I wish I could say that I am speaking from the experience of having mastered the skill of listening. Unfortunately, I can’t. I still catch myself cutting people off, interrupting, and finishing others’ statements. Listening is not a talent of mine, but I believe I can make it into a skill. I’m working on it and it’s definitely a process.
Like in any good multi-step program, the first step is to admit having a problem. I didn’t have a big realization moment. I didn’t make a huge mistake by not listening. It was a lot of small experiences starting to add up. It was never a critical situation. However, I’m a person who thinks of all consequences, including worst case scenarios. The range of consequences I determined for not properly listening, ranges from being rude to being incompetent. I don’t like being rude to people and I definitely don’t like being incompetent.
Once I realized that I have a true problem – at least for my personal and professional goals – it was time to resolve the problem. Personal habits are not very easy to break. I started by trying to catch myself not listening. At first, I would still end up behaving how I use to. The initial improvement was I would realize I didn’t fully listen to the person, apologize, and ask for them to continue.
Slowly, I was able to catch myself opening my mouth and would shut it while getting the first syllable out. It sounded funny, but was worth it. This progressed into training myself to take a deep breath as I opened my mouth to interrupt, followed by a quiet exhalation instead of speaking. Eventually I came up with a technique where I would take mental (and sometimes written) notes while listening to the speaker. It became a bit of a game, where I would start with a blank sheet and fill in the page with the details that I heard. The goal was to fill in as much space as possible, without room for gaps. So it was in my interest to keep the speaker talking for as long as possible because the information helped me gather a full picture. Once the speaker would stop talking, I would look at my (mental) sheet and see if there were any gaps. Those gaps would turn into follow up questions.
The problem with not listening is that you start trying to fill in the gaps you don’t know exist. Letting a person finish speaking may give you that key piece of information that would prevent a guess or question that would frustrate the speaker. You get the full picture and feel competent. The speaker gets the respect he deserves.
As I said, I haven’t mastered the skill of listening and it’s still a work in progress. I still catch myself doing all of the above from apologizing to taking mental notes. Just like with the progress from blind interrupting to apologizing, my main goal currently is to make the majority of cases result in the notes.
I was inspired to write down my experience after reading The Discipline of Listening by Ram Charan.
Career Carrot 