ILLUMINATIONS Blog

I was planning to move on to another topic this week but your comments about listening pushed my thinking a bit.  I want to suggest that “hearing the words” is important but not sufficient.  Increased opportunities for building relationships, for opening to new ideas, for aligning for action come from listening between and around the words. 

You may be aware of a study by Albert Mehrabian that showed non-verbals were particularly important in conversations conveying feelings and attitude.  Mehrabian found that three elements account differently for our liking of an individual: words account for 7%; tone, 38%; and body language, 55%.  (This explains why when words and body language don’t align, we trust the body language!  And it certainly has a lot to say about how people are observing and interpreting our leadership.  Perhaps that’s a future conversation.)

When we are fully listening, we note the tone, we observe the non-verbals and we get curious when we sense that they are not aligned with the words we’re hearing.  When we are fully listening, we observe what’s not being said and wonder why.  We notice that pace and tenor of the conversation.  I’m not suggesting that we do this in an analytical, judgmental way.  Rather, I’m suggesting that we listen with a strong desire to understand more fully.

In discussing how our brain works, Thomas Lewis, MD, notes that our limbic brain specializes in detecting and analyzing the internal state of others and adjusting our physiology to match the situation.  ”The limbic activity of those around us draws our emotions into almost immediate congruency.”  This explains a lot about the excitement of live concerts - or the contagious anger of a mob.  But in the context of our discussion on one-to-one listening, limbic resonance suggests that we can ”listen” to the feelings of others by considering how their feelings are reflecting in us.

As I consider listening between the words, it’s pretty clear to me that this is a focused, open, fully-present, single-task activity where I intentionally decide to set my own stories and egoic needs aside for the purpose of trying to understand what’s important to another person.  I wonder what possibilities might emerge in that space….

Throughout my career, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I speak. Is my message clear? Do I speak up too often? Not enough? Am I showing that “executive presence” that’s so important to a successful career? And yet I’ve become increasingly convinced that I’ve spent far too little time reflecting on how I listen. I’m slowly learning the power of listening.

In a peer coaching session, we refrain from giving advice and let the manager who’s speaking talk through her challenge. And in the end, she realizes the steps she must take to make a change. In a community dialogue, we listen respectfully as someone who seems so different from us tells his story. And in the end, we realize that we have a lot in common with him after all. As a friend speaks, I long to solve the problem that she presents, but I cannot. And so I listen and she says that she feels better for having spoken about her pain. My daughter tells me that she’s frustrated with a situation. And I offer a solution. OOPS! Now she’s annoyed at me. Why do I need to keep learning the lesson: that when I can be fully present and openly listening, I’m often serving far more effectively than when I try to take over and offer suggestions from my “vast” experience.

I find that listening is particularly challenging for many of the leaders with whom I work. As managers, they’re learned to quickly assess the situation and then solve the problem. Time is wasting; get on to the next issue. And yet as leaders we can help others hone their skills, improve their confidence, and explore creative opportunities when we listen to them. And when we listen to others, they feel respected and valued.

Listening takes time; the pace is definitely different. Listening doesn’t fit with multi-tasking. You can’t manage real listening while talking to someone else on the phone, checking your e-mail and making a list of what to buy on your way home from the office. And when we listen, the questions we ask are different. We don’t ask to show how much we know; we ask out of genuine curiosity.

What might happen to your relationships if you listened more? I think I’d better stop here; I’ve got some listening to catch up on.