Listening Now Blog

The corporate world has long shown a face of serious interest in good communication skills and improving the existing skills of its workers.  I’ve sat in countless meetings with leaders (and the Human Resources people who attend them) who have earnestly spoken of how much they want to invest in and improve the communication skills of their team. 

Often listening is singled out – “people don’t listen well here” is such a common complaint in many workplaces.  I’ve spoken with more people than I’d have wanted to who have been truly harmed by the lack of satisfactory (let alone great) listening in their workplaces.

I’ve spoken with many bosses who are truly frustrated at the lack of listening that goes on in their teams, and are wringing their hands in frustration as to what to do about it.

What’s so interesting is when you ask these leaders what would be the upside to people listening better, you often get a list of very generic benefits. Those kinds of benefits are hard to measure. If you follow up with “well, if we did some things with a view to improving listening skills – how would you know things had improved?”, there’s often a strained silence and blank expression that greets that question.  

Leaders know that listening skills are important – critical, even. They’re often just unable to articulate precisely why or for what benefit.  It’s what makes listening so darn fascinating.  We know we need it (sometimes desperately), we know it’ll make a difference  (it may even be life changing)- but we can’t quite pin those upsides down.

Which is why I was so taken with this new study on listening.

This study is being conducted right now and is focused on this question:  Does your boss listen to you?  What a fascinating question!  The architects of this study, Professor Avi Kluger and his student Osnat Bouskila-Yam, have a starting set of behaviours that constitute good listening.  They say a good listener:

• Enables speakers to tell more interesting stories
• Enables speakers to better understand themselves
• Sells more
• Strengthens parent-child relationships
• Increases employees’ or co-workers’ sense of well being
• Improves the quality of friendships

I was interested in all of these, but the “sells more” one really caught my attention.  So often, listening skills are presented as being in need of improvement for less commercial reasons.  I really liked how up-front the “sells more” item is – yes, listening can improve your sales performance!  Who knew?!

And they also say: However, the skill of good listening is poorly understood and unreliably measured.  Indeed.

I’m in full support of this study.  And if you’d like to be involved (by say participating in the research), then click here.  They say that even just participating in the survey, which takes 20 – 30 minutes, can improve how you think about listening.

“Very early in my work, I discovered that simply listening to my client very attentively was an important way of being helpful.  So when I was in doubt as to what I should do, in some active way, I listened.  It seemed surprising to me that such a passive kind of interaction could be so useful”.

A thumbnail sketch on Carl Rogers:  The impact Carl Rogers had on the therapeutic movement is profound.  Some say there is a “before Rogers” period and an “after Rogers” period, such is the significance of his approach and methods.   

The word “humanistic” is associated with the work of Carl Rogers – personally, I believe it’s a good thing to bring humans “front and centre” into this kind of work.  Carl Rogers believed in the philosophy of relationship - he believed that “the client has within themselves the ability to move towards wholeness” – a radical thought at the time when the therapist was definitely sitting in the I’m The Expert On You chair.  Carl Rogers is credited with the “listening for feelings” approach to therapy – at a time when thought reigned supreme, to bring feelings to the fore was indeed very progressive.

The debt we owe to Carl Rogers in his understanding of human beings and the human condition is unpayable.  In the context of listening, he manages to tell us something simple and profound.

Of course, listening can also be complex.  There are skills to be mastered, space to be created, connection to be fostered and pitfalls to be avoided.  But it doesn’t have to be complex. 

As one master has said: When in doubt, just listen.

Birdy Diamond and I are afflicted by the same bug – we are fascinated by the power and magic of listening in everyday lives.  When Birdy first suggested a series of posts on Listening Currency, I was fascinated.  And delighted that she wanted to write four posts about it.  Then four grew to five, and to six.  And there are even more when those came from!

So please to enjoy another installment in Birdy’s series on Listening Currency.  Thank you Birdy – over to you!

Greetings! So, you’ve read the previous posts (and you can start here if you want to catch up) and decided that yes, you’d like to apply the principles of Listening Currency to your life.

Here are some tips to help you make that resolution a reality, instead of just another good intention thrown out on the trash heap.

Three What-to-dos of Supporting New Listening Habits

As we move through January, the first month of the New Year for those following the Gregorian calendar, it is useful to look at ways which can help us support the new habits that we declared to the world a few weeks ago.

Listening habits are like any other habit in this respect. There are things you can choose to do and not do which will support the new listening habits you have chosen.

Here are three things to do:

 1. Make active choices.

The first is to remember that you always have choices, and that those choices are up to you.

There may be pressures. There may be consequences.

This does not change the fact that you still have active choice, and it is up to you to exercise it.

When it comes to a listening situation, actively decide whether or not you want to participate in it.

If you do, great.

If you don’t, great.

Allow yourself the freedom and the space to make that active and conscious choice.  Which also means you are aware of your contribution to the listening space.

And remember that the key word in that phrase is ‘active’. Making the choice and then not doing anything about it isn’t terribly useful.

2. Choose in advance.

Making those choices that you can ahead of time can make them a lot easier to follow through on.

Choosing what you want to listen to, the people that you want to hear it from (and those you don’t), the timeframe you want to devote to it, etc., all can be a bit easier to figure out if you go into things with a plan.

It certainly makes it easier to maintain boundaries if you know what they are before you get there. I’ve had those head-on collisions with suddenly-realized boundaries before, and let me tell you – in my experience, they seldom end well.

Now obviously you can’t do this with every single piece of listening, but when possible, figuring out a list ahead of time can be a useful way to triage your listening on the go.

3. Stand in your power.

Remembering to stand in your power in regards to your listening (and everything else for that matter) is a most powerful way to support yourself as you move into your chosen new habits.

It’s your body.

It’s your time.

It’s your life.

It’s your right to spend them as you choose.

 Practice remembering this. Then apply that practice to your listening.

 If you are in a situation where there is hostility or deliberate malice - stop listening! Get away if you can, and at least turn a deaf ear if you can’t.

 If you are in a situation that hits one of your ‘must listen to this’ buttons, then do so! Listen intently, drinking it all in.  This is important, even if you feel uncomfortable at times. Some of the most powerful listening we can do is when we don’t like what we’re hearing (it all depends on the intention of and our relationship with the person we’re interacting with of course).

 Remember that point about making active choices. You and you alone get to choose your boundaries, so choose them well.

 That’s enough to make quite a good beginning.

 Stay tuned!  Next time, we’ll be exploring some how-to-dos that will make implementing these what-to-dos a whole lot easier.

About the Author: Birdy Diamond & her husband Mike, teach people about wonder, words and progress at their growing collection of websites comprising The Avian Empire: An Encouraging Bird, CrowTarot Tours and  Mysticphoenyx Cafe .

Brenda Ueland was one of the most fascinating women of her time.  She died in 1985 at the age of 94.  She wrote one of the first “agony aunt” radio shows (Tell Me More), was married three times and had an affair with an anarchist who ended up leaving her for Isadora Duncan. She was a suffragette, an editor for a large New York City publisher and an animal rights activist.

In 1938, Brenda Ueland wrote a book about writing If You Want to Write which one reviewer said was “the best book ever written on how to write” and remains a best seller even today.

Brenda’s fundamental belief was “Try to discover your true, honest, un-theoretical self.”

Your True.  Honest.  Un-theoretical.  Self.  The most surprising word in that sentence, at least for me, is un-theoretical.  There’s lots of folks out there who try to help you to find your true and honest self. 

But your un-theoretical self?  Now, that’s an idea worth reflecting on.  Who, or what, is my un-theoretical self?  If I took all theory out of my sense of self, what’s left?

If I’m not an ESFJ or a 3 on the Enneagram or an Aries with Venus ascending – who or what am I?  And what if I didn’t use theory to help me find an answer to that penetrating, perception shifting and possibly life changing question?

Not only did Ms Ueland put a huge wooden spoon in my brain and give it a good stir about the self I am experiencing myself to be, she said some fascinating things about listening. 

“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force … When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and come to life … and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life ….

When we listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other … and it is this little creative fountain inside of us that begins to spring and cast up new thoughts and unexpected laughter and wisdom. …

It is when people really listen to us, with quiet fascinated attention, that the little fountain begins to work again, to accelerate in the most surprising way”.

What can you take from the wisdom of Ms Ueland this week, and apply to your world?  What ideas can you help grow?  Who or what can you help recharge?  Who can you give your quiet fascinated attention to?  What unexpected laughter is waiting for you, on the other side of listening? 

How can you use this strange listening to improve your life, and the lives of those around you, this week?