[14] Listen like a professional M

Not long ago, I stumbled over a phrase when I was doing some research for an article about listening. It was mentioned by Julian Treasure, an international speaker who specializes in sound and communication. The phrase was: "Allow the other person to fill you." That sounds a bit odd, but it made me stop and think. The phrase refers to listening.

Interestingly, Julian's two most popular TED Talks differ wildly when it comes to the number of views. One talk, called "How to speak so that people want to listen", has had more than 53 million views, while the other talk, "Five ways to listen better", has had just 11 million. This suggests that people are five times more interested in how they can make others listen rather than actually learning how to listen themselves.

I don't wish to complain. Perhaps it's natural to be more focused on sending rather than receiving. Humans have a need to be seen, heard and listened to. This is one of the reasons for the enormous popularity of social media.

Speaking is overrated; listening is underrated. Professional or public speaking classes are often booked out. But what about professional listening? The same bias towards speaking over listening can also be found in business environments and in teams. But this is changing, slowly.

An underrated power

In the past, the people who were able to sell themselves and convince their bosses with compelling presentations were generally the ones who got promoted. Today, the ability to listen and empathize is increasingly important to leaders. It's no longer enough to be a good motivational speaker; you have to be able to listen to your staff.

Listening is one of the most underrated powers of leadership in the 21st century. And it can have such a positive impact on your team and on your relationship with your employees.

We know that people want to be seen and heard. So, if you really listen to your people, you are fulfilling an important need. That helps to (re-)establish the connection and makes them happy.

Furthermore, if you listen closely to your employees, you might hear some great ideas or learn about a personal issue that may be affecting their performance. You might even hear some deeper concerns about one of your decisions.

Some people may dismiss this as "too simple", but listening is hard work. We're not used to it any more. Sometimes, our mind wanders back to whatever we were doing before. Often, we're already thinking about our reply when somebody is talking to us. Of course, no one wants to appear stupid, so we start thinking about what we want to say. That means we're not listening properly. Again, Julian Treasure can be of help here: "You can trust your mouth to come up with the right thing when the other person is finished."

Practise with your team

There are various approaches to listening. One that you've probably heard of is called "active listening". This includes using fillers or affirmations like "hmm" or "OK" to show the other person that you're really listening. To be honest, this is not my kind of listening. This just doesn't feel authentic to me. While you're busy remembering to say "hmm" or "OK", you're not fully listening.

Let me come back to Julian Treasure's quote at the beginning. To be a good listener, you should "allow the other person to fill you". If you're full of things you want to say and do to demonstrate that you're listening, then filling isn't possible; listening isn't possible. (It can't be a coincidence that SILENT is an anagram of LISTEN.) Thus, it's beneficial to be "empty" when listening to somebody else. You'll understand exactly what that means in a minute.

There's a simple but great exercise you can do to work on your listening skills. It's based on the concept of "deep listening" that I learned about during an MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction) seminar.

The exercise

Get together in pairs. A starts talking about something — how he and the team have developed in the past six months, for example. B is listening. A and B should be facing each other, either sitting or standing up.

Now comes the scary part: B shouldn't be looking at A. She should turn her head away or close her eyes if she wants. B's only assignment is: listen and be aware of everything that goes on inside you while listening to A. Listen closely to A, but also pay attention to what it does to your body, mind and heart:

Body: What sensations arise?

Mind: What thoughts arise?

Heart: What emotions arise?

This is not about getting lost in thoughts or emotions — just becoming aware of them. Do that for five to ten minutes. Then, share your experiences and switch. After that, share again.

The listening effect

It may not sound spectacular, but it was for me and for the many teams I've coached. It's always a great experience in both roles.

Of course, for both roles, the way this conversation is structured is quite unusual. As a listener, I initially thought it was rude not to look at the person talking to me. I also thought I would miss something important by not looking at the speaker. But, actually, that wasn't the case. It was a great experience. I really listened, and thoughts, emotions, sensations arose, exploded like fireworks. Within seconds, my mind found commonalities, similarities, objections to the words I heard, and they resulted in joy, sadness and curiosity. And, yes, I felt a closer connection to that person than before — just from ten minutes of really listening.

Then, I shared my thoughts and emotions with my partner, and she shared hers. My first concern (isn't that rude?) was eliminated. After I had shared what I experienced, she said that maybe nobody had ever listened to her like that before.

And I understood: by telling her how her words affected me, she understood that I had been fully listening to her. Being that open and sharing all this creates or increases trust and the connection between people.

As eye-opening as this exercise was for me, I wouldn't recommend turning away from your team members and closing your eyes when they speak to you. But perhaps the exercise will give you a new perspective on how your team can practise listening.

So, the next time you feel frustrated that some team members don't have their cameras on while you're talking to them in a meeting, be kind to them and to yourself. Maybe they're just practising deep listening.