Vol. 60, No. 1 — January 1979 —
The Act of Listening
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A great deal of the time spent in human
relationships is taken up by listening. But do we really listen
comprehensively to what others have to say? Here we look at
a much-neglected function, and at how we might better perform
it. Plus how we can make it easier to listen to ourselves...
The eminent novelist and philosopher André Gide once
opened a lecture by noting: "All this has been said before,
but since nobody listened, it must be said again." Nobody
listened... how often is this the case, and how often must
messages be repeated because they were not heeded in the first
place. In business, family and other personal relationships,
the failure to listen properly is responsible, at the very
least, for an enormous waste of time.
Yet scant attention has been paid in the past to the listening
side of communication. Academic courses in communications
still tend to place the emphasis on how to speak and write
effectively rather than on the effective reception and assimilation
of ideas. Recently, though, some large North American companies
have started courses in listening skills for their employees.
This is mainly because it has been authoritatively estimated
that the "listening efficiency" of people working in industry
is less than 50 per cent, meaning that only about half of
the oral messages passed around in the course of a day's work
are fully understood.
Big businesses are naturally concerned about communication
because it plays such a key role in their operations. Oral
communication especially - to a major extent the fuel of the
managerial machinery of a company is the spoken word. Surveys
have indicated that the senior officers of major North American
corporations spend up to 80 per cent of their working time
having discussions, either at meetings, in face-to-face conversations,
or over the telephone. Assuming that they listen more than
they talk - and good executives usually do - listening to
other people accounts for about half of their business day.
The volume of listening to be done on the job diminishes
somewhat on the way down the managerial ladder. Still, listening
remains an essential function from the executive suite to
the shop floor. It is central to getting things done and it
strongly influences morale, which in turn affects productivity.
Again and again, the same phrases crop up in surveys of the
attitudes of employees towards their superiors. A man who
is happy with his boss will say: "He listens to me," or "I
can talk to him." Those who are unhappy will say the reverse.
A situation arose in a manufacturing plant in the United
States a few years ago which clearly illustrated the consequences
of bad listening in industry. The plant had a serious quality
control problem which took months - and relatively huge amounts
of money - to identify and solve. Then a young tradesman,
on the brink of resigning, told the personnel manager he had
known what was wrong from the beginning. Why hadn't he said
something about it? Well, he said, he had approached both
his foreman and the plant engineer, "but they wouldn't listen.
I stopped trying to tell them when they made me feel like
a jerk."
If this story suggests that listening habits in business
(and not only big business) could be improved, it also suggests
a prerogative to better listening in society in general. This
is nothing more than a willingness to listen - a disposition
that is lacking in people more than they would care to admit.
In his novel Daniel Martin, John Fowles writes of
a man who divides his conversation into two categories: "when
you speak, and when you listen to yourself speak." That may
sound extreme, but who doesn't know a person like him? And
who, on occasion, has not indulged in a one-sided conversation
himself?
It is almost a cliché in marital disputes that the
partners "can't communicate". It is certainly a cliché
among parents that their offspring "won't listen to sense".
On the other hand, young people complain that their parents
don't take what they have to say seriously. Clearly, the emotional
messages people send out to their intimates are not being
adequately received.
The mind darts ahead like a runaway race horse
As Samuel Butler observed, "It takes two people to say a
thing - a sayer and a sayee. The one is just as essential
to any true saying as the other." We are all "sayees", but
most of us afford little thought to our performance in this
vital role in human affairs. We confuse hearing with listening,
believing that, because hearing is a natural function, then
listening must be effortless. According to the American speech
communications expert Dr. Harrel T. Allen, it is anything
but: "Listening is hard work and requires increased energy
- your heart speeds up, your blood circulates faster, your
temperature goes up."
So listening is a kind of activity. Those who aspire to
be good listeners must turn it from an unconscious activity
to a conscious one. What makes a good listener? It all begins
with concentration. We listen to other people through a thick
screen of physical and psychological distractions which can
only be penetrated by deliberately applying the power of the
mind.
Physical distractions are often easily enough dealt with,
although few people bother to do so - shutting a door or window,
moving out of hearing range of other people, cutting off telephone
calls. The distractions generated within one's own head are
far more difficult to manage. For the act of listening has
a built-in dilemma, which is that the speaker cannot keep
pace with the workings of the listener's mind.
The average rate of speech is about 125 words a minute;
the average person thinks at a rate nearly four times faster.
With all that slack time at their disposal, people on the
listening side of a discussion are likely to be carried away
by their own thoughts.
It is said that "the mind wanders" while one person hears
another talk; actually it darts ahead and off the track like
a runaway race horse. This helps to explain why people jump
to conclusions. They anticipate what is going to be said instead
of following what is being said in the present. In this regard
we might do well to remember the admonishment of a rough-and-ready
tycoon as he started a meeting: "Now listen slow."
It takes a concerted effort of will to deal with some of
the other impediments to listening that clog the mind, the
more so since they spring from perfectly normal human feelings.
For example, everyone's range of interests has its limits,
so we all have a tendency to resist ideas that are of no personal
interest to us. It is natural to conclude that complex thoughts
outside of our own field of experience are beyond our comprehension,
so we make no effort to digest them. And no one is immune
to boredom; the first couple of sentences uttered by a dull
speaker are enough to make us want to "tune out" all the rest
that he says.
It is difficult to suppress the emotional responses to another
person's words triggered by our own attitudes and opinions
- difficult, but necessary to good listening. Human nature
makes us want to hear only what pleases us, and to reject
that which does not. We are therefore prone to listen carefully
to ideas which accord with our own point of view, and to discount
or mentally argue with those we find disagreeable, To listen
effectively, we have to guard against the tendency to exercise
emotional censorship - to blank out or skip over ideas which
we would rather not hear.
The medium is the personality of the person
doing the talking
In Marshall McLuhan's much-quoted opinion, "the medium is
the message." This may be so of the electronic and print media,
but it is not so in face-to-face conversations in which the
medium is the personality of the individual talking at the
time. You might not like that type of person; you might object
to his or her appearance or mannerisms; but it is what is
being said that counts, not who says it. The same applies
to positive emotional responses: you might be so favourably
impressed by some personalities that you take what they say
for granted, and fail to hone in on the meaning of their words.
At the same time, however, you should listen with more than
your ears. People give out non-verbal signals as they talk,
as lovers know when they look into each other's eyes. The
look on a man's face, his stance, his gestures, his pauses
and hesitations, may tell you more about his real message
than the words he is saying. By visual observation of his
"body language" you may learn how he feels about
what he is saying, not just what he thinks.
Check up on your conclusions and your grasp
of the facts
Part of the difference in the speed of speech and thought
mentioned above may be employed by the listener in practising
such visual observation. Another part of the extra thinking
time afforded by the workings of the mind can be used to mentally
summarize and analyze what is said. One way to prevent your
mind from leaping ahead of the words being spoken is to periodically
check up on your conclusions and your grasp of the facts by
asking questions. This clarifies misunderstandings and allows
you to digest the other person's thoughts one stage at a time.
The full capacity of the mind may also be brought to bear
on the task of listening by training it to scan like radar
for key ideas. In this way the listener can get straight to
the point when it is his or her turn to talk. Some people
have a prodigious capacity for details; but most of us are
in danger of becoming confused if we try to remember every
detail in a long discussion. Our comprehension is better served
by identifying the points that make up the theme of the other
person's message and then attempting, through questioning,
to make our understanding of them clear.
Needless to say, the responsibility for effective discussion
does not rest solely with the listener. The disparity between
speaking and thinking puts the onus on the speaker to ensure
that his thoughts do not get lost in the gap between words
and thoughts. Dr. Jesse Nirenberg, a New York psychologist
who spent many years studying listening problems, once made
the following suggestions for holding a person's attention:
Always start with the conclusion - never with a question.
Do not lead up to your main idea slowly; if you do, the
listener's mind might have skipped ahead of you by the time
you get to the point.
Translate what you have to say into potential benefits to
the listener whenever possible. People will sit up and take
notice if they feel there is something in it for them.
Repeat your point subtly in the course of your delivery,
preferably by citing examples that keep the listener from
getting bored.
Avoid pronouns. "What do you think of this?" should be,
"what do you think of (something specific?)" Specifics focus
attention.
Get "feedback" on everything pertinent you have said by
intermittently questioning your listener. By asking questions,
you pose problems to be solved which obliged the listener
to think about the meaning of what you have to say.
Techniques such as these will help you to deliver your thoughts
effectively, but only if those thoughts are clear. You must
first be sure of what you want to say in your own mind. Whenever
the circumstances permit - and admittedly they frequently
don't - people who intend to do most of the talking in a discussion
should systematically marshall their thoughts beforehand.
They can be memorized, or, better still, written down as notes
to be referred to in the course of the talk.
Question your use of words before you start to speak
"Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible,"
wrote Anthony Hope, author of The Prisoner of Zenda.
It should be evident - but apparently it is not - that people
should carefully select the words they say. A language can
be extremely deceptive; for instance, there are more than
14,000 meanings for the 500 most-commonly used words in English.
With this in mind, anyone entering into a serious discussion
should ask himself: Do I use slang or professional jargon
that may not be generally understood? Do I define my terms
sufficiently? Is my phrasing free of ambiguity? Do I resort
to euphemisms that take the edge off the meaning of what I
have to say?
A message should be as clear as the precision of language
can make it. It should also be as complete as the facts allow.
A basic rule of good communication is never to over-estimate
the amount of knowledge or information the person on the receiving
end possesses. Specialists in various subjects are usually
surprised to discover how little other people know - or care
- about their fields.
A fine line exists, however, between completeness and superfluity.
Too many details can turn off the listener's mind. While it
is good to subtly repeat your points to make them understood,
to repeat them too often and too obviously is to drive your
listener off into a state of ennui. People tend to talk at
greater length than necessary. We might be wise to emulate
the thinking of E. M. Forster when he was asked why he had
not published a book in the 20 years since he wrote A
Passage to India. "Well, I hadn't anything more to say,"
he replied.
Approaching the process with the intention
of making it
work
In his estimable book Language in Thought and Action,
S. I. Hayakawa equates the ability to talk with co-operation,
and co-operation with human survival. Any effective discussion
- provided that it is not blankly hostile on both sides -
demands the co-operation of the listener and the speaker to
an equal degree. Both should approach the process with the
conscious intention to making it work - of doing their best
on either side to achieve a mutual understanding. When this
approach is taken, a mood of empathy is automatically established,
clearing the way for a responsiveness to one another's human
needs.
"This business of conversation is a serious matter," wrote
Oliver Wendell Holmes. Indeed it is - more serious than most
of us think. In a world suffering from a lack of communication
between individuals and groups, in nations, organizations
and families, people would communicate better if they spared
more thought to listening. All it takes, basically, is an
awareness that listening is a difficult and demanding function
which demands care and effort, both when we listen and when
we talk.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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