Improve your listening skills

Last week we talked about thinking about what your partner loves/likes and this week we talk about improving your listening skills.

Poor listening could lead to assumptions and misunderstandings. These lead to errors, ineffective decisions, and/or costly mistakes. On a personal level, poor listening leads to hurt feelings and a loss of team cohesion. This deteriorates trust and weakens communication even further.

Most of us would like to think that we are good listeners. In other words, we believe that we hear what someone is saying and can take it in and interpret it correctly, before responding appropriately. 

Unfortunately, the sad truth is that most of us overestimate our abilities in this area.

There are numbers of barriers that may prevent or hinder listening.

• Pseudo-listening

Pseudo-listening is a type of non-listening in which you appear attentive in conversation while ignoring or only partially listening to the other person. You may find that you do this in conversations without even thinking about it, which hurts you and the person you’re supposed to be listening to.

If your mind is somewhere else or wandering, you’re not listening, even if you look engaged in a conversation. The best way to avoid this is to use a simple active listening tactic: when responding, repeat back what you’ve heard so you can make sure you’re listening and understanding.

• Self-protective listening

Here, the listener is so wrapped up in their own situation and/or emotional response to it that they simply have no brain-space to hear or concentrate on anything else.

In other words, they are NOT really listening at all, and they are certainly not engaging with what anyone else says. It is a moot point whether this should be described as ‘listening’ at all—except that these listeners will often be nodding and smiling, and generally looking like they are engaging with what is being said.

However, when they come to respond, it will be obvious that they have not really heard or taken on board anything that is said.

These listeners often simply repeat their negative stories over and over—and with increasing levels of negative emotion.

• Judgemental listening

Judgemental listeners will constantly criticise what speakers are saying. This type of listening is like evaluative listening, but usually with more negativity and less opportunity to respond. These listeners often have preconceived ideas about the speaker (for example, bias or prejudice based on how they look, or their background). This may prevent them from considering the speaker’s ideas with an open mind.

This type of listening tends to result in the speaker shutting down and refusing to provide any more information. Being constantly criticised quickly becomes unpleasant.

• Defensive listening

A defensive listener takes everything that is said as a personal attack.

These people therefore feel the need to defend themselves against everything, and to justify everything that they say. They often use the phrase ‘Yes, but…’, because they have no interest in building on any other communication—only to justify themselves. They also find it hard to explore other points of view, because anything different is a threat. 

• Giving advice

Dishing out unwanted advice is a common way of presenting with poor listening skills. “Trying to fix a situation comes from such a well-intended place, but the talker is not asking you to fix anything, the talker wants to be heard,”.

Possibly the talker has something important to share or ask for and interrupting to give advice before they ask for it takes this opportunity away from them. If they want advice, they’ll ask for it. What’s more, giving unwanted advice stops you from listening and instead puts you in the speaker role. 

This is another time when having a notepad can be helpful. If the person asks for your feedback, you can refer to your notes to give it at the end.

•  Affirmative listening

Affirmative listening is the opposite of judgemental listening. Affirmative listeners only ‘hear’ messages with which they agree. They therefore only listen for points that they can support, and not those that show different opinions.

Having an affirmative listener is at first quite pleasant. They tend to agree with you, which is nice. However, after a while, you realise that they only agree with some points—and possibly not very important ones—but refuse to engage with anything else.

The problem here is that these people only listen for themselves. They want their opinion to be validated—and have no real interest in anyone else. This quickly gets one-sided and tiresome, especially if you are genuinely interested in a debate that explores different perspectives.

• Assumptive listening

Assumptive listeners make assumptions about the speaker’s meaning or intention—and usually before the speaker has finished. They may therefore finish other people’s sentences or jump in with a response before the speaker has really finished. Engaging with an assumptive listener is hard work, because you constantly must go back and explain your meaning again because they have interpreted it incorrectly.

Some types of ineffective listening generally relate to patterns of thinking as highlighted above. However, there may also be physical barriers to listening.

• Too much noise around you. It can be hard to listen effectively if there is too much background noise, such as radio or TV or while attempting to listen to your partner’s talk or being on the phone with someone else and trying to talk to your partner at the same time. Or browsing the internet and wanting to engage in a conversation with your partner at the same time. Or destructed by a notification shows on your smartphone you want to know what that was and trying to continue the conversation with your partner at the same time.

• You find the communicator attractive or unattractive and you pay more attention to how you feel about them and their physical appearance than to what they are saying. This can also apply when someone has an accent: you may find yourself listening to the cadence, and not the words or meaning.

• You are not interested in the topic/issue being discussed and become bored. This rapidly leads to you becoming distracted and ceasing to pay attention.

• Feeling unwell or tired, hungry, thirsty, or needing to use the toilet, too hot or too cold. Physical discomfort is a huge distraction.

• Being stressed about something else that is happening in your life. When you have a lot going on in your life, it is much harder to calm your internal dialogue and simply listen to your partner.

• Being on the phone rather than speaking face-to-face. Facial expression and body language is big part of communication You therefore must concentrate much harder on the phone, to fully ‘hear’ the speaker’s message.

• If you don’t really understand what someone is saying, perhaps because of their choice of words, or because they have a strong accent. Under these circumstances, it is tempting to just ‘switch off’. However, instead, you should try to listen harder, and ask for clarification if you don’t understand.

If you’d like to explore any of these further, and improve your communication and listening skills, let me know.