How Well Do You Really Listen? What Your Team Wishes You Knew

Stephen R Covey said, “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”

Were you listening or were you miles away thinking about something completely different? Could you be one of those people who looks like they are listening, yet you are miles away?

A study in the Journal of Applied Psychology (Weger et al., 2014) found that participants who felt actively listened to experienced significantly lower stress and greater satisfaction.

If this is the case, have we just found a significant tool to reduce stress with no extra cost?

Can we agree that effective listening involves:

• Active engagement (eye contact, nodding, verbal affirmations)

• Empathy (tuning into the speaker’s emotions)

• Non-judgmental attention

• Clarifying and paraphrasing to ensure understanding

• Responding thoughtfully—not just reacting?

  
  

And this list is not exhaustive. Remember that over 50% of your communication is non-verbal. Gallup reports that employees who feel heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to do their best work. If this is the case, can we afford not to take note of this?

Do you relate to the time a reception age child was telling you the story of what happened last night before they went to bed. You hear the words dog and snacks, and you zone out. You are wondering if you remembered to take the chicken out of the freezer for your dinner, had you answered that parent email and whether you fed your own dog this morning before you left the house in a rush.

You keep nodding and saying uh-huh, and make encouraging noises when suddenly you hear the child say, “And I drank the toilet water!” You snap out of autopilot and automatically respond with “Oh wow, amazing!”

The room goes quiet…. The child beams. You go cold!

Or perhaps you are the form tutor listening as your Year 9 pupil chats away to you at the start of the day about nothing in particular. You nod and smile. You are trying to remember if you have marked all the homework for the next lesson and whether you put your lunch in the fridge.

You vaguely hear the student say something like, “...so I told my mum I could get an eyebrow piercing if you said it was OK…”

You, still on autopilot, nod and reply, “That’s fine, yeah.”  Silence. Then the student lights up. “SERIOUSLY?! You said yes! I’m telling her tonight!” You go cold.

Have you ever done this? Do you often do this? Do you think others around you would see you as a great listener? What makes us effective listeners and why does it matter?

Bryant H. McGill said, “One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.”

Are you offering your team the respect they deserve?

So often I would go through my day, worrying about my to-do list, with something going on with my kids at home that was on my mind and desperate to try to get away in good time at the end of the day, so I would rush conversations, decisions, emails, tasks. What is the impact of this? It leaves the other person, or the recipient feeling less valued and less heard, less seen.

Gallup research shows that “feeling that someone at work cares” is strongly correlated with retention and productivity.

We all want to feel seen and heard. Is it time we each considered that in the rush of a multi-tasking world, listening more carefully could be a key to both reduce stress, be more effective, build up our colleagues and even encourage staff to stay!