We’ve all been there before.  We’re in the middle of pouring our hearts out, or presenting an idea that represents weeks of thought, only to look up and … what??!  Our audience, who we thought would be listening raptly, is surreptitiously checking out their PDA.

Let’s face it, we are a culture of bad listeners getting worse.  And while we like to believe that we can be in two places at once, the truth is as soon as we divide our attention, we have exponentially decreased our ability to take in what matters.

Sure, a good chunk of the time we get away with it – we’re able to skim the surface of conversation without serious consequences.  But there are times when we find ourselves in a hole and our poor listening skills are the shovel that keeps digging us deeper.  Consider your latest disagreement with a friend, co-worker or significant other.  Chances are overwhelming that at one point in the conversation you both thought or said ‘you never listen to me’.  Guess what – that other person was talking about you.

Oh.

It’s been said that we generally have two states of being: talking and waiting to talk.   Otto Scharmer, professor at MIT and author of the book Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges calls those states level 1 listening, or downloading.  We basically listen for the pause in the other person’s story so we can start telling our own.  Nothing really touches us, we hear what we already know and believe about things.  It’s the listening equivalent of a political convention – lots of talking back and forth, but no real dialogue.  Somewhere in your life you probably have a meeting where people arrive, each person makes a report, the boss says a few words and then everyone leaves feeling bored and relieved it’s over.  Welcome to level one hell. 

Scharmer goes on to describe three other levels of listening.  In level two, we start to move out of our own world a little and actually begin to hear facts and ideas that are different from ours.  They don’t really touch us, but something grabs our interest and we begin to hear and see a slightly different view of the world.  It’s like the university lecture form of listening.  We’re hearing new stuff, but we’re often only taking what might be useful to us later.  Think about an inter-departmental meeting.  Finance or HR tells you have to make adjustments because of some policy or legal issue. You get the information, put it to use grumbling about the idiots in the other department, and move on.  That’s a classic level 2 exchange.

We’ve all experienced level 3 listening – that moment when we feel like we’ve actually stepped into someone else’s shoes for a few minutes and get a sense of what life is like from their perspective.  We’ve dropped our own agenda and we want to know and hear more.  Remember those first early, heady months of dating when you couldn’t get enough of who the other person was and how they saw the world?  Chances are good you were doing a lot of level 3 listening.  At work, this plays out in meetings where people actually start to get curious about what’s happening in other people’s departments or areas and listen for what’s different and what’s the same.  It’s the kind of conversation that leads to better thinking and better results.

At level 4 we’ve not only dropped our own agenda, we’ve stepped into a kind of listening where we’re imagining a new kind of future.  Possibilities and ideas start emerging and we not only feel connected to the other person, we feel connected to something bigger and greater.  Someone recently said that the best story meetings in a newsroom occur when people are engaged in level 4 listening.  Most often there’s a significant event as a catalyst; the meeting turns into an incredible flow of ideas and perspectives.  Instead of looking for who has the best idea, people seem to naturally build on what they hear and move beyond that into whole new ways of thinking.  According to Scharmer, listening this way is what makes real innovation most likely.

So how the heck do we get there?  Well, let’s aim for level 3 and leave level 4 alone for now.  Try this experiment.  Ask someone you care about to talk to you for two minutes about something that really maters to them.  You can use the kitchen timer for this.  Your job as the listener is simply to listen.  No questions, no comments, just listen for what really matters.  At the end of the 2 minutes, tell the other person what you heard.  Then take a step back.  What did you notice about your own listening?  Apart from this feeling a little contrived, what did it feel like to just listen to what they were saying?  You may also want to ask your partner what it felt like to be listened to.

Beyond this little experiment, there are some practical tips for becoming a better listener.  It helps to clear away external and internal impediments to listening.  Get rid of external ones like: PDAs, cell phones, email, pagers, and papers that grab your attention when someone starts talking.  Pay attention to any internal impediments like: thinking about your own story to tell, crafting a solution, believing you already know what the other person is going to say and making a value judgment on what’s being said.  When you notice your thoughts drifting, give them a gentle nudge and refocus on what’s really important for the other person.

Experiment for a week and see what you notice about the quality of your conversations.

Elizabeth Lancaster is a certified professional coach and works with individuals and teams to help them communicate more effectively.  She is a faculty member at Adler International Learning, an international coaching and communication school based in Toronto.  She is also Director of Context Management Consulting.  www.contextconsulting.com 

You can contact her directly at kingstone-brigid@rogers.com

History repeats itself because nobody listens the first time.

- Anonymous