How Come It Is So Hard To Listen, Really Listen When Someone Is Speaking To Us?

Because It Is Not Possible To Multitask

I know we all think we can can do more than one thing at a time...we can't, even though we think we can, and even when we say we can, we can't!

So what has multitasking got to do with really listening? More than we think...until we think.about what is going on when we are listening to someone speaking to us. Or, more accurately, when we think we are listening to someone speaking to us.

When we think about it we will discover we are always listening...the question is what are we listening to? 

So let's run an experiment. Stop reading, and be quiet for 60 seconds...time yourself...just sit and be quiet.

How long did it take for you to notice the conversation you were having with yourself? Something like this perhaps:

• What am I supposed to be doing exactly?
• What exactly is the experiment...just be quiet, is that all? Oh, I can do that...love peace and quite
• Jeez, 60 seconds is a long time...wow, 30 to go.

We soon begin to notice the conversations we are having with ourselves. And, it won't take long for us to we aware it is always there. As far as I can tell it is there when I wake up...at various times of the day, and around certain people it gets particularly loud, and it is still going as I go off to sleep.

 I call this conversation we have with ourselves our background conversation. As we start to pay attention we soon notice our background conversation has something to say about everything, and everyone.

We all have distinct themes to our background conversations, that said, we all seem to have some background conversations in common. For example:

• We make judgements...I like, I don't like; that's right, that not right; that true, that's not true...
• We make assessments...that's good, that not good; that will work, that won't work; she's competent, he is not competent...
• We evaluate every person, and every situation...

So, Back to the point: How come it is so hard to listen, really listen when someone is speaking to us? It is because when they start to speak...often even before they start to speak...our background conversation kicks in, judging, evaluating,  and assessing every thing they are saying.

And, because we can't multitask, we listen to a bit of what is being said to us, followed by listening to our background conversation about what is being said, then back to what is being said, and so on.

At best we listen to fragments usually the bits we like, the bits we agree with, the bits we think are true, and so on. The bits we don't like or don't agree with, the bits we don't think are true, we don't listen to. What we do instead...we either ignore what's being said (switch off even) or argue with it...often to ourselves in our background conversations.

If relationships are to really work we need to master a way of communicating that includes not just the foreground conversations, but also the background conversations.

More about that next.

Having Asked Our Questions...Let People Speak

Let People Speak...And Then Do What Is Hardest Of All For Most of Us...Listen

And I don't mean listen for answers...especially when there is a question on the table, and a problem to solve.

I also don't mean listen for what you like and filter out what you don't like...you know the knee jerk agree/disagree reflex we all have that only allows what we like and agree with to make it through to us.

No, I mean listen, it is one of the hardest things to do, in my experience, to just listen...with no judgements, no evaluations, no assessments. Just listen so as to really get another person's perspective...how come they think, feel, and believe as they do...?

Simon Sinek has some useful coaching for purposeful leaders be the last person to speak. 

When we know we are being listened to...magic happens, or atleast so it seems. We find ourselves saying things that we didn't even know we knew to say. We find ourselves expressing feelings, emotions and passions we didn't know we had...or atleast not to the extend we express them when we are really being listened to. 

Purposeful leaders get the importance of being listened to for a purpose to be fully expressed in the world. They also get how essential it is for everyone to have the experience that they are being listened to, if their self expression and passion is to see the light of day...the very self expression and passion that brings purpose to life.

The Power of Questions

Leaders Need to Ask More Questions

In the process practice giving up being the go to person...the answer provider in chief.

Ask questions to:

1. Evoke
2. Provoke
3. Elicit dialogue.

Ask questions that nature inquiry for the respondent, not answers for the questioner. 

A leaders job is to make people think; to encourage and support people to use their own best intelligence; to create an environment of autonomous decision-making.

Asking questions is an access to continuous learning. Especially questions that expose us to the risk of discovering invalid, even limiting, beliefs. And, questions that expose our areas of ignorance – the ancient Greeks considered ignorance to be a sacred space...it was the access to learning, growth, and discovery.

Great leaders relish questions, especially questions that:

1. Uncover our ignorance so we can replace not knowing with discoveries
2. Questions that reveal the faulty foundations of our decisions and actions
3. Questions that unconcealed the elephants in the room so that they can become topics of inquiry and new insights.