Having effective listening skills means being able to display interest in the topic discussed and understand the information provided. The ability to speak effectively is a highly sought-after skill.
Active Listening
Active listening is the ability to hold your response to a given situation until;
- you have gathered and checked all relevant facts,
- you have understood the facts and
- you have given the facts your unbiased attention in order to arrive at a logical decision.
Active listening requires ALL of your attention. Since your mind can receive words three or four times faster than people speak, you should use the spare capacity to understand, sort and organise and validate the information.
Active listening involves four levels of a pyramid, no higher level being constructed until the preceding level has been given sufficient attention:
- SENSE -> INTERPRET -> EVALUATE -> RESPOND
Sensing Attributes
- Focuses all attention on the speaker.
- Provides a listening setting in both physical/social terms.
- Tries to prevent outside interruptions.
- Allows others adequate time before questions or comments.
- Avoids wandering mentally or getting sidetracked.
- Avoids formulating responses while others are speaking.
- Refrains from taking overly detailed notes.
- Says, ‘I didn’t hear that’ or ‘Could you repeat….if necessary.
- Sees appropriate non-verbal behaviour to indicate message reception. (E.g. eye contact, gestures, ‘uh-huh’, nodding, facial expressions, etc.)
- Doesn’t let speaker’s style, age, position, sex, looks, character, positive or negative support, etc, affect sensing.
Interpreting
- Determines the broad intent of the speaker (small talk, self-expression, information, persuasion).
- Asks questions or rephrases to promote understanding and clarity: organisation of content.
Uses excess thought speed to mentally organise, sequence, or outline content. - Identifies supporting material and relates it to central ideas flexibly.
- Tries to reflect the speaker’s feelings to enhance understanding.
- Uses appropriate non-verbal behaviour to convey understanding.
- Is aware of emotional barriers (red flag words, deaf spots, stress, ego, bias, etc).
- Probes and uses restatements to check on potential semantic confusion such as connotation, context, personal meaning, grammatical structure, etc.
- Gives positive feedback.
- Clarifies fact from opinion.
Evaluating
- Withholds judgement until others are finished.
- Uses awareness of own filters, bias, or prejudice to help control or suspend judgement.
- Identifies own ‘parent’ and ‘child’ inputs and processes them via the ‘adult’.
- Recognises parent’ and ‘child’ data from the speaker.
- Uses appropriate non-verbal behaviour to indicate ongoing evaluation (disagreement agreement, like/dislike, etc).
- Looks for implications in what is being sold and not being said; listens between the lines.
- Pays attention to voice tone, in-flection, body language, or other non-verbal clues.
- Distinguishes carefully between facts, opinions based on fact, and opinions based on preferences.
- Identifies alternatives before deciding on preference.
- Understands the prevailing environment of the speaker, and takes it into consideration.
Responding
- Uses non-verbal communication in response,
- Accepts obligation to respond in some way.
- Clarifies the expectations or wants of the speaker through questions.
- Commits to respond to the speaker.
- Reviews own available resources,
- Reviews own current priorities.
- Determines feasibility of filling speaker’s needs.
- Decides on degree of response.
- Decides on ‘how to respond.
- Closes the loop with some response to the speaker.
Non-Verbal Communication
- Posture: Bodily position communicates more than is often realised, e.g. a rigid stance often signals a desire to dominate.
- Gestures: Physical mannerisms are perhaps the most obvious form of NVC.
- Head Movements: A nod in some cultures is important. It indicates more than agreement.
- Facial Expression: Because people can control these, what is seen may not be a true reflection of thought and attitude.
- Eye Movements: These are difficult to control. Eye contact is greater when people like each other. Long and frequent looks also indicate a high degree of interest.
- Leg Movements: Feet moving about in an uncomfortable situation are literally saying help’. Leg movements are less likely to be controlled in a contrived way.
- Proximity: The distance maintained between people varies from country to country, and can have an impact on the effectiveness of communication far beyond its apparent importance to an uncritical observer.
- Bodily Contact: Different societies have their accepted standards.
- Orientation: Facing or turning away can have a significant effect. When sitting side-by-side people tend to co-operate but when facing, they tend to compete.
- Appearance: This subtly signals attitudes, eg. similar dress shows conformity, while a marked difference is often a guide to a person’s wish to be different.
- Rapport: A characteristic which makes people more effective in their relations is leaning forward with a friendly smile offering warmth, help and encouragement.
- Presence: Sometimes people must project themselves more dramatically so that they are listened to more closely.
- Variations: Tone, speed and voice level indicate the speaker’s emotional state.
- Vocal Mannerisms: An over-use of vocal mannerisms like ‘er’ and ‘umm irritates, and detracts from the effectiveness of a talk.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
Neuro-Linguistic Programming was developed from detailed studies of the work of three outstandingly successful psychotherapists, Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir and Milton Erickson. While NLP was initially developed from therapy, it offers powerful communication opportunities as well, and successful communication is an essential prerequisite of a successful business.
The three basic tenets of NLP; known as the ‘The Three Legs of NLP’ are;
- know exactly what outcome you wish to achieve in every situation.
- have the sensory acuity to recognise when you have achieved your outcomes
- have the flexibility to change your behaviour until you achieve your outcome.
Put negatively, this says that if you do what you have always done, you will get what you always get!
The first step of successful communication is building rapport, i.e. mimicking and mirroring behaviours, smiling, making eye contact and always using peoples names etc. An important effect of being in rapport with someone is that it builds trust and responsiveness between you.
The second step is to develop sensory acuity, which means learning a new sharpness in observing the people you are communicating with. With a little practice it is easy to read the micro-muscular facial signals that tell you how your message is being received.
Another important factor in this field is the understanding of eye movements and what they mean. These eye movements indicate how people think, not what they think.
Bandler and Grindler, who completed the experiments, observed that:
- When we look up, we are visualising
- When we look horizontally to the left or right we are either remembering or constructing sounds.
- Looking downward or to the left, we are accessing our feelings.
- Looking downward to the right, we are talking to ourselves!
Appreciation of these factors will provide you with some of the skills required to understand the effect your message is having. Most people have a style of speaking that indicates the way they think about the world. Some speak in a visual way, ‘I see what you mean or I get the picture’. Others speak in an auditory manner, ‘I hear what you say or That sounds OK to me’.
A third group speak about feelings, ‘I’ve got a good grasp of that or That feels about right’.
Therefore, it is essential that when you wish to communicate fully with a person you adopt the language style they prefer. This will enable you to operate from their viewpoint, and will demonstrate to them that you are similar in many respects to them, and therefore can be trusted! It will provide you with the ability to employ influencing language patterns.
In addition, you can support your understanding of how people receive messages by using the technique of ‘matching’ behaviour. In general, people find that they get on best and maintain relationships more easily with other people with whom they are ‘on the same wavelength’ – people who are like themselves in some way.
Similarly, people often say they have a ‘gut’ feeling about another person-often when that person is someone with whom they do not feel completely at ease. In fact, gut feelings occur when we pick up tiny signals from others but do not know how to code them. NLP shows individuals how to work with such signals and use them to modify their own behaviour to greater effect.
The principles on which rapport is based is easy to understand, if you observe how another person is functioning, notice the difference between that and your own way of behaving, and then copy part of what the other person does, you will find you quickly establish a feeling of comfort’. In addition to mimicking and mirroring behaviours, you can employ ‘matching’.
Anything can be matched; usually, behavioural factors are chosen. For example, you might match another person’s movement. If you are with someone who naturally keeps very still, but you gesture a lot, it can be intimidating for the other person. By toning down your gestures, you are likely to relate better to the other person.
Similarly, if you naturally speak very softly, you might find that communication with people with louder voices is sometimes difficult. By practising speaking more loudly you will find you relate better to those particular people (and you have gained greater flexibility for yourself along the way).
The examples given above are behavioural; they are other ways of changing your behaviour to get closer to that of someone else – you might, however, choose to model someone’s beliefs, though this does raise issues of an ethical nature.
An appreciation of NLP and the associated benefits of building rapport will no doubt provide you with another tool with which to effectively manage your staff, by providing you with another means of gathering information.