CBP S2E10: Listening With Respect and Engagement

Active listening is much more than just inserting “yeah” or “okay” at regular intervals in a conversation. Active listening also means listening with respect, with engagement, and listening with your whole body. Thinking before you speak. Creating connections with people and helping to ensure that they don’t leave a conversation with you feeling bad about it, or about you. Join me in Season 2 Episode 10 while I talk about active listening, what it is, the attributes of a good listener, and some tiny tactics you can employ to make yourself a better listener.

This one has a video too!

Remember that Season 3 starts on February 26. There won’t be a podcast on the 19th – try not to miss me too much! 

Please note that there are links in this post that will give me a commission if you use them to purchase something, at no extra cost to you. Please rest assured that I will never recommend anything that I don’t trust and believe will be of value to you. See my affiliates page for more details.

Referenced in this episode:

• What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter: https://amzn.to/2Nx1Sjt [affiliate link]
• How Women Rise by Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith: https://amzn.to/2NBeYw8 [affiliate link]

Key Takeaways

• Being a good listener is an important part of empathy.
• It builds connections with others, which is important at work and at home. It makes you a better partner, co-worker, family member, friend, and leader.
• It arms you with information that you might miss out on if you’re not listening.
• Attributes of a good listener include:
  • They think before they speak
  • They listen with respect
  • They gauge their responses
  • They respond rather than react
  • They make the conversation about the speaker, not themselves
  • They listen to the spoken as well as the unspoken messages
  • They are conscious of their own unspoken messages
  • They ask intelligent questions that move the conversation forward and demonstrate that they’ve been paying attention
• Active listening is a two-part maneuver: the part where you listen, and then the part where you speak. What you say is a measurement of how well you’ve been listening.
• Not listening for your turn to talk, inserting things like “yes, okay, mhm” at regular intervals, and listening without thinking of what you’re going to say next are all accepted parts of active listening.
• It is also listening to the unspoken messages. Listening with respect to the speaker and what’s being said. Asking questions that move the conversation forward.
• Some tips on being a better listener (see also Tiny Tactics below):
  • Don’t interrupt.
  • Don’t finish the other person’s sentences.
  • Don’t shut people down.
  • Don’t be distracted.
  • Ask, don’t tell.
  • Listen with your whole body.
• Shutting people down can damage your relationship with them, and let them leave the conversation feeling bad about themselves, or even you as a person. Remember your emotional wake.
• These behaviors can easily cause friction, when it is just as easy to assume behavior patterns that do not cause friction.

Tiny Tactics

Marshall Goldsmith’s Tiny Tactics (https://www.marshallgoldsmith.com/articles/the-skill-that-separates/):

– Listen.
– Don’t interrupt.
– Don’t finish the other person’s sentences.
– Don’t say, “I knew that.”
– Don’t even agree with the other person. If he praises you, just say thank you.
– Don’t use the words “no,” “but,” and “however.”
– Don’t let your eyes wander elsewhere while the other person is talking.
– Maintain your end of the dialogue by asking intelligent questions that show you’re paying attention, move the conversation forward, and require the person to talk (while you listen).

Transcript

Hi everybody. It’s Dianne Whitford from Coffee, Grit, and Inspiration, and this is your weekly Coffee Break podcast. It is Season two, Episode 10 and what that means is next week we’re going to take a break, so our next episode after this one will be on February 26. Of course, you can still catch us on the blog, during that time, there will be a couple posts and other things happening so you can – if you haven’t already. You can subscribe to the newsletter at www.coffeegritandinspiration.com/subscription. The topic on the blog right now is empathy, and today’s topic for this podcast is active listening, because active listening is a big part of empathy.

If being more empathetic or or trying to demonstrate your empathy is important to you, or even if it’s not and you’re just trying to be a better partner, co-worker or friend or whatever, active listening is a really good way to work on those skills. This topic is very near and dear to my heart, mostly because I don’t think that I always do it very well. I’m not always very good at it, and I don’t think anyone is always a perfect listener or is always going to be good at this kind of thing. It’s something that you have to just be conscious of and practice it as much as you can so that it becomes sort of an automatic behavior.  

Being a good listener is important in a couple of ways. For one thing, it builds connections with other people. When you’re a good listener, the chances are that the people that are talking you are gonna feel heard. They’re gonna feel more connected to you. And building those connections helps you be a better partner, a better co-worker, a better friend, a better family member, a better leader. It’s important in all parts of your life, Whether at home or at work, it doesn’t matter. Being a good listener is important in all of those areas. 

Another reason good listening skills are important is because it arms you with information. If you’re busy talking when you should be listening, or if you’re thinking of what you’re going to say next, when somebody else is speaking, you’re missing out on potentially valuable information. Being a good listener helps arm you with information that you might miss out on otherwise. 

So what are the attributes of a good listener? I had to research this because there’s what I thought I knew, and then there’s a whole lot more to it. It’s It’s a lot more than just saying “Oh, yeah, Oh, okay, mhm” at the right parts in the conversation. It’s way more than that. I referenced a couple of books and articles as I was researching this podcast, and I’ve mentioned a few of them before. One is Marshall Goldsmith, and the other is Frances Hesselbein and Marshall Goldsmith actually talks about Frances Hesselbein in several of his earn. At least a couple of books that I’ve read of his. What got You Here Won’t Get You There. That’s by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter. How Women Rise, that’s Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith and Frances Hesselbein was referenced in both of those. And she is the leader of Girl Scouts of America, and she’s been doing it for since, like the sixties, I think. She’s kind of widely recognized as a foremost authority on leadership, and Marshall Goldsmith actually says that she is the best listener that he’s ever encountered. So what all of these articles and books told me is that active listening again is more than just saying, “Oh, mhm, mhm”, at the right moments in the conversation.

Good listeners think before they speak and they speak last. That’s something Frances Hesselbein said, is “good listeners speak last”. They listen with respect, respect to the individual that speaking and respect to what’s being said, and they always gauge their responses. So you’ve probably seen the memes going around Facebook “is it kind, is it necessary”, and I forget the other one. Is it kind, is it necessary, and something else. This is along those same lines. They gauge their responses by asking themselves, “Is it worth it? Is what I’m about to say, worth it” for any number of reasons. Is it necessary? Is it kind? Is it worth the reaction I’m likely to get by saying this thing?

Good listeners respond instead of react. If you think about what’s one of the first things that we do when we’re feeling upset or confused or scared or anxious or nervous or whatever, a lot of times we talk. And when someone’s telling you something that maybe you don’t want to hear, maybe you’re a little uncomfortable. Your first reaction might be to talk, to fill up the space, to justify, to defend, whatever it is that you’re trying to get across. You’re making it about you and not about the person that’s talking. So a good listener, one of the things that they do is they respond rather than react. They make the conversation about the person that is talking, not about themselves.

It’s a discipline. It’s a mental discipline to hear what’s being said, listen to what’s being said, think, and then to respond last. Let everybody else say whatever they’re going to say, and then you can mention something that hasn’t been talked about yet or share your opinions after everyone else has had a chance to do that.

They also listen not just to what’s being said, not just the spoken messages, but also the unspoken messages. They’re thinking about, “what is this person telling me with their words and with their facial expressions, with their tone of voice, with their body language? What are the unspoken messages that are being communicated at the same time?” That’s all information. You’re hearing things and you’re seeing things and you’re noticing things, and those are all part of active listening. Good listeners are also conscious of their own unspoken messages. So what message am I sending to the people that that are talking to me? What message am I sending in my showing that I’m listening and my showing that I have – that I’m giving this person my undivided attention? Or do I seem distracted? Am I not really paying attention? People can tell when you’re not paying attention. I think that’s I think we forget that sometimes that we think we’re being, you know, sneaky. We think we’re multitasking. We think that people won’t notice, but they do. Just like your dog knows when you’re listening to him or your kids know they, they can tell by your body language by the things that you’re saying that the things that you’re not saying, the things that you’re doing, the things you’re not doing, they can tell when they don’t have your attention.

Another thing that good listeners do is they ask intelligent questions. So if you’ve heard anything about active listening and you know if you’ve read anything or had any kind of motivational speaking or gone through training course at work or anything like that. One of the things you’ve probably heard is to ask questions, right? To ask questions to clarify understanding, and that is important. And to take that kind of another level deeper, you’re asking intelligent questions that show that you’re listening that show that you’re paying attention and that move the conversation forward.

When we think about what active listening is and what isn’t, it’s not necessarily just sitting there listening to somebody go on and on and on and on forever. That doesn’t help the speaker, and it doesn’t help you as a listener to get that information that you’re looking for out of the conversation. So asking questions that can move the conversation forward is an important part of active listening.

So what active listening is and isn’t is a little bit murky. I think. There’s a few things that I think everybody thinks about when they think about active listening. The giving the feedback. “I’m listening. Oh, yeah. Mhm, mhm”, you know, to kind of show I’m paying attention to what you’re saying. The thinking of what you’re about to say when you should be listening. The waiting for your opportunity to speak when you should be listening. All of those, I think are pretty accepted parts of what active listening is. 

But something that Marshall Goldsmith talked about is, listening is a two-part maneuver. There is the part where you listen, and there is the part where you speak. And what you say reflects how well you listened. Not only is it reflecting your understanding by indicating that you’re listening “Oh, yeah. Uh oh. Uh huh. I see”, like, all that kind of stuff, which sounds really weird to say it. But you find yourself doing it, “mhm, mhm, mhm”…just doing that is not active listening. Just waiting for other people to speak and not jumping in. That’s not just active listening. It’s also that listening to the unspoken messages, paying attention and listening with your full attention and your full engagement on what that person is saying.

You can’t listen and talk at the same time. And I think, especially when we get into conversations where we’re super passionate about the topic, there’s a lot of people talking at the same time. A lot of stuff is going on. You can’t listen and talk at the same time. You have to listen, and then talk.

So there are a lot of ways we talked about a few of them already in ways that you can become a better listener. Think it’s important to remember that when we’re not listening, when we’re doing things that indicate we’re not paying attention, people can tell. So there’s a lot of things that you can do to stop demonstrating that you’re not paying attention and start just paying attention to what people are talking. To when, to when people are talking and what they’re saying.

It probably should be understood, but it bears repeating because I know that I do this a lot. But when you are listening, when you are actively listening, you are not distracted. You’re not checking your phone, you’re not taking your emails or your watch, or drumming your fingers or, you know, move it along. You’re not doing anything like that. You are listening with intention and engagement to the person that is talking.

You’re also thinking before you’re speaking, so going back to the Facebook meme or whatever, you’re asking yourself before you open your mouth, you’re asking yourself “is what I’m about to say worth it? Is the way I’m about to say it worth it?” It can, a lot of times be easier, to have a list of things not to do as opposed to a list of things to start doing. When you say to yourself, “I’m gonna start being a better listener”. That seems like a really big task. It can. There’s a lot that goes into being a better listener. What might be easier is to think of things you’re going to stop doing. So I’m gonna stop doing this and that, and that will make me a better listener.

Some of the things you can stop doing is stop interrupting. This is one of my pet peeves, and I do it all the time. I do it all the time, and I can’t stand it when people do it to me. All I want is to be able to get out what I’m trying to say and have my point be heard. When somebody interrupts me, It makes me feel like they don’t care about what I’m trying to say. They’re not listening. That’s what that tells me is they’re not listening to what I’m about to say.

Another pet peeve that has to do with with actively listening is not finishing someone else’s sentence. I don’t know if you’ve ever been trying to say something, and maybe you’re searching for the word. Or maybe you’re not quite sure how to articulate what it is you’re saying and somebody jumps in trying to finish your sentence for you. Maybe it’s because they’re impatient. They think you’re taking too long. Maybe they’re just trying to help you come up with the word. But more often than not, the way that that leaves people feeling is that, number one, they feel foolish. Because, you know, they feel like they can’t think of the word and they need help. And whether it takes them five minutes to come up with what they’re trying to say or not, it’s worth it to just let them try to come up with it. If they say, “What am I trying to think of what…How would you say this?” then jump in because you’ve been asked that question. You’ve been asked for help. If you’re not asked for help, don’t jump in and finish someone else’s sentence. Think about the effect that it has on that person. They get derailed. Has this ever happened to you? Where you’ve been trying to say something, somebody interrupts you or finishes your sentence and now you’ve forgotten what it was you were trying to say. And so you sit there and you’re groping and you’re trying to remember what it was you were going to say. And now you feel foolish. Now you feel now you feel dumb. The person leaves that conversation with you feeling bad about themselves, bad about their contributions and potentially bad about their interaction with you. They might feel bad about interacting with you. And that is not how you want to leave people feeling after a conversation with you. You don’t want people to walk away from a conversation with you feeling bad. You want them to walk away feeling good about that interaction. You gotta remember your emotional wake. Doing things like interrupting people, cutting them off, making them feel stupid when they’re talking to you. That is a negative emotional wake.

Another thing, Francis Hesselbein said is, “the leader of the future, asks. The leader of the past, tells.” This is applicable not just for leaders, I think. The concept is ask. Be curious. Try to understand, ask questions that lead to understanding about what that person is trying to say, what their reasoning is, what their emotions are, how they’re feeling and what they really think about, what’s…what they’re saying. And don’t don’t tell, don’t tell “you are feeling this way. You are doing this.” You are, you know, etcetera, etcetera. Just ask. Ask the questions rather than tell.

Kind of going along with the “don’t be distracted” is give the speaker your undivided attention. In today’s world with technology and WebEx and conference calls and distributed teams, we don’t always have the luxury of seeing someone face to face, eye to eye. We can’t always demonstrate that we’re listening with that eye contact, but when you can, make sure that you are, you are really not just showing that you’re giving them your undivided attention. But give them your undivided attention. You’ve set aside…like if you’re in a meeting, for example, at work. Presumably, you’ve set aside this time. You’ve agreed to spend this time with this person, and they’re trying to tell you something. If you didn’t have time to go to the meeting, then you shouldn’t have gone. It’s not an excuse to say, “Well, I’ve got all this other things happening and all these other you know, things were blowing up” and blah, blah, blah. So I can’t really listen to you right now. If that’s the situation, then at least tell them that. And don’t make them think that you’re listening when you’re not listening. Don’t check emails. Don’t go on Facebook. Don’t go on Twitter, Pinterest, or I don’t know whatever it is that you do when you’re not really listening to somebody. If they took that time and you agreed to give them that time, then give it to them. Give them your undivided attention.

Another thing that we may not think about all the time is our body language. So if you’re on a webcam or you’re in a live meeting, somewhere where people can see you, you may think that you’re showing, you know, that you’re listening, but people can tell by your body language that you’re not. So if you’re you know, maybe that’s hunched over. Maybe you’re showing that you’re really resistant to the message that you’re hearing, Or maybe your eyes are going over here, where your other monitor is where you got your emails, and people can tell that. Like you’re like, “Oh, yeah, mhm”, they can tell that you’ve got something else going on, and you are not totally focused. Keep your body language loose, keep it interested and attentive and paying attention to what that person is saying, and not on all the other things that you may have going on.

Something that I’m really present to this week in particular is the effect that it has when you shut people down. So when someone’s talking and you’re “move it along, move it along move it along” or “I already knew that” or something along those lines, you’re you’re devaluing whatever they’re trying to say, And it may be that they’re rambling on. It may be that we have a limited amount of time. And so as a speaker, when you’re trying to get somebody’s time and you’re trying to get them to listen, there’s a lot of things that you need to make sure. You need to make sure that the person you’re trying to talk to has availability. If you have a limited amount of time, you need to be concise. You need to share just the information that has to be shared right now that can’t be shared in any other way and be concise. But as a listener in that kind of a situation, shutting somebody down when they’re in the middle of trying to share information can be damaging. It can damage the relationship, and it can leave them feeling bad, again, leave them feeling bad about the conversation and bad about you. As as a person. And that’s not always…maybe you don’t care. Maybe you don’t care if people walk away from the conversation feeling bad about you. But over time, that kind of thing is going to really make a difference, especially when you’re at work, especially when you’re trying to lead people or you’re trying to create a collaborative environment. If you have the reputation of shutting people down where they can’t talk to you, pretty soon they’ll stop. They’ll stop sharing information with you. They’ll stop looping you in. They’ll stop trying to bring you into the conversation, because they know what happens when they do. So do what you can to encourage that conversation. Even if you’re on a tight time schedule, there’s ways to say, “Hey, we’ve only got, you know, five minutes left. Can I ask a question or or can I redirect the conversation a little bit?” You can ask. You can say things like that in a way that does move the conversation forward, that does redirect the conversation without making somebody feel bad.

And this isn’t to say that you can’t give somebody feedback that you know, “Hey, you keep scheduling these meetings with me and then all you do is complain”, or “you keep taking up a lot of time to say something when maybe we could do it quicker, faster”. Whatever it is that feedback is valuable, it is really valuable. And it helps the person that’s trying to talk to you because they may not know that they’re taking too long to get to the point or that they’re you know, they tend to, you know, belabor the topics or whatever. That feedback is really good. How you deliver that feedback, and when you decide to deliver it can make a huge impact on that person, though. And their mentality and how they feel about you, how they feel about themselves.

So I talked a lot about being good listener. There’s also the being a good speaker, and this is probably another podcast, because there’s a lot I could say on the topic. I’m not always as concise as I’d like to be. These podcasts are probably a good barometer of that. Some of them are quick, but maybe I don’t get all the information out, and some of them are a little bit longer, maybe I talk a little bit too long about a topic. So not that I’m perfect at it. But I do think that there’s some things that we can keep in mind when we’re talking to people that helps them be a better listener to us. So presenting our points in a concise way, organizing your thoughts, preparing for a conversation as opposed to just jumping in and doing whatever. All of those things can help deliver your message quickly, where it’s easier for people to listen to you where it’s easier for them to stay engaged for the entire time that you’re talking.

All of this stuff that I talked about, it takes mental discipline, right? It takes mental discipline. We’ve fallen into these habits sometimes where doing them is easier than to stop doing them. And it does take discipline to…I’m talking to somebody. I’m gonna put my phone down. I’m gonna pretend I don’t have a watch on. I’m gonna pretend that my monitor with all my emails and my IMs is not sitting right over here where I can see it. Maybe you have to close your laptop. Maybe you have to start walking around your office to where you’re not sitting there in front of the screen, whatever those things, whatever you need to do to make it so that you can listen, to create an environment where you can listen. Maybe that’s what you have to do in order to be able to be a good listener.

Something that I think is really relevant, that I really liked from what I heard in, or read in a couple articles by Marshall Goldsmith as well as in his book is this quote. “What matters is how easily we slip into small behavioral patterns that create friction in the workplace and how just as easily we could assume patterns that do not create friction. That’s why simple disciplines – such as thinking before speaking, listening with respect and asking, “Is it worth it?” – work. They don’t require nuance. We just need to do them.”

And that I think it’s a great summary. These are behaviors – interrupting, not listening, finishing people sentences, not asking intelligent questions, shutting people down, not listening with your whole body. All of those kinds of things are behavioral things that cause friction. And while it may not be easy to implement and you know, changing that habit is hard, but they’re not hard things to do. Not interrupting is not.. is not a difficult thing. It may be hard to implement, Like, for me, it is very hard to not interrupt people. It is. I interrupt people because I’m not listening. If I think to myself, “I’m gonna listen. Don’t interrupt, don’t interrupt. Listen”, then I’ll stop interrupting. It requires that discipline and that practice to build it into an automatic habit.

There’s another nugget of it’s like a bulleted list of things not to do or things to do as you’re being a good listener. It’s from Marshall Goldsmith again. I got it from one of his articles. And I talked a lot about many of the topics in this podcast, but I’ll put it in the description, and I’ll put the bulleted list in there as well. And it’s just a short list. And he calls them tiny tactics and they’re tiny tactics that you can do to help be a better listener.

So thank you for listening. I appreciate your attention. I appreciate all of you that are listening to this podcast. It just makes me feel so great when people mention it or or reach out to tell me, it just really means a lot. And I just want to thank, thank, thank, thank, all of you. I hope you have a wonderful couple of weeks. Don’t forget, I won’t be back until the 26th, February 26. I don’t even know if you’ll notice. You may not even notice, but if you do, don’t worry. I’ll be back on the 26. Hope you guys have a wonderful, wonderful couple of weeks. Thanks for listening. Bye!