As anyone who has followed my blog for some time will tell you, I’m a big proponent of listening skills. In fact, I believe that listening is the key component of the successful communication.

In a book that I’m reading, Life is a Series of Presentations (one that I’ll review in the coming days), he mentions a passage Stephen Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People that discusses listening. I had actually forgotten that Stephen Covey discusses the importance of listening skills in his book, so immediately dug out the book and looked up the passage. And was actually, surprisingly, quite disappointed because he gets it wrong — what’s more, he gets it wrong on such an important topic. Overall, the chapter, Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood, has a lot of valuable information. But I want to add some clarity where Covey has muddied the issue.

(Mr. Covey, if you ever read this — yeah right! — please don’t take this personally; overall, I really respect and enjoy your work, but I do think that you don’t do this topic justice—and, in fact, are wrong in places.)

First off, he oversimplifies the roadblocks that prevent effective listening:

When another person speaks, we’re usually “listening” at one of four levels. We may be ignoring another person, not really listening at all. We may practice pretending. “Yeah. Uh-Huh. Right.” We may practice selective listening, hearing only certain part of the conversation. …we may even practice attentive listening, paying attention and focusing energy in the words that are being said. But very few of us ever practice the fifth level, the highest form of listening, empathic listening.

None of the above is flat out wrong. It just doesn’t quite cover the many ways that we, as listeners, put up roadblocks to prevent us from the really understanding the speaker. Bolton does a much better job of describing and explaining these roadblocks. So perhaps, for what Covey needed in his book, the description suffices, but he doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. I would encourage fans of Covey to dig deeper into the roadblocks that prevent us from really listening to and understanding the speaker. Once you understand the roadblocks, you can better identify them in yourself and take steps to eliminate them.

Now, in the next paragraph, he will contrast empathic listening with reflective listening and this is where hecompletely loses me.

When I say empathic listening, I am not referring to the techniques “active” listening or “reflective” listening, which basically involve mimicking what the another person says. That kind of listening is skill based, truncated from character and relationships, and often insult those quote listened quote to in such a way.

Maybe you can see where I’m going with this. The purpose of reflective listening is to understand the meaning — which includes both the emotional and verbal content. If the listener is merely mimicking the speaker, he is not engaged in reflective listening. He’s mimicking, which is one of roadblocks that Bolton mentions in his book. This is such an important point that I’m going to write it again: Mimicking is not reflective listening. In fact, why don’t you say it out loud: Mimicking is not reflective listening.

Now the next part, he gets right:

When I say empathic listening, I mean listening with intent to understand. I mean seeking first to understand, to really understand. It’s an entirely different paradigm.

And a few paragraphs later:

Empathic listening involves much more than registering, reflecting, or even understanding the words that are said. Communications experts estimate, in fact, that only ten percent of arc vindication is representative of the words we say. Another thirty percent is represented by our sounds, and sixty percent by her body language. And empathic listening you listen with your ears, but you also, and more importantly, listen with your eyes and with your heart. You listen for feeling, for meaning. You listen for behavior. You use your right brain as well as you are left. You sense, you intuit, you feel.

Now, this sounds a lot like reflective listening. And that’s because it is. The purpose of reflective listening is to empathize with the speaker, and you do that by reflecting emotional and verbal meaning to first ensure that you have understood what the speaker has meant as well as to communicate that you have understood. (In fact, by using reflective listening, you’re often helping the speaker to clarify exactly what he means.

In the end, the purpose of the chapter is spot on: we must first seek to understand the speaker, then attempt to be understood. The first part is invaluable (setting the stage for the second part) and can only be accomplished when we fully understand how to listen and how not to listen.

So, yesterday I recommended the book Chasing Daylight. Today, I’m recommending an old favorite of mine: People Skills. A book that I have recommended before, but definitely worth recommending again.

I just finished reading Steve Pavlina’s How to go from an introvert to an extrovert. It’s a great read, and like so many of Steve’s articles, I completely agree with everything he says.

In the last comment of Steve’s post, as of this writing, someone asked how to develop social skills. As someone who has been working to to improve his social skills over the past few months, I’ve found that successful social interaction starts with a few basic techniques:

• Smile. This is probably one of the greatest things you can do to meet new people. I’ve just started a new job and have had a lot of luck meeting new people just by smiling. Appear friendly and open and people are much more likely to talk to you than if you’re stoic.
• Be prepared. People are, at some point, going to ask about you—your thoughts, your opinions, your life. Think about your answers, but don’t have “pat” answers. It’s more like having interesting bullet points to talk about. Some common questions to be prepared to answer include:
  • What do you do?
  • Are you married?
  • How did you meet your spouse?
  • Do you have any kids?

• Be interested. Take responsibility for being interested in what the other person is saying. If you’re not interested in them, it’s your fault. Ask yourself: what can I do to make this conversation more interesting? And do it. How do you communicate interest? See the next bullet.
• Engage. This is probably the most important social interaction skill you will develop. When you’re talking to someone, fully engage them. At the core of engagement is listening, but engagement also includes asking questions and appropriate body language.
• Adapt. Social situations change at the drop of a hat. Add a fourth person to a 3-way conversation and you’ve exponentially increased the complexity of the relationships. This is something that I’m having particular trouble with.
• Get out of the way. Often, I find myself in conversations asking myself: “What do I say next?” Relax and go with the the flow of the conversation.

And, really, the best advice I can give for improving your social interaction skills: get out there. You can:

• observe people who have strong social interaction skills.
• have one-on-one conversations with people who you think are interesting.
• Read. If you want to be a good programmer, you read books about programming. If you want to have good social interaction skills, read about improving social interaction skills.Some good reads:
  • How to Go From Introvert to Extrovert
  • The Multiple Self - blog post on how to actually make changes in your self.
  • Are you listening to me? Learning to Listen? Learn what to listen FOR
  • Quickly connect with people
  • How to listen: Following skills
  • How to listen: Attending Skills
  • How to Listen: Reflecting Skills
  • People Skills: How to assert yourself, listen to others, and resolve conflict by Robert Bolton
  • Never Eat Alone by by Keith Ferrazzi, Tahl Raz

The remaining three roadblocks change the topic of the conversation. They communicate boredom on your part or that the problems of the speaker are unimportant to you.

• Diverting. “Pushing the other’s concerns aside through distraction.”[1] This is akin to going off on a topic that’s tangential to what the speaker is talking about.

• Logical Argument. “Attempting to convince the other with fact or logic.”[1] Logic has its place, but it is not usually received well when people’s emotions or relationships are involved.

• Reassuring. “Trying to stop the other person from feeling the negative emotion she is experiencing.”[1] This belittles the person’s emotions and prevents them from fully owning their experience.

Focus on the speaker—on what she is saying. You might actually connect with someone in a meaningful way.

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[1] I’m certainly no expert on listening. Most of the ideas and all of the quotes come from an amazing book by Robert Bolton: People Skills. IMO, it is the greatest book on how to apply listening skills in your everyday life, but don’t just take my word for it.

“Sending Solutions” roadblocks are solutions that you suggest to the speaker. Even if they accept your solutions over the short term, they will grow to resent you over the long haul—whether you solution was right or wrong, it doesn’t matter. People must be allowed take ownership of their decisions without intervention on your part. The amazing thing: if you listen to people—really listen to them, they will generally come to their own decisions. Might not be the choice you would have selected, but at least it is their choice.

The five “Sending Solutions” roadblocks are:

• Ordering. “Commanding the other person to do what you want to have done.”[1]

• Threatening. “Trying to control another person’s actions by warning of negative consequences.”[1]

• Moralizing. “Telling people what they should do.”[1]

• Excessive/Inappropriate Questioning. Excessive close-ended questions.

• Advising. “Giving the person a solution to their problem.”[1]

You might have a great solution to the problem someone is trying to work through, but when is trying to work through their problems, offering them other solutions will, most likely, just complicate the situation and create animosity between you and them over the long haul.

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[1] I’m certainly no expert on listening. Most of the ideas and all of the quotes come from an amazing book by Robert Bolton: People Skills. IMO, it is the greatest book on how to apply listening skills in your everyday life, but don’t just take my word for it.

Carl Rogers called judging the “major barrier to interpersonal communication”. Judging prevents us from really knowing the person we’re talking to. There are four types of judging:

• Criticizing. How critical are you? And why? Bolton offers the idea that people are critical to help improve other people—that is, pointing out the areas that need improvement is the only way people will grow. Hear criticism from the person receiving it, and you get a different story: “Nothing I do will be good enough.”

• Name-calling and labeling. When we identify a person with a label—and all the qualities that we’ve associated with that label—and we do not take the time to really know them.

• Diagnosing. Diagnosing is similar to labeling. Telling people why you think they do what they do. “You’re being defensive…” or “You’re being obsessive…” Diagnosing someone else’s problems shuts them down. They don’t listen to you—how can they when all you want to do is tell them why they’re doing what they’re doing. Maybe you’re right, maybe not. But what good does it really serve?

• Praising evaluatively. General praise. For example, “It was a good story…” or “You’re such a good girl.” Praise should be given for specific items or actions. If you liked the story, say what you liked about it. If you daughter is a good girl, praise her when she is being good. When you praise the general instead of the specific, you either set unrealistic expectations, create anxiety, or trigger defensive statements. For example, if you told someone that they wrote a good story, they might respond: “Eh, my friend thought of the idea.” He shuts down, stops listening, and doesn’t accept the praise.

I would add one other judging roadblock:

• Judgemental body language. We also communicate the judgements we pass through our body language. Even if we never voice our judgement, we may communicate that judgement by the way we look at the person, stand near them, or the tone in our voice.

Removing judging roadblocks from your conversation is tough. Once removed, though, you will have more effective conversations with your family, friends, and co-workers.

I’ve talked some about how to listen in past posts:

• How to listen

• How to Listen: Attending Skills

• How to listen: Following Skills

• How to Listen: Reflecting Skills

I’ve yet, though, to talk about how easy it is to shut a conversation down—that is, what are you saying and doing that has a high likelihood of shutting down a conversation—of making the other person (or persons) involved in the conversation feel like they are not really being heard.

In his book, People Skills, Bolton identifies 12 responses that he terms high risk responses. They don’t always ruin the conversation, but they do it often enough that you should strive to avoid using them. The 12 responses are

Judging

• Criticizing
• Name-calling
• Diagnosing
• Praising Evaluatively

Sending Solutions

• Ordering
• Threatening
• Moralizing
• Excessive/Inappropriate Questioning
• Advising

Avoiding the other’s concerns

• Diverting
• Logical Argument
• Reassuring

I’ll review each group of roadblocks over the next few days. By understanding what not to do, you get a better understanding of how to listen to peopel—and not just react to what they’ve said.

Now we’re down to the most difficult group of listening skills: Reflecting skills. Reflecting skills are the key skills required to be a master listener. With Following Skills and Attending Skills alone, you’ll be good, but you may still misunderstand or misinterpret the speaker. Bolton offers these thoughts on reflective listening:

In a reflective response, the listener restates the feelings and/or content of what the speaker has communicated and does so in a way that demonstrates understanding and acceptance.

There are four reflecting skills:

• A paraphrase is “a concise response to the speaker which states the essence of the other’s content in the listener’s own words.” When I talk to folks about the virtues of reflective listening, this is often what they think about, but it doesn’t stop here.

• Reflecting feelings “involves mirroring back to the speaker, in a succinct statement, the emotions which she is communicating.” You can deduce the speaker’s feelings by

  • observing body language
  • listening to their tone
  • listening to the type of feeling words they use
  • putting yourself in their shoes

  By non-judgmentally reflecting the speaker’s feelings, you encourage them to talk more freely and openly, which helps create an instant intimacy with the person. Further, in order to fully understand the content, we must understand the emotions surrounding the content.

• Reflecting meaning is simply reflecting both the speakers content and emotion.

  When we respond to the speaker’s meanings—the feelings that paralyze or motivate and the content to which the feelings are associated—our listening is often most effective.

  When first learning how to reflect meaning, try using the formula: “You feel…because…” For example: “You feel angry because that jerk cut you off in traffic.” You might think that saying something like: “You feel…because…” would come across as silly or condescending, but it doesn’t. People focus on the fact that you actually understood them rather than the actual words you used to communicate that understanding.

• Summative reflections are restatements of the over-all themes and feelings of a conversation.

  Summaries are useful in any number of situations, and are most effective “when the listener (1) gathers together points that the speaker brought up, and (2) selects relevant data—that which will help the speaker more clearly understand key elements of her situation.” A good summary, then, empowers the speaker to “speak in more depth” about the topic.

  Bolton gives a great example of how helpful summative reflections can be:

  Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychotherapist, told a colleague about his first visit with Sigmund Freud in the year 1907. Jung had much that he wanted to talk about with Freud, and he spoke with intense animation for three whole hours. Finally Freud interrupted him and, to Jung’s astonishment, proceeded to group the content of Jung’s monologue into several precise categories that enabled them to spend their remaining hours together in a more profitable give and take.

So, there you have it. A summary of the three sets of skills needed to become an effective listener. I’ve only scratched the surface here, and would strongly recommend that you pickup Bolton’s excellent book People Skills to learn more about effective listening.

Other posts on How to listen:

• How to listen: Following skills
• How to listen: Attending Skills
• How to listen

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I’m certainly no expert on listening. Most of the ideas and all of the quotes come from an amazing book by Robert Bolton: People Skills. IMO, it is the greatest book on how to apply listening skills in your everyday life.

Rosa’s at it again. And, as usual, she’s hitting the nail on the head.

She’s posting more about the Daily Five Minutes. This time it’s a two part series. Today’s part focuses on the D5M from the employee’s perspective; the second part will focus on the boss’s perspective.

Now I’ve been remiss in actually telling you why I think the Daily Five is such a good idea. There are two reasons:

The first has to do with the core purpose of the Daily Five:

When your boss Takes 5 with you, the basic coaching they get from me is that the agenda for the D5M is yours, not theirs (hence Lucy’s question). They are supposed to come to you with nothing but an eagerness to talk to you, ready for some practice on being a better listener when you talk to them — about whatever you want to talk to them about.

That the employee has the opportunity to be heard and, more importantly, be understood is the key part of the Daily Five Minutes. Being understood is key, because it’s what we, as humans, really want. If your boss shows up for a Daily Five and doesn’t actively listen to you, she’s doing more damage than if she had just ignored you all day long.

Keith Ferrazzi writes a little about this in his column in inc magazine. Master Networkers, he says, can quickly create an intimacy with other folks by “allowing people to go deep into themselves”—that is, we can intimately connect with others by engaging them in an open conversation about the things that they are passionate. What’s more, this openness and intimacy are rewarded.

In this same way, a boss that takes the time to talk to her employees in a non-judgemental fashion about things the employee is passionate will be rewarded with hard-work and loyalty.

The second is a bit more practical in nature: it allows the employee and boss to connect without taking a lot of time, which gives the employee (and boss, for that matter) more time to get work done.

Anyway, quit reading my words and go read some of Rosa’s. Great stuff.

Unlike the attending skills I previously discussed, following Skills require more practice to master. They might look familiar, but putting them into practice will take some work. At their core, Following Skills are the activities that you do (and don’t do) to encourage the speaker to, well, speak without getting in their way. In fact, according to Bolton:

One of the primary tasks of a listener is to stay out of the other’s way so the listener can discover how the speaker views his situation.

Unfortunately, listeners don’t always get out of the way. They often ask too many questions, or their questions divert the conversation in directions the speaker didn’t want to go. How many times have you wanted to talk about something, but your listener started asking questions about things that were only peripherally related to your topic?

Following skills include:

• Door Openers. Per Bolton, a door opener is “a noncoercive invitation to talk.” Sometimes it’s as simple as “What’s on your mind?” or “You don’t seem yourself lately.” According to Bolton, door openers have four parts, though not each part is present in every door opener:

  1. Description of the other person’s body language
  2. An invitation to talk or to continue talking
  3. Silence; that is, give the person a chance to respond.
  4. Attending. (All the skills I talked about here.)

  Keep these guidelines in mind when “opening the door on a conversation”:

  1. Do not use roadblocks when you should be using a door opener. More on roadblocks later. For now, know that roadblocks are comments that actually dissuade a person from talking instead of encouraging them to talk.
  2. If the person doesn’t want to talk, don’t force the issue.
  3. Only use door openers when you have time to commit to the conversation. Giving the person an opportunity to talk and then cutting them short will make it that much difficult for them to open up later.
• Minimal Encourages. These are “brief indicators to the other person that you are with them”. They are minimal because the speaker says very little, but they encourage the speaker to continue talking because they communicate that you are interested and are following them. Minimal encourages include nodding your head, saying “mm-hmm”, or offering other short phrases.

• Infrequent Questions. Questions can either help draw the speaker out, or they can direct the conversation away from the real issue the speaker wants to discuss. Using infrequent questions “helps you better understand the speaker without directing the conversation”. However, most people, myself included, ask too many questions. If you find yourself down the rabbit howl of asking too many questions, try turning your next question into a statement; as Bolton says:

  …most questions can be expressed as statements and that doing so generally is far more productive in a conversation than repeated questioning.

• Attentive Silence. One of the best quotes from Bolton’s book starts out his section on Attentive Silence:

  The beginning listener needs to learn the value of silence in freeing the speaker to think, feel, and express himself. “The beginning of wisdom is silence,” said a Hebrew sage. “The second stage is listening.”

  Many of my friends and co-workers are uncomfortable with silence. Any pause I might give to my conversation is often filled with the other person’s voice. Bolton likens these people to the character in Waiting for Godot who said: “Let us try to converse calmly since we are incapable of keeping silent.”

  During silence pauses in a conversation, a good listener does the following:

  1. Attends.
  2. Observes facial expressions, posture, gestures; hears what the speaker’s body is saying.
  3. Thinks about what the other person is communicating, reflecting on both the speaker’s message as well his emotions.

  Like the other following skills, silence can be taken to extremes as well: Too much silence communicates disinterest.

Unlike attending skills, which you probably already knew how to use, following skills will take time to master. Be patient. I’ve been practicing these skills for the past 2 years and am still learning. Don’t let that intimidate you, though. I’ve been talking for nearly 30 years and have become quite proficient at it—just ask my wife! But I’ve only been listening—really listening—for 2 years. You wouldn’t expect a toddler to speak in complete sentences, would you? The important thing is to keep trying, keep practicing. Even as a growing novice, you will see a marked improvement in your conversations and even in the core of your relationships.

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I’m certainly no expert on listening. Most of the ideas and all of the quotes come from an amazing book by Robert Bolton: People Skills. IMO, it is the greatest book on how to apply listening skills in your everyday life.

Attending skills are the body language skills of listening. It’s said that 85% of communication is done non-verbally. If true, that means that 85% of our communication relies on our attending skills. Fortunately, most people already have an inuitive understanding of how to apply attending skills—they just rarely apply them.

Attending skills include:

• A posture of involvement. Relaxed alertness. Being relaxed communicates acceptance of what the speaker says and being alert communicates that you are paying attention. A posture of involvement can involve any of these activities:
  • Incline your body toward the speaker. When you are really interested in a topic, you’ll actually sit forward.
  • Face the speaker squarely. Don’t sit or stand at an angle. Face them head on.
  • Maintain an open position. Keep your arms and legs unfolded. Closed arms and/or legs can communicate defensiveness and distance.
  • Give the speaker her personal space. Crowding the speaker only makes her feel uncomfortable, but too much distance means that you are not interested in what she is saying. For Americans, an appropriate distance is three feet. Closeness beyond that communicates an intimacy that is reserved for close friends and loved ones.
• Appropriate Body Motion. Avoid distracting motions and gestures. Fidgeting communicates boredom, but so does complete stillness. Your movements should be in response to the speaker’s movements.
• Eye Contact. Of the attending skills, this is probably the biggest no brainer as well as the most important. Good eye contact communicates interest in what the speaker is saying as well as confidence from the listener. Eye contact also carries with it a level of intimacy that some people may not be comfortable with, so, at times, it will be difficult to use effectively.
• Nondistracting Environment. Another no-brainer. If you’re going to talk with someone, make sure your environment has as few distractions as possible. Turn off the television. Close your office door. Shut down email. Do whatever you need to do to cut down on distractions. (The television kills me every time—something about those pretty pictures and magical sounds draws me to them. When someone is talking to me, and a television is on, I turn it off. If I can’t turn it off, I make sure I can’t see it.)

Attending skills are the building blocks of good listening. The sad part is that even though most of us know how to use these attending skills, we don’t.

Make a conscious effort at some point during the next few days to actively practice your attending skills. It will seem artificial at first. And by “at first”, I mean the first few minutes of a conversation because actively attending to what the other person is saying stirs your interest in the conversation. It won’t turn a dreadful conversation into an interesting one, but it will make those marginally interesting topics even more bearable. And you might even learn something from the interaction—at the very least, you’ll hone your attending skills.