It's time to shut up and listen if you want meaningful conversations
by Mervin Straughan
July 2021
When conversations fail, we risk missing a crucial piece of information that might have led to a different outcome. We risk alienating the other person or both. And we underestimate the damaging impact of ill-intentioned interruptions.
Many of us regard ourselves as good listeners but the reality is that we’re flattering ourselves. Listening is a skill that takes time to develop and it takes work to remain good at it. It’s particularly challenging because many of us are prone to interrupting and getting our own point across.
Lacking these skills might mean we’re missing out on a golden nugget of information, a valuable insight that might have led to a better decision, a different outcome personally or professionally.
And interruptions, in particular, can be destructive, according to coaching expert, leadership consultant, lecturer and international speaker Nancy Kline writes. She writes about the subject in in her book The Promise That Changes Everything: I Won’t Interrupt You.
Kline was once named International Listener of the Year so she knows a great deal about the subject.
Kline draws our attention to research by the Gottman Institute in Seattle that found that our listening attention rate has plummeted in recent years. Three years ago, our average listening time was 20 seconds but it’s now shrunk to a measly 11 seconds.
And she warns us that the brain registers an interruption as a physical assault prompting it to go into freeze, flee or fight mode.
My own analogy is that we often treat conversations like a dodgem car ride. We fail to listen and choose to interrupt instead. Each interruption is a shunt. There’s a brief respite and then we shunt the other person again. Or we shunt one another.
So, how do we go about improving our conversations? Well, ditching the interruptions and learning to become an active listener is a good start.
An active listener gives the other person space to speak. The active listener makes a deliberate effort to understand the message that’s being communicated.
Here are my tips for becoming an active listener.
1. Give the speaker your full attention
Avoid any distractions such as checking notifications on your mobile phone or eavesdropping nearby conversations. This also means refraining from using this listening time to make judgement or develop a counter argument.
2. Encourage the other person
Look at the speaker. Nod and use facial expressions to encourage them and to show you’re engaged.
3. Observe body language
The speaker will also be communicating via their body language so pay attention to this. And ensure your own body language, as well as the facial expressions and nodding mentioned above, is active, open and constructive to the discussion.
4. Paraphrase and summarise
It's useful to paraphrase or summarise. This shows you understand or want to understand what is being said.
5. Ditch the desire to interrupt
Given what we now know about the destructive nature of interrupting, this is obvious. If you’re prone to interrupting, the good news is that you’ll find that it becomes easier to refrain from doing so with experience.
In his international bestseller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey emphasises the importance of understanding first, then being understood. He lists this as the fifth of the seven habits.
This habit moves us from focusing on what we want to understanding what the other person wants. It takes into account the fact that we each think differently. It helps to remove our subjectivity and it leads to much more informed decision making.
So, press the pause button if you’re about to interrupt because there’s a prize for listening intently. It makes for communication a richer experience and helps to forge stronger personal and professional relationships. And we can learn something valuable in the process.