Listen to understand

Listen to understand
Empathic approach helps make sense of other person from their perspective, writes Winnie Chiu.

Last week we talked about the importance of having a win-win attitude. This week we will be talking about the listening continuum, the importance of diagnosing the problem before prescribing action, and the art of empathic listening - which is a forgotten skill.Stephen Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, believes that the fifth habit, seeking first to understand, before being understood, is a principle that can be applied in many areas of life. If you are in a deteriorating relationship with your spouse, would you simply ask for a divorce or separation without delving into the root cause of the problem?
Similarly, if your customers are not satisfied with your company's product or services, would you offer big discounts on your products or services right away? When seeking to understand you would first examine the root cause of the dissatisfaction, whether it is the price, customer service, or quality. You would also probably look at surveys to understand what your customers are telling you. You would also study what your competitors are doing that you are not, before coming up with initiatives to address the situation.
Ask yourself, as managers or senior executives, do you diagnose the problem before you prescribe remedial action, or do you jump the gun and go into quick fixes?
If you look into the recruitment advertisements, most of them would say the successful applicant must possess excellent communication and presentation skills. How often do you see a job advertisement that says successful candidates must possess excellent listening skills? This tells us that listening skills are frequently overlooked, or given a low priority, in our business communications today.
Let us examine something called the listening continuum, which consists of five levels, and provides us with a good framework with which we can judge our listening skills. The first level involves ignoring people. At this level we are only hearing sounds. We are someplace else while the speaker is trying to tell us something, we are completely tuned out.
At the next level a slightly better listener pretends to be listening. They are probably mimicking the speaker's last sentence, and just showing some body language such as nodding their heads. But at the same time, their eyes are blank, and they avoid eye contact. The third level is selective listening. We listen with a filter and we tune in and tune out as we wish. This is evidenced by our responses such as "I know exactly what you mean", or "I have also been there too". When the speaker asked us what we think, we simply said "Oh, that is great, that is fantastic", without any knowledge of what the speaker had said. Near the top of the continuum is attentive listening, where we give full attention and energy to the speaker, but seeing things from your own perspective. We are anxious to reply. We give our opinions and recommendations to the speaker and tell the speaker what he or she should or should not do. Finally, the very pinnacle of listening skills is empathic listening. Here we are trying to connect ourselves to the speaker's world, and try to experience life from their perspective. We are not only giving full attention and energy to the speaker. We are also leaving our mind, and going into the speaker's mind and heart. We are trying to understand the other person from their own perspective.We take no partisan views, and we are not agreeing nor disagreeing. We are anxious to understand, and to let the other person express their feelings to you. This relates to a saying that, if we want to understand a person, we must first walk in their shoes. In order to do that, we must first remember to remove our own shoes. As managers and senior executives in an organisation, which level of listening are we operating on most of the time? How often have we forgotten to take off our shoes before we put ourselves into other people's shoes? Top people managers and business leaders must learn to remember to take this lesson to heart.All too often we upset the peace because we don't take the time to listen emphatically. We tend to put our own need to be understood first, but this often results in a breakdown in communication we later regret. Ralph Roughton, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, once said that if a person, tasked to listen, starts giving advice instead, then they have not done what they were asked.
When people, who are asked to listen, begin to tell the speaker how they should or should not feel, their feelings are being trampled. If the person being asked to listen feels they need to do something, then they have failed, strange as it may seem. All that was asked of was to listen, not to talk or do.
Unsurprisingly, seeking to understand first is a very disarming technique. Once the other party feels that you understand where he or she is coming from, they will feel less defensive and be open to understand you in return. This sets the stage for open communications, arriving at a solution that both parties can accept. Trying to arrive at a solution, without first having this understanding, can be disastrous.
Most people in the business world reverse the habit by seeking first to be understood. They do not listen with the intent to understand, but they listen with the intent to reply. They are either speaking, or waiting to speak. They are filtering the messages they receive, based on their own frame of reference.
Instead, we need to allow the person with the problem to do most of the talking. We must avoid premature conclusions based on our own life experiences. We help the individual to better understand themselves and are sensitive to the feelings being expressed. Madelyn Burley-Allen, author of the book on Listening: the Forgotten Skill, says that when we listen well, we acknowledge the speaker, increase the speaker's self-esteem and confidence, and tell the speaker: "You are important" and "I am not judging you".
Empathic listening is best described by the traditional Chinese character for "listen", which consists of the separate characters for ear, eyes, and the heart. This is especially appropriate since empathic listening is about using all three components to understand the message being communicated.
When people deeply understand each other they seek to be understood by using phrases such as: "I've heard you. Now is there something else you'd like me to understand?", "Would you like to hear my feelings about it?", "I have a suggestion, would you like to hear it now or would you prefer to continue?", and "This is what I have observed, given the situation, would you like to brainstorm some solutions together?"
Managers are classified into two major types - the ones that understand, and the ones that are unperceptive. Understanding managers will say that they need to understand their people accurately and deeply, and they care to give feedback honestly and often.
The unperceptive manager will complain that they do not understand why their people do not listen to them and will assume that people don't want feedback as they are afraid of it. Therefore the key actions of an understanding manager are: practice empathic listening and give honest and accurate feedback.Dos and don'ts of listeningDo
Be attentive, interested, alert, and not distracted. Create a positive atmosphere through non-verbal behaviour
Be a sounding board, allow the speaker to bounce ideas and feelings off you while assuming a non-judgmental manner
Indicate you are listening by providing brief, non-committal acknowledging responses such as "Uh, huh", "I see", "I understand your problem and how you are feeling about it", "I am interested in what you are saying and I am not judging you", "Thank you for sharing your feelings with me", and "How can I help you?"
Don't
Discount the speaker's feelings by using stock phrases such as "It's not that bad", "Quit feeling sorry for yourself" or "You'll feel better tomorrow"
Let the speaker "hook" you. This can happen if you get angry or upset. Do not allow yourself to get involved in an argument, pass judgment on the other person or automatically disagree with their opinions
Winnie Chiu is senior consultant for the Hong Kong office of Right Management, a global human resources consultancy. This is the sixth in our eight-week series about how The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People can apply to senior executives. Next week: Synergise
Management lessons: Leaders made when going gets toughSome are born to lead while others are made because of unforeseen circumstances. I lean towards the latter and believe that some of the most crucial leadership skills can only be forged during periods of difficulty.
A recent learning experience for me was the earthquake in Sichuan. As the chief executive of a travel company, I went to Sichuan to preside over a ceremony to mark the launch of our tour to one of the four sacred Buddhist temples there.
Arriving a couple of days before the earthquake, everything went as planned. On the day of the first tremors, I remember it was 2.28pm and I had just come down a mountain with a tour group. I vividly remember seeing the windows of the hotel shaking. People were screaming and were running around in a panic.
In emergency situations my first concern is always for people's safety. We had to take practical steps to assure the safety of the 250 customers and 10 staff with me there. Throughout the next few days I had to decide what the most important things we needed. I decided my priority was to make special flight arrangements and find shelter for everyone. I assigned my people different tasks so that we could all focus our energy on specific things and not let the chaos disrupt our goals.
The next important thing was effective communication. I had to let people in our Hong Kong office know what was happening so they could let the relevant people know that we were alright. I gave them updates of our situation and instructed them to prepare all contingency plans for our customers in advance.
Staying in an earthquake zone was a frightening experience. There was always the fear of another earthquake and that challenged us emotionally and physically almost every second. To alleviate fear, we went from coach to coach regularly to offer emotional support, give customers updated information of our situation and let them know we were there no matter how tough the situation was.
I learned that lesson from watching Premier Wen Jiabao, who went to the earthquake zone to visit the victims. I was inspired by his action.
I believe that this is what it means to be a leader - to care for your people by being there. While that may not sound exceptional, you have to remember that unlike decisions that are made in the comfort of an office environment, it was not something you could put back in the in-tray and chew on before acting.
You could not set up a committee, hold a meeting and brainstorm about what to do next, or to sleep on it and worry about it again after the weekend. There was also no deferring to another authority as everyone was too busy with the important tasks of saving lives that were on the line.
Everything was a series of important snap decisions that had to be made then and there, and all decisions had to be correct. Such circumstances have the distinction of being incredibly stressful but, ultimately, acting in this high-stress environment sharpened some of my leadership skills - making decisions, prioritising tasks, communicating - that I had slowly acquired over the course of my career.
Would I have been able to eventually improve these same skills to the same degree had I not been forced to act by the circumstances of the earthquake? Probably, but it would have taken longer. My experience of the Sichuan earthquake has been a beneficial one for my career, and the lessons learned will be very relevant in my job in future.





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"The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer"Henry David ThoreauAmerican author, naturalist and transcendentalistIllustration: Winnie Ho















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