Too often we think we’re listening when we’re not. We might be:
- waiting to put our own point across,
- thinking about what we want to say, or
- checking our emails (I was running a meeting when a senior manager did this on his phone…yes really!)
Here’s a simple action to start practising listening effectively.
The very next conversation you have with a colleague, have a go at saying back to them what they just said. Word for word.
It’s to make sure you heard what they said. The formal name for this is an empathic restate.
There are no shortcuts. You. Have. To. Actually. Listen.
Greg McKeown, author of ‘Essentialism’ had this to say about listening:
The most essential part of relationships is communication.
The most essential part of communication listening.
The most essential part of listening is empathic restates.
The most essential part of empathic restates is getting out of your own head and into the head of the other person.
The most essential part of getting out of your own head is seeing the paradigms.
Greg McKeown
A paradigm is a framework used to understand something. Once you start listening to your colleagues at the basic level of what they just said, you’ll start seeing the frameworks of how you’ve been listening.
When I started doing this, it felt like time was slowing down. It’s SUCH a cliché but I used to think people didn’t listen to ME…when after practising empathic restates, I realised I wasn’t listening to THEM.
As I got better at this, colleagues around me became more interesting! I started to find out what it was like in in their heads. I began to see the world (and teaching) as they did. I naturally started summarising what they were saying and asking for permission to say what I thought. It opened the door to to suggestions, ideas, and collaboration.
It might feel strange doing this at first, so three scripts you can use to set this up are:
- “So you’re saying…”
- “Let me check I’ve understood what you’re saying…”
- “So you mean that…”
Play and experiment with your own versions.
Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash
James D'Souza 