Has Listening Become a Lost Art?
Have
managers lost the ability to listen? Professor Jim Heskett reviews recent
research that suggests we don't even listen to ourselves anymore. What do YOU
think?
The
week that I write this, I needed help programming a television set for
recording purposes. Before being connected with the cable company service
representative, I agreed to provide telephonic feedback about the service after
my call. The call went miserably, in large part because I couldn't understand
what the rep was saying. After 30 minutes, it was clear that my time was
running out, and I was shunted off the call quickly with little assurance that
I had programmed my television set correctly.
Several
minutes later, the automated call came for the questionnaire. A recorded voice
thanked me for cooperating and assured me that the poll would take only two
minutes. The first question was, "On a scale of 1 (low) and 5 (high) how
would you rate your overall experience?" I pressed the "1" on my
phone. Whereupon the automated voice thanked me for my cooperation and hung up,
consuming only about ten seconds of the two minutes.
Having
studied and written about the value of "listening posts" in business,
I concluded that the company's management wasn't interested in listening.
In
his new book Quick and Nimble, based on more than 200 interviews, Adam
Bryant concludes, that, among other things, managers need to have more
"adult conversations" —conversations needed to work through
"inevitable disagreements and misunderstandings" —with our direct
reports. Such conversations require careful listening.
In
the same book he reports that CEOs expressed major concerns about the misuse
and overuse of e-mail, something that they feel encourages disputes to escalate
more rapidly than if face-to-face conversations had taken place instead. The
latter, however, would require people to listen.
Edgar
Schein, known primarily for his work on corporate culture, pursues the subject
from a different direction in a little book, Humble Inquiry. In it, he asks and
answers a question we discussed here several months ago of why CEOs talk too
much and listen too little. And he proposes an antidote, something he calls
"the gentle art of asking instead of telling," describing the kinds
of questions designed to elicit useful information. At the same time, according
to Schein, the mere act of asking, if done sincerely, requires that the
questioner make himself temporarily vulnerable to the person being questioned.
This in turn, builds trust so lacking in many organizations today.
There's
a catch, however. It requires that the questioner know how to listen, something
many CEOs have forgotten.
The
question is brought closer to home in a new book by Daniel DeSteno, The Truth
About Trust. DeSteno presents evidence from the world of psychology that we
don't even listen to ourselves. As a result, we shouldn't trust anything that
we say or plan. He cites studies that conclude that people deceive themselves
into thinking they will do things in the future that, when the time comes, they
have no intention of doing. Further, we often deny that we ever expressed the
intention in the first place.
Am
I imagining that this is a growing problem, or have I just been picking up the
wrong books lately? Has it always been like this? Are we forgetting how to
listen? If so, what are the reasons?
To Read More:
Adam
Bryant, Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to
Create a Culture of Innovation , Macmillan, 2014.
David
DeSteno, The Truth About Trust: How It Determines Success in Life,
Love, Learning, and More, Hudson Street Press, 2014.
Edgar
H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of
Telling Berrett-Koehler
Publishers, Inc., 2013.
by
James Heskett http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7414.html?wknews=
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