Why we are so bad at listening

The value of listening

A recent email from a Senior NHS Consultant – a participant on one of our leadership programmes – described a weekly meeting that he finds exhausting to chair. With external noise surrounding their service, he joined a recent meeting and decided – in the moment – to take a different approach and start by asking everyone to share how they were feeling. By the time it was his turn, he felt able to say that he was feeling good but under pressure and explain why in a much more open and calm manner to a group of people who were listening as they had all listened to each other. 

He reflected on how a difficult day became easier and how this ‘check in’ had led to a much higher quality dialogue for the remainder of the meeting. 

In the 7 years I’ve been working at CoCreate, delivering literally hundreds of development sessions, I can confidently say that the single most common learning takeaway will – in some shape or form – relate to their capacity to listen. 

I’m not sure how I feel about this. 

In a way, it’s great – when you’re trying to bring groups of people with diverse skills, backgrounds and perspectives to tackle complex problems together, the ability to listen and learn together is fundamentally important. 

Yet I also find it troubling – why are we so bad at listening? Why do we rarely take the time to listen properly? Three potential drivers…

1) We believe we don’t have time

The pace of change has ramped up significantly in the past 10 years. There’s information overload, a constant need to do more with less and deliver results quickly. If this is your operating environment, then it’s perhaps easy to see why you might believe that you don’t have time to listen, why we consume media at 2x speed, and why research shows that when patients are describing their problems, clinicians will typically interrupt within 18 seconds. As an aside, and perhaps unsurprisingly, men appear to be the main culprits when it comes to interrupting, 

We regularly use ‘Friendly Consulting’, a specifically crafted 20-minute process for collaborative exploration of a problem. Without fail, groups are amazed at how much progress they make in just 20 minutes. And what lays the foundation for progress is that it starts with the problem holder describing the issue in 3 minutes without interruption. People describe how powerful these 3 mins are – in feeling heard, in helping them think through the problem, in enabling the listeners to see the issue from multiple angles.

By ‘forcing’ people to just listen for 3 mins it has a significant impact on their ability to help the problem holder think through the problem. Slowing down to speed up. 

2) It takes real effort

It’s not just about making time, there’s a real skill to it. It’s an active not passive activity. What are you listening for? Whose perspective are you listening from? In Stephen Covey’s Listening Levels, the 5^th level – we’re listening without applying the filters of our own experience, judgement, values and needs. We are hearing AND sensing what it means in ‘their world’ and – as Alan Alda describes listening – ‘we are willing to be changed by what we hear’. Listening at level 5 requires a massive effort (there’s no way we can do this all the time) and vulnerability – a willingness to let go of preconceived ideas & beliefs. 

3) We don’t value listening

In his book, ‘Leading from the Emerging Future’, Otto Scharmer describes 3 openings – open mind, open heart, open will – as the blind spots of almost all change efforts. Research typically estimates that 70-80% of change efforts in organisations fail and the cost of this failure – in time, money, relationships, etc – is huge. At the heart of all three openings is our capacity to listen; the willingness to open ourselves up to new possibilities and perspectives.

Whenever we look at competency frameworks, listening is often there but it’s hidden and frequently follows advocacy. How can you advocate effectively if you haven’t first listened? 

If we want change to succeed, if we want to create an inclusive culture where people can come together to learn fast, drive innovation and perform then isn’t it about time that we really went big on listening as the number one leadership skill?

Two of my favourite quotes that speak to the transformative power of listening…