Are you really listening?

What does the act of listening mean to you?

Is it the short pause when you take a breath and allow someone else to get a word in, just to interrupt him again to tell your story? Or is it an act to analyse what the other person is saying so that you can catch him out, prove him wrong, or contribute to the conversation? Or are you not listening at all … continuing with what you were doing while the other person talks to you?

You might have heard or even said the words: “Don’t interrupt, just listen to me!”  Or you might ask people why they haven’t told you how they felt. Perhaps they tried to, but you never listened.

Many of us have taken courses in active listening, which means looking the other person in the eyes while he or she is talking, showing your  interest in the way you hold your body, nodding in agreement and making little agreeing sounds, and asking clarifying questions. But even this is not genuine listening.

Then what is genuine listening?

Genuine listening is an act of respect. It is focusing your attention entirely on the person who is telling his story – without interrupting to agree, disagree or ask questions. It is about giving another person the space to let hurts, thoughts, ideas, or worries flow from him, to open up space for new thinking.

True listening is therapeutic. Often a person doesn’t need advice, just the chance to talk: while sharing concerns, fears or doubts, his mind clears and solutions enter the space that was emptied.

By just listening and doing nothing else, you can help to transform negative attitudes into positive ones.  By listening, you can influence people much more than by telling them what to believe.

True listening is much more powerful “telling them”, when you want to influence people, because when you truly listen without judgement to a person voicing his or her uncertainties or anger, you give them permission to sort these feelings out by themselves.

When and to whom do you need to listen?

Always, and to everybody you care about. If you are a parent or a spouse, you can positively influence relationships when you start to listen genuinely. If you are an employer, genuinely listening to the concerns or ideas of your employees will make a difference in their attitudes. If you are a salesman, genuinely listening to and acknowledging your prospective client’s needs or uncertainties can mean the difference between making or losing the sale.

Anyone listening out there?

For more information on workshops, specifically aimed at listening skills and other narrative methods to build relationships, please contact Prose&Coms, at: susan@prosecoms.co.za

This blog appears as a regular column the Afridevelopment newsletter for small businesses owners. http://afrid.co.za/cms/index.php

Know your communication style

Communication, or more precisely, effective communication, lies at the foundation of healthy relationships. Now what makes communication either effective or ineffective?

To illustrate what happens when communication breaks down, let’s look at a possible work-related scenario:

Morris is the general manager at Livewire, a small but busy consultancy. He is under pressure to get a proposal out to a prospective client, and is at the same time preparing for an important meeting with Mojo, a current client, to save a relationship that had gone sour when one of Livewire’s young consultants was perceived as being unapproachable and arrogant.

Earlier the morning, Morris asked this same junior consultant to type up his notes and write the proposal, and it came back for his approval just before his meeting with Mojo - riddled with typos and grammar errors. After making a few corrections, he chucked down the proposal on the consultant’s desk, saying over his shoulder, while he rushed out: “Your spelling is atrocious. And check the grammar. There’s a style guide in my office – use it. I made notes on the side, please affect them. Have it ready by 5 – I’m off to see Mojo to rescue our contract after last week’s incident.”

Anything wrong with this? Morris said clearly what he wanted, by when and how to improve the piece of work. To his mind, he communicated effectively. He didn’t mean to insult the consultant or to tell her that she was inefficient, he just said that she had to correct errors on an important document and be more careful with her grammar.  But why did the consultant cry? And why did she sulk for the rest of the afternoon and went home with a headache and a firm resolution to find another job?

Effective communication implies that a message has been given clearly and understood correctly by the receiver of that message. If this doesn’t happen, the verbal and non-verbal communication did not deliver the intended meaning appropriately.

Without going into a long discussion about “my requirements” versus “your requirements” and how to “get what I want” while “giving you what you want”, we can identify one of the major reasons for the breakdown in communication as our preferred styles of communication that often get in the way of effective communication. 

If Morris had had a better understanding of his staff member’s communication style, he might have changed his manner of speaking to ensure the correct transfer of the message. If, on the other hand, the consultant had not felt guilty or defensive about the previous week’s incident, she might not have taken his brusqueness personally. Or, perhaps this breakdown in communication is a regular issue between Morris and the consultant – and a similar misunderstanding might even have caused the incident of the previous week.

So, what is the solution?

This example is grounded in a specific situation, but it happens so often that misunderstandings cause a rift in relationships, that it is worth our while to invest in improving our communication skills.

Tip of the week: How to communicate effectively

Find out what your preferred style is. If you had done the exercise in the previous post, you might be able to point out incidents where communication had broken down because of a misunderstanding of intention. Why did that happen? Do you know? Can you put yourself in the other person’s shoes and try to understand the misunderstood message from his or her perspective?

Most communication experts distinguish between four styles of communication, but tag them differently. For the sake of simplicity, we will refer to the communication styles as: Creator, Doer, Listener and Thinker. On the extroverted side, we get: The Creator and The Doer. On the introverted side, we get: The Listener and The Thinker.

Listeners, who are generally not very assertive, often get into conflict with Doers, and vice versa. If the Listener can focus more on definite actions and less on personal relationships, he or she can change a potential conflict situation into a meaningful conversation, while, if the Doer just counts to 10 before responding and shows more of his or her feelings, the Listener will understand the message and be able to respond better.

Creators are often very intense in their enthusiasm and tend to irritate Thinkers, who like to ponder on the detail and the processes, and vice versa. So Creators can do well to slow down a bit to listen to what the Thinker has to say because the Thinker’s input is often of great value. Thinkers, on the other hand, can try to move faster and leave the detail for later. They can also try to show more concern for human relationships.

Now where do YOU lie on the matrix?  Take a quick (free) quiz on http://www.asme.org/Jobs/Manage/Whats_Communication_Style.cfm to see your preferred style – and then work at your relationships.

For more information on workshops, specifically aimed at getting your message across effectively in diverse teams, please contact Prose&Coms, at: susan@prosecoms.co.za

This blog appears as a regular column the Afridevelopment newsletter for small businesses owners. http://afrid.co.za/cms/index.php