestions for holding a person’s attention:
- Always start with the conclusion – never with a question.
- Do not lead up to your main idea slowly; if you do, the listener’s mind might have skipped ahead of you, by the time you get to the point.
- Translate what you have to say into potential benefits to the listener, whenever possible. People will sit up and take notice, if they feel there is something in it for them.
- Repeat your point subtly in the course of your delivery, preferably by citing examples that keep the listener from getting bored.
Don’t you think it is worth trying it out. You don’t lose anything, you only stand to gain. Learning is a continuous process. Learn to listen. The key to listening effectively is …......
“Listen to understand rather than Listen to reply”
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