The Act of Listening

A great deal of the time spent in humanrelationships is taken up by listening.But do we really listen comprehensivelyto what others have to say? Here we lookat a much-neglected function, and at howwe might better perform it. Plus how wecan make it easier to listen to ourselves...

[] The eminent novelist and philosopher Andr~Gide once opened a lecture by noting: "All this hasbeen said before, but since nobody listened, it mustbe said again." Nobody listened.., how often is thisthe case, and how often must messages be repeatedbecause they were not heeded in the first place. Inbusiness, family and other personal relationships,the failure to listen properly is responsible, at thevery least, for an enormous waste of time.

Yet scant attention has been paid in the past tothe listening side of communication. Academiccourses in communications still tend to place theemphasis on how to speak and write effectivelyrather than on the effective reception and assimi-lation of ideas. Recently, though, some large NorthAmerican companies have started courses in lis-tening skills for their employees. This is mainlybecause it has been authoritatively estimated thatthe "listening efficiency" of people working in in-dustry is less than 50 per cent, meaning that onlyabout half of the oral messages passed around inthe course of a day’s work are fully understood.

Big businesses are naturally concerned aboutcommunication because it plays such a key rolein their operations. Oral communication espe-cially- to a major extent the fuel of the mana-gerial machinery of a company is the spokenword. Surveys have indicated that the senior offi-cers of major North American corporations spendup to 80 per cent of their working time havingdiscussions, either at meetings, in face-to-face

conversations, or over the telephone. Assumingthat they listen more than they talk- and goodexecutives usually do- listening to other peopleaccounts for about half of their business day.

The volume of listening to be done on the jobdiminishes somewhat on the way down the mana-gerial ladder. Still, listening remains an essentialfunction from the executive suite to the shop floor.It is central to getting things done and it stronglyinfluences morale, which in turn affects produc-tivity. Again and again, the same phrases crop upin surveys of the attitudes of employees towardstheir superiors. A man who is happy with his bosswill say: ~’He listens to me," or ~’I can talk to him."Those who are unhappy will say the reverse.

A situation arose in a manufacturing plant inthe United States a few years ago which clearlyillustrated the consequences of bad listening inindustry. The plant had a serious quality controlproblem which took months--and relativelyhuge amounts of money- to identify and solve.Then a young tradesman, on the brink of resign-ing, told the personnel manager he had knownwhat was wrong from the beginning. Why hadn’the said something about it? Well, he said, he hadapproached both his foreman and the plant en-gineer, "but they wouldn’t listen. I stopped tryingto tell them when they made me feel like a jerk."

If this story suggests that listening habits inbusiness (and not only big business) could be im-proved, it also suggests a prerogative to better

listening in society in general. This is nothingmore than a willingness to listen- a dispositionthat is lacking in people more than they wouldcare to admit. In his novel Daniel Martin, JohnFowles writes of a man who divides his conversa-tion into two categories: ~when you speak, andwhen you listen to yourself speak." That maysound extreme, but who doesn’t know a personlike him? And who, on occasion, has not indulgedin a one-sided conversation himseli?

It is almost a clichd in marital disputes that thepartners ~can’t communicate". It is certainly aclichd among parents that their offspring "won’tlisten to sense". On the other hand, young peoplecomplain that their parents don’t take what theyhave to say seriously. Clearly, the emotional mess-ages people send out to their intimates are notbeing adequately received.

The mind darts ahead likea runaway race horse

As Samuel Butler observed, "It takes two peopleto say a thing--a sayer and a sayee. The oneis just as essential to any true saying as the other."We are all ~sayees", but most of us afford littlethought to our performance in this vital role inhuman affairs. We confuse hearing with listening,believing that, because hearing is a natural func-tion, then listening must be effortless. Accordingto the American speech communications expertDr. Harrel T. Allen, it is anything but: ’~Listeningis hard work and requires increased energy-your heart speeds up, your blood circulates faster,your temperature goes up."

So listening is a kind of activity. Those whoaspire to be good listeners must turn it from anunconscious activity to a conscious one. Whatmakes a good listener? It all begins with concen-tration. We listen to other people through a thickscreen of physical and psychological distractionswhich can only be penetrated by deliberatelyapplying the power of the mind.

Physical distractions are often easily enoughdealt with, although few people bother to do so-- shutting a door or window, moving out of hear-ing range of other people, cutting off telephonecalls. The distractions generated within one’s ownhead are far more difficult to manage. For the actof listening has a built-in dilemma, which is thatthe speaker cannot keep pace with the workingsof the listener’s mind.

The average rate of speech is about 125 wordsa minute; the average person thinks at a ratenearly four times faster. With all that slack timeat their disposal, people on the listening side ofa discussion are likely to be carried away by theirown thoughts.

It is said that %he mind wanders" while oneperson hears another talk; actually it darts aheadand off the track like a runaway race horse. Thishelps to explain why people jump to conclusions.They anticipate what is going to be said insteadof following what is being said in the present.In this regard we might do well to remember theadmonishment of a rough-and-ready tycoon as hestarted a meeting: ~Now listen slow."

It takes a concerted effort of will to deal withsome of the other impediments to listening thatclog the mind, the more so since they spring fromperfectly normal human feelings. For example,everyone’s range of interests has its limits, so weall have a tendency to resist ideas that are of nopersonal interest to us. It is natural to concludethat complex thoughts outside of our own field ofexperience are beyond our comprehension, so wemake no effort to digest them. And no oneis immune to boredom; the first couple of sentencesuttered by a dull speaker are enough to make uswant to %une out" all the rest that he says.

It is difficult to suppress the emotional responsesto another person’s words triggered by our ownattitudes and opinions- difficult, but necessaryto good listening. Human nature makes us wantto hear only what pleases us, and to reject thatwhich does not. We are therefore prone to listencarefully to ideas which accord with our own pointof view, and to discount or mentally argue withthose we find disagreeable, To listen effectively,

we have to guard against the tendency to exerciseemotional censorship- to blank out or skip overideas which we would rather not hear.

The medium is the personality ofthe person doing the talking

In Marshall McLuhan’s much-quoted opinion,~’the medium is the message." This may be so ofthe electronic and print media, but it is not so inface-to-face conversations in which the medium isthe personality of the individual talking at thetime. You might not like that type of person; youmight object to his or her appearance or manner-isms; but it is what is being said that counts, notwho says it. The same applies to positive emotionalresponses: you might be so favourably impressedby some personalities that you take what they sayfor granted, and fail to hone in on the meaningof their words.

At the same time, however, you should listenwith more than your ears. People give out non-verbal signals as they talk, as lovers know whenthey look into each other’s eyes. The look on aman’s face, his stance, his gestures, his pauses andhesitations, may tell you more about his realmessage than the words he is saying. By visualobservation of his ’~body language" you may learnhow he feels about what he is saying, not just whathe thinks.

Check up on your conclusionsand your grasp of the facts

Part of the difference in the speed of speechand thought mentioned above may be employed bythe listener in practising such visual observation.Another part of the extra thinking time affordedby the workings of the mind can be used to mental-ly summarize and analyze what is said. One wayto prevent your mind from leaping ahead of thewords being spoken is to periodically check up onyour conclusions and your grasp of the facts byasking questions. This clarifies misunderstand-ings and allows you to digest the other person’sthoughts one stage at a time.

The full capacity of the mind may also be broughtto bear on the task of listening by training it toscan like radar for key ideas. In this way the lis-tener can get straight to the point when it is hisor her turn to talk. Some people have a prodigiouscapacity for details; but most of us are in danger ofbecoming confused if we try to remember everydetail in a long discussion. Our comprehension isbetter served by identifying the points that makeup the theme of the other person’s message andthen attempting, through questioning, to makeour understanding of them clear.

Needless to say, the responsibility for effectivediscussion does not rest solely with the listener.The disparity between speaking and thinking putsthe onus on the speaker to ensure that his thoughtsdo not get lost in the gap between words andthoughts. Dr. Jesse Nirenberg, a New York psy-chologist who spent many years studying listeningproblems, once made the following suggestionsfor holding a person’s attention:

¯ Always start with the conclusion- never witha question.

¯ Do not lead up to your main idea slowly; if youdo, the listener’s mind might have skippedahead of you by the time you get to the point.

¯ Translate what you have to say into potentialbenefits to the listener whenever possible.People will sit up and take notice if they feel thereis something in it for them.

¯ Repeat your point subtly in the course of yourdelivery, preferably by citing examples that keepthe listener from getting bored.

¯ Avoid pronouns. ~What do you think of this?"should be, ~’what do you think of (somethingspecific?)" Specifics focus attention.

¯ Get ~’feedback" on everything pertinent youhave said by intermittently questioning yourlistener. By asking questions, you pose problemsto be solved which obliged the listener to thinkabout the meaning of what you have to say.

Techniques such as these will help you todeliver your thoughts effectively, but only if thosethoughts are clear. You must first be sure of whatyou want to say in your own mind. Whenever thecircumstances permit--and admittedly theyfrequently don’t- people who intend to do mostof the talking in a discussion should systematical-ly marshall their thoughts beforehand. They canbe memorized, or, better still, written down asnotes to be referred to in the course of the talk.

Question your use of wordsbefore you start to speak

"Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at beingintelligible," wrote Anthony Hope, author of ThePrisoner of Zenda. It should be evident--butapparently it is not--that people should care-fully select the words they say. A language canbe extremely deceptive; for instance, there aremore than 14,000 meanings for the 500 most-commonly used words in English. With this inmind, anyone entering into a serious discussionshould ask himself: Do I use slang or professionaljargon that may not be generally understood? Do,I define my terms sufficiently? Is my phrasing freeof ambiguity? Do I resort to euphemisms that takethe edge off the meaning of what I have to say?

A message should be as clear as the precision oflanguage can make it. It should also be as completeas the facts allow. A basic rule of good communica-tion is never to over-estimate the amount of knowl-edge or information the person on the receivingend possesses. Specialists in various subjects areusually surprised to discover how little other peo-ple know -- or care -- about their fields.

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A fine line exists, however, between complete-ness and superfluity. Too many details can turnoff the listener’s mind. While it is good to subtlyrepeat your points to make them understood, torepeat them too often and too obviously is to driveyour listener off into a state of ennui. People tendto talk at greater length than necessary. We mightbe wise to emulate the thinking of E. M. Forsterwhen he was asked why he had not published abook in the 20 years since he wrote A Passage toIndia. "Well, I hadn’t anything more to say," hereplied.

Approaching the process with theintention of making it work

In his estimable book Language in Thought andAction, S. I. Hayakawa equates the ability to talkwith co-operation, and co-operation with huma,~survival. Any effective discussion -- provided thatit is not blankly hostile on both sides -- demandsthe co-operation of the listener and the speakerto an equal degree. Both should approach theprocess with the conscious intention to making itwork -- of doing their best on either side to achievea mutual understanding. When this approach istaken, a mood of empathy is automatically estab-lished, clearing the way for a responsiveness toone another’s human needs.

"This business of conversation is a seriousmatter," wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes. Indeed itis -- more serious than most of us think. In a worldsuffering from a lack of communication betweenindividuals and groups, in nations, organizationsand families, people would communicate betterif they spared more thought to listening. All ittakes, basically, is an awareness that listening isa difficult and demanding function which demandscare and effort, both when we listen and whenwe talk.

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