Showing posts with label
a10. Barriers to Being a Good Listener.
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Showing posts with label
a10. Barriers to Being a Good Listener.
Show all posts
Many people don’t listen simply because they aren’t expecting others to say anything of value. Every human being has something to contribute. Sometimes you must do some digging, but everyone has some special knowledge. In a negotiation, the other party has a great deal of beneficial information. But if your normal mind-set is that the people you talk to have very little to contribute, turning that around and listening effectively may be difficult. When some people speak, what they have to say and how they go about saying it is, to put it bluntly, boring. Spending the energy to listen to such people may not seem worth the effort. But even these people often have valuable information and insight. Your job is to draw such speakers out. Question them until you hit some nugget of interesting information. In fact, good listeners tend to attract much more interesting company than others. It’s also true that, by listening carefully to the company you keep, you learn much more about the subjects that make them interesting. Listening can be like sifting through sand on the beach. This is truer at a cocktail party than at a scheduled negotiating session. To be the best possible listener at the negotiating session, you can practice at cocktail parties. The next time you have to go to a party, keep repeating, “Buried within this chatter is something of value.” If you want to find it, you can.
Beware of the preconception. A preconception is an expectation that prevents your mind from staying open and receptive. Like its relative, the assumption, the preconception is an enemy to listening. Both problems seem to prey on people in long-term relationships.
A preconception is a notion that just because a person has behaved one way before, he or she will act that way again. If a person blusters once, for example, you may well jump to the conclusion that the individual will display the same behavior during the next negotiation. “Oh, he’s just that way” may be an accurate statement of fact. But if that conclusion is used as an explanation for every outburst, it may well mask the reality that the blustering party is quite angry at some aspect of your behavior. The blusterer may be genuinely frustrated this time at not being able to reach a deal or may be reacting to pressures from places not related to the negotiation. So how do you fight the preconception? Greet a person as though you are meeting him or her for the first time. Practice on your receptionist or whomever you first see at work. Stop. Turn. Look the person in the eye. Ask, “How are you today?” And listen, really listen, to the answer. If you greet people as though you are meeting them for the very first time, you will go a long way to conquering preconceptions.
Maybe you have, over time, developed the habit of talking or thinking ahead when you should be listening. If this is the case, you can treat this habit like smoking; you can quit.
Changing this behavior pattern is difficult because you have to do it on your own. No nicotine patch is available for effective listening. The more status and power you have, the less likely people are to tell you that they think you’re not listening. They notice. They react. They just don’t tell you. It’s like bad breath; many notice, and few comment.
Habits are hard to break, no question about it. Just think about all the money that has been made trying to get people to break the smoking habit or change eating habits or stop a drinking habit. You won’t find many courses on changing listening habits because bad listeners usually aren’t so self-aware, and their behavior isn’t so noticeably and immediately destructive. If you really want to break the habit of not listening, you can use the following steps to improve. Don’t be too hard on yourself if your improvement isn’t as a rapid as you would like. You’re way ahead of the pack for even trying.
- Be aware of how you listen whenever anyone talks. Do you actually turn physically toward them and look them in the eye, or do you continue multitasking in some fashion or other?
- Monitor how often your mind wanders, thinking of something else. Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if an audible alarm went off every time your mind wandered during a conversation?
- Actively work on bringing your mind back to the conversation at hand each and every time it wanders.
No matter how boring the speaker is, bring your mind back, and then try to use questions to keep things more interesting. One of the best uses of questions is for turning the boring into the interesting.
Your energy can drag in two ways. One is the effect of your very own biorhythm or energy cycle. The other is some specific factor that affects you at a specific time for a specific reason. I talk about the biorhythm first. Every human being has a biorhythm. That means that each person has a time of day when his or her energy naturally peaks and a time of day when his or her energy naturally slumps. Its part of the human condition and it’s slightly different for everyone. This rhythm occurs totally independent of any specific events. You have heard people say, “I’m not a morning person” or “She’s a real night person.” They are talking about the natural biorhythm. By the time you become an adult, you have a good idea of what the best time of the day is for you to do various things.
And it’s not just the amount of energy, but what the energy is good for. I like to write in the morning. If I can, I schedule meetings for the afternoon so my reading and drafting activities take place during the morning hours. That’s me. If at all possible, I schedule serious negotiations for the afternoon. What is your biorhythm? How do you normally function in the morning, the afternoon, and the evening? It’s important to do what you can to match your activities up with your own natural biorhythm. This isn’t always possible, not even for me, but it’s a worthy goal to have in mind. In the office, try not to schedule negotiations for the latter part of your workday, if that’s when your energy tends to be lower. For you, your mind won’t be as fresh as it is before lunch, for example. You don’t carry the “baggage” of your workday with you if you schedule meetings during the first half of the day. On the contrary, you may have had a good day at work and you’re pumped and ready for a negotiation late in the day.
But what if the other party is experiencing an energy drag? What if the other party isn’t having a good day? Perhaps your counterpart doesn’t want to listen. Your negotiation is then similarly in danger of not proceeding well. The unfortunate truth is that often the two negotiators will have different rhythms to their energy. You just have to try to make things work the best for you because it’s not possible to change someone else’s rhythm. No matter what biorhythm may be involved, more often than not specific circumstances will trump the biorhythm. Sometimes people are just too tired to listen. Listening takes energy. If your energy is flagging because of a lack of sleep or the crush of other business, you have a hard time listening. Be aware of that fact. You probably have said or heard, “Slow down, I’ve had a long day at work.” That’s the sound of a good negotiator, someone who knows that you can’t always listen at top speed. If the speaker needs to slow down for you to fully participate and pay attention, just say so.
Many people who talk too much when they should be listening do so out of nervousness. Talking a great deal is often a mask for, or a result of, old fashioned butterflies.
Butterflies are lethal to good listening — they cause a person’s mind to race around searching for an answer, observation, or anecdote while the other person is speaking. A mind in motion blocks listening as effectively as a mouth in motion. Think back to your worst interview ever. Chances are that it didn’t go well because you weren’t listening and, most likely, were talking too much. Job interviews are nerve-racking experiences. The butterflies fly at full speed.
In the heat of the moment, you don’t realize how much you are talking. By and large, the same people who talk too much usually don’t even listen to themselves. Interrupt them and ask them to repeat something they just said, and they can’t do it. They talk, but they don’t listen — not even to themselves! An unfortunate side effect often occurs when your mind is racing during communication. The person speaking takes your silence for listening, not preoccupation. Then, when you give an inappropriate answer or, worse, a loud “Huh?” that person makes an immediate and inaccurate assessment of your IQ. In essence, you make yourself look stupid, something you don’t want to do, especially during a negotiation. It sets you up for failure. Understand that butterflies are not free. They are expensive. If your butterflies cause you to lose control of your mouth when you need to be listening, they can cost you a job, a sale, a contract, or a date. Take a moment to breathe the next time you interview for a job or buy a car or audition for a role. A calm mind allows you to focus on what you say without saying too much. Better yet, it helps you listen.
Rechanneling anxieties into positive energy makes you look confident and in control in listening situations, as well as when you speak. Energy can voluntarily escape your body through five channels: eyes, hands, feet, body, and voice. Releasing your energy through eye contact is better than talking too much. Leaning forward and listening harder is better than talking too much. The key is to recognize that these feelings of anxiety are actually energy that your body is generating to help move you through a dangerous situation. If it sounds somewhat primordial, it is. The better your skills, the less threatened you feel and the less nervous energy your body must manage. Be aware of the ways in which butterflies affect each of these channels:
- Eyes: Butterflies cause you to look away from the person sitting across from you, giving the impression that you’re not focused. Don’t let your eyes flit around. Stay focused on the speaker.
- Hands: Butterflies cause you to fidget or wring your hands. Sit on your hands if you have to, but don’t be fidgety with them. Sometimes you can settle the butterflies by clenching your hands in your lap. This drains some of that energy that the butterflies create.
- Feet: Butterflies cause you to inadvertently tap your feet. This little tap dance is real irritating. Instead, press your feet hard against the floor. This is not noticeable and, like the clenched hands in the lap, can help drain off all that nervous energy that is coming out through your feet.
- Body: Butterflies cause you to slouch or cross your arms against your chest. This reaction isn’t as bad as some of the other behaviors because a lot of people do this naturally. However, it makes you look very unreceptive. Again, if this is the way the butterflies affect you, add some push to it. Tense your muscles to relieve the pressure of the extra energy and get you to a place where you can relax.
- Voice: Butterflies cause your voice to quiver or make you talk softly or too loudly. Stuttering can also be a problem. This is the toughest channel to control because your voice is the hardest to hide and one of the most obvious indicators of nervousness. Try not to talk much until you get the butterflies back in their cage. When you do talk, use short words and short sentences. Eventually, the butterflies leave. Try to refocus your energy on listening instead of blocking. You can avoid the pitfalls of the butterflies, but it takes a prolonged, conscientious effort.
One of the most self-destructive ways to listen in business and personal situations is listening with what I call the “yeah, buts.” This condition occurs when there is a kernel (or more) of truth in something negative that is being said but you don’t want to hear it. You are defensive about what the speaker is saying, so the first response out of your mouth is “yeah, but.” Whether you’re listening to a customer, boss, or spouse, you’ve got to put the automatic “yeah, but” response on hold. Watch out for responses like these:
- “Yeah, I know, but you’re not our only customer.”
- “Yeah, but honey, you’re always on my case about that.”
- “Yeah, but you always use that tone of voice with me.”
These responses keep you from hearing the other person. You block out any chance you have of learning something from this person. You want to say “I hear you” or “I understand” first. Then make sure that you do. Ask questions to find out as much as possible about what the other person is saying. Don’t stop until you fully understand what is being said; then — and only then — you can try to explain the situation. You will get more positive results this way.
One reason people don’t listen carefully during a negotiation is purely psychological. Generally speaking, people don’t want to get bad news. Some people state this derisively, as in, “Oh, he just hears what he wants to hear.” Catchphrases like that almost always have more than a kernel of truth in them. In fact, everyone filters out bad news to one extent or another. Every animal has stunning built-in survival mechanisms. One of the most important survival mechanisms is to hear danger coming. A predator, a fire, even a storm all have some advance warning signals that animals that want to avoid danger must hear and assess. Animals run from approaching danger. Although humans have retained many useful self-defense mechanisms, such as blinking, ducking, and flinching in the face of danger, we seem to have lost a very important one — the ability to hear danger coming. Perhaps we’ve decided that simply not hearing the danger is a better approach than hearing and, subsequently, having to deal with it. Not so. This is one case where animals are more advanced than humans are. Only when you hear and can accurately assess the danger you face are you in a position to avoid or defuse it. In fact, you should force yourself to probe even deeper if you suspect that bad news is lurking.
People use defense mechanisms in different ways. Some scream and holler, causing others to flinch. Some cave in to the predatory aspects of aggressors and instead hold in frustrations or grievances, using silence as a defense. The best thing to do is listen. In this modern world, words — not winds or sounds or temperature shifts — are the harbinger of bad news. In the workplace, you don’t have to worry about a physical attack. You have to worry about a future event that you can only learn about if you hear or read about it. So listen. Listen very carefully. It’s important for you to get as much detail as possible about whatever bad thing is coming your way. Unlike an animal that must run away from danger, you must stand and listen and absorb as much information as you can.
Barton Fink, by the Coen brothers, exemplifies not listening as a defense mechanism in all its glory. The film is about a newly successful New York playwright, Barton Fink, played by John Turturro, who accepts an offer to write a film while living in a creepy Los Angeles hotel. He finds himself with writer’s block. The Hollywood studio chief who hires Fink to write the picture is Jack Lipnick, played by Michael Lerner, a loud, brash, overbearing executive based on MGM’s legendary Louis B. Mayer. Watch the scene where Fink has his first meeting with Lipnick. Instead of listening to Fink, Lipnick uses every scare tactic in the book to command the room. Because he failed to hear Fink, Lipnick thinks he gets what he wants. In this case, he commissions Fink to take the writing job. If he had listened, he would have heard the bad news that Fink was not the man for the job. He would have known that Fink simply wasn’t going to write the script. He would have been a lot better off hiring someone who at least wanted to try to write the script.
Most people try to be good listeners, and most people consider themselves successful. Yet accusations such as “You are not listening to me!” abound. Unfortunately, a number of barriers to listening apply to a greater or lesser extent to everybody at some time or another.
One of the biggest reasons that listening is so hard is that our brains have been wired for thousands of years in a certain way. You can think much faster than anyone can talk. Speech rate is about 100 to 150 words per minute. You can listen at more than 500 words per minute. It’s only natural that your mind may race ahead of the words you hear and even take in other conversations. You have to be very careful that, when this happens, you refocus on the speaker. Face it: You’re battling thousands of years of pure biology.
