Listening
Listening
Listening
How well do you listen? Listening is a key leadership skill identified in many leadership
competency models, either explicitly, or embedded under the general domain of
communication. ‘Of all the time we spend in communication, by far the greatest is spent in
listening.’i It is only by listening that leaders: get feedback on how they are being perceived;
learn how their team members are working; build positive team culture; engage with their
team members; encourage new ideas and innovative thinking to be expressed; and so on.
Introduction
Because people are not generally taught how to listen, they are simply told to listen, for most it
develops into an unconscious skill. You may direct your ears to listen to the words, but effective
listening is about far more than just hearing the words that echo in your ears. Listening is an
integral part of the whole communication cycle. Your listening habits come from many sources,
starting from your childhood (what was the listening protocol in your home?), moving on to any
training you received in school or in the workplace, wrapped up in your socialised attitudes and
values developed through life experience. In addition, your natural strengths and deep-seated
traits have an impact on how you listen now.
1
When you are taught to listen, you learn such things as:
• don’t interrupt
• make eye contact
• put your attention on the speaker
• give feedback in the form of acknowledgement
• ask questions to encourage to speaker to continue
• ask questions to clarify understanding
But effective listening is far more than just the technical, observable actions described above.
Read on to find out the benefits of effective listening, and how you can improve your listening.
You’ll have your own reasons for wanting to improve your listening skills, with specific benefits
you want to gain, and problems you want to leave behind. If you’re a leader, or responsible for
developing leaders in your organisation, read on, because there are some useful listening tools
and techniques in this article.
Levels of listening
There is an emerging school of thought about listening being led by Peter Senge, Joseph
Jaworski and others; but before I describe that, let’s take a look at the more traditional
approach.
As you move through the levels of listening, you’ll generate different responses from the
speaker. To get a feel for what this might mean, imagine yourself as the speaker - how do you
feel and react when someone ignores you as you speak to them? And how is that different
when the listener puts their whole attention on what you are saying?
The whole communication message is made up of: the words you use (7%); the tone and
variation of your voice (38%); and all other non-verbal actions (55%). Similarly, listening is
made up of far more than simply looking like you’re listening.
In levels two and three it’s most likely that the speaker will be aware of your pretence or
selective listening. Just like you when you’re the speaker, they’ll have a sense or an intuition
that your mind is elsewhere, even though you’re apparently listening to what they are saying.
To move on to level four you need to consciously turn off your inner dialogue, clear your mind,
and make way for the incoming message. This sounds simple, but is not necessarily easy.
I often coach people to use what I call the Teflon technique. You clear your
mind, but then the next thing you know you’ve been distracted by another
thought and lost focus on what the speaker is saying. That’s when you turn
your mind into Teflon, and you let the distracting thought slip right off
again, bringing your focus and attention back to the speaker.
At level five you’ve mastered the skill of attending to the speaker and clearing your mind.
You’ve moved on to listen with your ears and your heart for the unspoken, identifying the
emotions underlying the speaker’s message. Steven Coveyiv says, ‘In empathic listening you
listen with your ears, but you also, and more importantly, listen with you eyes and with your
heart. You listen for feeling, for meaning. You listen for behaviour. You use your right brain as
well as your left. You sense, you intuit, you feel.’ He also writes, ‘You have to open yourself
up to be influenced’. At level five listening, that’s possibly the most important concept to
embrace.
Listening - A key leadership skill
© January 2006 Gail Reichert & Leader’s Edge Ltd 3
For personal use only. Please contact Leader’s Edge (see last page for contact details) if you
wish to use this article in your organisation.
Active listening and reflective listening
It’s possible you can shift directly to level five listening. However, if you find that’s not possible,
there are a couple of techniques to learn at level four which enhance your practice at level five.
They are active listening and reflective listening.
Before moving on to describe how to listen actively and reflectively, let’s place this skill in
context, because there are certain situations when their use is more important than others. For
example:
When a team member comes to you with a concern
If there is a person you ‘just can’t get through to’
When you are faced with someone in a tense emotional state
When you are coaching a team member to improve performance
In any relationship where there has been some sort of tension or upset
When you sense a team member is lacking motivation
Any time you want to improve how you are relating to another person
When the speaker finishes talking, you can ask any clarifying questions, and then
paraphrase what you understood them to have said. Use your own words to check that
you understand what they’ve said. At the end of your paraphrase you could say, “That’s
what I thought you said - have I got it right, or is there something different?” Then wait.
You will get a response of some sort from the speaker - either, ‘yes’, ‘yes, but …’, or
‘no.’ Generally with ‘yes, but…’ and ‘no’ responses the speaker will go on to provide
more information. You simply listen. Then, once again, paraphrase. Continue doing this
until you get a firm ‘yes’. Often you’ll notice either a subtle or significant physiological
Underlying both of these techniques is the openness of you, the listener, to be influenced. In
addition they require your intention to be that of having the speaker feel they have been
listened to. Especially when there is some level of emotional commitment or frustration in the
situation, the speaker is not open to influence until they have released their pent up energy.
This happens when they have their say, and they feel as if they’ve been heard accurately. Only
then is it possible (no guarantees) to influence them in any way.
At Leader’s Edge, we teach people how to build rapport consciously and how to identify and
adapt to different communication styles, before moving on to teach active and reflective
listening. We build these skills into most leadership coaching programmes, as we believe they
are the foundation of building and developing influence.
Now, let’s move on to the emerging school of thought coming from the Society for
Organisational Learning (SOL), involving Peter Senge (The Fifth Discipline and The Fifth
Discipline Fieldbook), C Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski (Synchronicity) and Betty Sue Flowers.
Their thinking is captured in their book, Presence; exploring profound change in people,
organizations and society. The book’s focus is on levels of learning. However, Scharmer has an
aligned model that identifies four levels of listening. They are:
Level 1. Politeness - this is the downloading state of listening, where people are
‘talking nice’ in conversations that are centred on themselves. He labels
this the I-ego stage.
Level 2. Debate - this is the seeing/hearing state of listening, where people ‘talk
tough’ with conversations centred on issues. He labels this the I-it stage.
Level 3. Inquiry - this is the sensing and inquiring state of listening, where
people engage in reflective dialogue out of a deep sense of respect for
each other. He labels this the I-thou stage.
Level 4. Flow - this is the presencing state of listening, the place of generative
dialogue, the place where new thinking and precepts emerge. He labels
this the I-now stage.
Because this is an emerging model I’m not aware of any techniques or checklists that would
help you move through the levels. However, you will probably gain a greater understanding if
you read their book, Presence. I think here of the translated quote by Antoine de Saint Exupéry
in The Little Prince: ‘It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; that which is essential is
invisible to the eye’.
Once you’ve learned to listen to your heart, then you can use the same technique to ready
yourself to listen with your heart.
Summary
• Listening is a key leadership skill
• The first step of listening is ‘close your mouth’
• By and large people are not taught to listen - it’s an unconscious skill
• There are levels of listening - traditional and emerging
• Two techniques to improve your listening are active listening and reflective listening
• To listen empathically you must listen with your heart
• There are many benefits, both personally and professionally, to improving your listening skills
• There are many costs and stresses associated with poor listening, and if you don’t improve
they will continue to create problems for you
And remember, listening is the skill you can practice constantly, and no one even knows you’re
practicing!
Listening - A key leadership skill
© January 2006 Gail Reichert & Leader’s Edge Ltd 7
For personal use only. Please contact Leader’s Edge (see last page for contact details) if you
wish to use this article in your organisation.
Resources
Leader’s Edge Ltd
We can work with you individually, or with your organisation to assess the level of competence
of listening, for individuals, teams or the whole organisation. We prefer to work with clients who
are willing to link competencies to business results, as a way of measuring the effectiveness of
the work we do. However, if you’re not there yet, we can still help. We have a range resources,
including NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) that means any solutions can be simply tailored
to your needs. We run courses, do one-on-one coaching at all levels in organisations, as well as
train your people to develop and deliver skills workshops.
Books:
• Listening: The Forgotten Skill - Madelyn Burley-Allen
• The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook - Senge et al - particularly Chapter 33 - Mental Models
• Presence: Exploring profound change in people, organizations and society - Senge, Scharmer,
Jaworski, Flowers
• The Power of Full Engagement - Jim Loehr & Tony Schwarz
• Messages: The Communications Skills Book - McKay, Davis & Fanning
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Steven R Covey
• Principle Centered Leadership - Steven R Covey
Websites:
• Otto Scharmer: http://www.ottoscharmer.com/
• Society for Organizational Learning: http://www.solonline.org/
Endnotes:
i
Listening: The Forgotten Skill - Madelyn Burley-Allen
ii
Listening: The Forgotten Skill - Madelyn Burley-Allen
iii
An recent example from a client of Leader’s Edge Coaching Programme
iv
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Habit 5
v
In NLP terms, facing the speaker and making eye contact may not be the best way to build rapport. For more
information on building rapport using NLP methods, contact Leader’s Edge or consult an NLP Practitioner.