Do you want to be a great listener?
I'm going to tell you what great listeners actually do.
These are 3 key characteristics of people who really know how to listen.
I was recently reading an article by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, and they were talking about listening. It was in a book about empathy in general, but their chapter was entitled, "What do great listeners actually do?" When I read it, I immediately thought of you guys and that you would benefit also from these simple ideas about the habits of great listeners.
So, these two authors went into a large organization, interviewed thousands of people, and identified the top 5% of listeners, people who are identified by all their colleagues as great listeners. Then they looked at what characteristics they have, that other people lacked. That's what I'm going to describe to you today, these three characteristics that great listeners have.
Great listeners are…
1. Active. Good listening is more than sitting there silently. Good listening is active, it's engaged. Good listening is actually a dialogue. We make a mistake when we think that good listening is passive and simply receptive. The best listeners in this group actively participated in dialogues with the people that they were listening to, often asking clarifying questions, making supportive statements, and engaging in a constructive dialogue. Good listening is more than just sitting silently.
2. Supportive. Good listening supports the speaker's self-esteem and confidence. One of your jobs as a good listener is to create a safe environment where the other person feels at ease and comfortable talking about whatever it is they need to talk about. That may be talking about difficult things, being vulnerable. Good listening bolsters the self-esteem and confidence of the other person, creates a safe space for them to be vulnerable, to open up and talk about whatever it is they want to talk about.
3. Cooperative. Good listening is a co-operative activity. It is not argumentative, it is not critical, and it is not judgmental. So when you're listening to someone, you are cooperating with them in an activity. The main purpose of that activity is to get in sync with one another, to increase the stack of common knowledge between you, maybe to deepen the relationship. But it isn't to judge or criticize or argue or compete. So good listening is cooperative, not competitive, not judgmental, not critical.
This doesn't mean you can never challenge the person who's talking to you. It doesn't mean you can't ask for clarification or question their assumptions. But it has to be done in a spirit of cooperation and help. It can't be perceived as attempting to one-up the other person, or belittle them, or make them feel stupid. It has to be done in this spirit of cooperation.
As I said before, good listening is active and cooperative. It means you can question people, but it has to be done in this spirit of cooperation. And it has to always be obvious that you're attempting to help and be cooperative in this joint venture.
Good listeners make suggestions. This runs counter to some typical advice we get about listening, which is never to focus on problem-solving, always to focus on the emotions. But the best listeners in this group were often found to make suggestions. Now, they were constructive suggestions, they were helpful suggestions. They weren't critical or judgmental suggestions. But because listening is this cooperative activity, of course the best listeners make suggestions once they hear something where they might have something constructive to offer. The best listeners were always in the habit of making constructive suggestions.
This doesn't mean they were exclusively focused on problem-solving, or they were hijacking the conversation to change it to their own agenda. But when they found an opportunity to make a constructive contribution, based on what had been going on in the dialogue, they felt free to make suggestions.
This runs counter to the evidence or the advice that we get sometimes, which is never problem-solve, only just listen and focus on feelings. But if you are constructively engaged in this cooperative activity with another person, it's only natural that you would make suggestions if you have constructive input to offer.
Summary
So that's it. Three quick suggestions about how you can improve your listening by identifying the characteristics of excellent listeners, what good listeners actually do.
Good listening is an active dialogue.
Good listening is supportive and bolsters the other’s self-esteem.
Good listening is cooperative and non-judgmental.