‘Seek first to understand, then to be understood.’ – Dr Stephen Covey
For most of us, listening involves formulating our reply to what they are saying while they are still talking.
Why do we do this? Because being listened to is a deep human psychological need. We all want to be heard.
Do you feel listened to at work? Do you feel listened to at home?
I think that we live in a society where no one deeply listens to anyone else. I think that is why we have so many counselors and psychologists. We have to pay people to listen to us!
So just imagine what it would be like if you were listened to at work. What if you deeply listened to your colleagues before responding?
Deep Listening requires both a skill and an attitude.
The attitude must be one of acceptance of the other and a willingness to try on the other’s glasses or way of looking at the world.
The skill is to be able to listen to the feelings and the facts and to feed them back to the other.
“You sound really upset that you were late to work because the trains were down.”
“You look a bit disappointed that the executive team did not accept your proposal.”
This skill might sound easy. But it is not easy to change the way we habitually respond to someone. We usually respond with advice as to what to do. This advice is usually unwanted. Most of the time people know exactly what needs to be done – they just want to be listened to, unload, or get it ‘off their chest’.
Stephen Covey also said:
“Communication is the most important skill in life. We spend most of our waking hours communicating. But consider this: You’ve spent years learning how to read and write, years learning how to speak. But what about listening? What training have you had that enables you to listen so that you really, deeply understand another human being from that own individual’s frame of reference?”
So build your own listening capabilities, take a deep breath, and listen to your colleagues. When you do, you will be doing them a great service and they will be appreciative of you. This all goes into building even better relationships with your colleagues.
