A Little Book of Listening Skills for the

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A Little Book of Listening Skills for
the Workplace 52 essential practices for
profoundly transforming production, profits and
people AUTHOR Mark Brady, Ph.D. PUBLISHER
Piadeia Press
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The Big Idea

• Listening, being one of the most important things
  in business, helps create good relations with
  people. It is a creative act that improves as it
  is practiced. By effectively listening we open
  opportunities to explore our wants, how we feel,
  and what we think. It also gives understanding of
  who weve been, who we are, and who we will be as
  individuals and even as organizations.
• Being a skilled listener opens our minds this is
  why the business community needs good listeners
  with open hearts and clear minds. Good and
  accomplished listeners can create strong
  companies by knowing what transformational
  questions to ask themselves and to ask others.
  There are 52 listening skills that may help in
  becoming a better listener.

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52 Listening Skills
Stop talking so much! To stop talking so much is
one of the most basic things required to become
an accomplished listener. During conversations in
the workplace, observe who is doing most of the
talking, is it you or someone else? The first
thing to do is to notice yourself this primary
awareness is a good start. The business world is
already full of speakers, being a listener will
make you stand out. After awareness comes a
possible array of options. First is simply to
decide to stop talking so much. This may be
achieved by asking questions such as What are
your views? What is on your mind? Another
method of passing conversation is by
acknowledging with a smile or a nod, this
encourages others to talk.
Create a
culture of trust Effective and meaningful
communication exists when there is trust. To
become a skillful listener, you have to build
trust. There are different ways to establish
trust and the most common is to become
trustworthy. You achieve this by always putting
trust and integrity above everything else.
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52 Listening Skills
Listen for disrespect When a conflict arises,
there are usually two things that come about.
First is the issue, and second, which is not
always talked about, is the feeling of disrespect
that people get from another. As long as there is
a feeling of disrespect, conflicts are rarely
solved. The feeling of disrespect must be first
addressed before the issue. It is because this
feeling is the seeming cause of most
conflicts. Listen for mutual purpose Lack or
loss of mutual purpose is the second most common
causes of conflict. Few conflicts will be
resolved unless there is a foundation that will
reinforce or re-establish this. Listening for
mutual purpose is important in the success of
both business and personal relationships.
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52 Listening Skills
Be slow to disagree, argue or criticize There is
always criticism, argument and disagreement in
the workplace. But when you engage in such
behavior you cannot hear what the other person is
trying to say. With this behavior you
continuously try to get your point across and
become less of a listener. Skillful listeners
will allow others to speak and say what they need
to say. Pay special attention to the need for
control If two or more people are talking at the
same time, there is often a subtle power struggle
that happens. When such conversations arise, it
is really an exercise in one-upmanship and
competition for control. But if you learn to
selectively attend to content and emotional tone
this will allow you to hear the deeper needs that
are expressed by the speaker.
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52 Listening Skills

Listen to be able to take unconflicted action
Unconfilcted action happens when decision making
functions are deliberately placed in charge of
the fifth brain. The fifth brain is the part
of the brain that consists of axons, dendrites,
synapses, and glial cells that generate a
magnetic field 5000 times stronger than any of
the other four parts of the brain contained in
our skull. Most of the time, vacillation between
head and heart prevents people from achieving
unconflicted action. By deliberately choosing to
move executive functions to the fifth brain, you
have better perspective in decision making by
dissipating fear. This fearlessness is great for
a business person in the long run. Get
comfortable with silence Silence is critical to
becoming a skillful listener. It is in silence
where ideas unfold because people get to think. A
listener allows others to discover what they
think, feel, want and how one can be of service.
In silence, you not only listen to others but you
also listen to yourself and discover what it may
take to perform more fully.
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52 Listening Skills
Dont be an emotional terrorist Emotional
reactivity interferes with listening and even
damages business relationships. People who
frequently communicate in this manner tend to
justify their actions. Such way of dealing with
reactivity only shows little understanding of the
negative effects of this communication process.
Avoid shoulding on people There are times
when you simply give out advice. As well-meaning
as you may be, advice doesnt work. Inside each
person is a wisdom that is more reliable,
insightful and trustworthy than any advice from
someone else. Telling people what they should do
when they do not solicit for advice will result
to interference with internal wisdom, or worse
you will seem to be judgmental or disrespectful.
A skillful listener will continuously encourage
others to look at themselves and to take
initiative.
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52 Listening Skills
Encourage expression of innovation
value Innovation value is the process that lies
at the root of Blue Ocean Strategy, a book by W.
Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. Implementation of
this strategy proved to be beneficial for
numerous companies. There are six steps in
implementing this strategy in any business. These
are 1. Reconstruct market boundaries 2. Focus
on the big picture, not the numbers 3. Reach
beyond the existing demand 4. Get the strategic
sequence right 5. Overcome key organizational
hurdles and, 6. Build execution into strategy.
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52 Listening Skills
Establish support for speaking truth to power It
is hard to talk to people who hold power over us.
Skillful listeners know this and are willing to
hear anothers truth no matter how distressing
the truth may be. You must know that your power
makes it hard for others to speak the truth,
which is why you should be the one to initiate
it. Refrain from ridiculing, blaming, shaming, or
condemning. This will help establish yourself as
someone people can speak the truth to. Regularly
practice kenosis Listening is more than just
taking in words-- it requires you to react in
order to connect with one another. Kenosis
meaning to empty oneself is a state for high
level listening. A related meaning of kenosis is
revealer. Listening allows the speaker to
discover possibilities and see from a larger
perspective. Another meaning of kenosis is
mediator. Listeners often become mediators
because they can help people see the exact nature
of the problem.
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52 Listening Skills
Listen for opportunities for executive
neglect Executive neglect is looking at what you
do in a workday with an ear and an intent to
discontinue things that are no longer critical.
Listening opens the opportunity to know and stop
doing things of low value, and instead increase
doing things with high value or essential.
Listening for opportunities to practice executive
neglect helps check your performance in the
workplace. Listen beyond perfection Perfection
has been a prime pursuit for both experts and
businesses. Usually the difference between
excellence and perfection is small but there is a
difference. By giving acknowledgement and reward
based on performance and achievement, employees
learn that they are valued for what they do and
not just for who they are. In unhealthy
organizations the job done never seems to be as
good as what you might do if you tried a little
harder. Life in such an organization can be very
unrewarding. When you listen beyond perfection,
you encourage people to strive for excellence.
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52 Listening Skills
Listen as practice of presence Presence is a
result of listening to what lies at the heart of
your work. Practicing presence is to live life in
the here and now. It invites you to let go of
your own convention and it allows you to maximize
what it is to be here now. Good practices for
this would be to try to talk to someone you
normally have difficulty listening to. Avoid
letting your story take over their story When
listening, you often have similar thoughts and
experiences that make you want to tell your own
stories. You must resist this impulse because it
doesnt work. When you tell your own story, you
cut off the speaker and shift the focus away from
him. When this happens, you change the mood of
the conversation to something worse. By
interrupting, you imply that what you have to say
is more important, even if this is not what you
want to project.
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52 Listening Skills
Check for meaning Meaning comes from inside you.
Because of differences in knowledge, attitudes
and experiences, you often misinterpret others
message. One way to counter this misunderstanding
is to repeat and paraphrase what you think you
hear. Be prepared to be wrong because this
practice takes time before you can get it
right. Listen for Six Sigma opportunities Six
Sigma is a problem solving method for business
and organizational performance. It was developed
by Bill Smith and Bob Galvin and several other
Motorola engineers for quality improvement
initiative in the 1980s. The 5 Six Sigma steps
are to define, measure, analyze, improve and
control. Always be aware of these opportunities
as you listen.
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52 Listening Skills
Be genuinely curious Curiosity is something that
can be learned and developed. Try remembering how
it was as a child when everything was new and
fascinating. If you see people with the same
amazement, you become more curious about them and
what they have to say. Curiosity creates sincere
interest in the people you listen to. Listen
for underlying needs Skillful listeners try to
look for underlying needs directly or indirectly
expressed by speakers. To be able to identify
such need, you can ask questions such as why do
you ask? or what do need exactly? Listening
helps identify common interests. Almost all
communication is intended to express different
needs. A skillful listener constantly tries to
listen for those needs.
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52 Listening Skills
Identify defensiveness practice
non-defensiveness When under attack, you often
become defensive either by becoming silent or
violent. When we listen, we can more clearly
recognize the root of the attack from the
speaker. And it becomes easier to understand the
underlying truths of the attack if we practice
non-defensiveness. Listen for differences In
general, people dont want to hear differences in
opinion or way of thinking. Differences make
people uncomfortable. Skillful listeners however
will try to look for these differences because
these differences interest them as it presents
the individuality of each and every person. From
this process of learning to listen for
differences we begin to honor the special
uniqueness of each person.
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52 Listening Skills
Listen for attachment style The first three years
of life creates attachment that affects how we
deal with people, places and things in the
future. Outcomes of attachment can be classified
as secure or insecure people. Secure attachment
results into people who are positive, friendly,
creative, outspoken, etc while insecure
attachment during childhood results into three
possible styles anxious-ambivalent,
anxious-avoidant, and disorganized. Develop
second attention at the edge Growth and
learning takes place at the edges where the old
makes room for the new, just as plants and
flowers do. With people and organizations, we
have to pay close or second attention to the
old ways of being and acting as it is replaced
with new areas of expertise and responsibilities.
Mostly, this transition will come with fear and
anxiety. Listening will enable us to connect and
see such fearful concerns.
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52 Listening Skills
Listen for skilled incompetence Skilled
incompetence is the thing people say and do that
have unhappy consequences. This is what happens
when managers or business leaders adeptly avoid
conflict just to get along. On the other hand,
competent leaders focus on issues, generate
alternatives and create goals all in the service
of managing conflicts and obtaining best results.
Listen to signs of skilled incompetence for the
betterment of the business. Listen between the
words Listen to what is not being said as well as
to what is. Research shows that only 10 percent
or even less of the information is conveyed by
words. The rest is taken from what is not said.
Learning to listen to what is not being said is
seen in the body language, facial expression,
tone, context, etc. If there is something not
being said, ask colleagues and acquaintances what
they really want to say.
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52 Listening Skills
Champion the timid The timid voice does not bring
out the wisdom in each of us for many reasons.
Some feel unsafe to speak while others may just
not be clear with what they want to say.
Championing the timid voice is creating a place
where people can speak truth to power
comfortably. People dont usually know what they
think unless asked for their opinion which often
turns out to be surprising to both speakers and
listeners. Listening for inconsistencies
Inconsistencies are mismatches between what is
being said in words and the content of
communication. Skillful listeners notice
inconsistencies. To address these
inconsistencies, respond in a compassionate way
that does not increase defensiveness.
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52 Listening Skills
Listen with a soft belly When we listen to
viewpoints that differ from ours we often tense
up and become irritated. Listening with a soft
belly is to take slow breaths all the way down
into your belly enough to push out all the air.
By relaxing during a disturbing conversation it
allows us to be open to new and creative
solutions. Ask smart questions Smart questioning
is an approach to solving business problems
through holistic listening and thinking. There
are three foundation smart questions 1. How can
we treat every problem uniquely? 2. What
purposeful information do we need to create
living solutions? and, 3. How can a system view
ensure the solution we are creating will work?
There are also four phase questions to the smart
question approach 1. People involvement 2.
Purpose 3. Future solution and, 4. Living
solutions.
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52 Listening Skills
Develop methods for skillful self-listening Skillf
ul listeners are able to listen to themselves
well. Listening brings out the riches within you.
A simple and direct way to question yourself is
by asking Who am I? What do I love? What do I
love most? The two very powerful questions that
you should keep repeating to yourself are Whats
true for me? What do I want? Asking these will
help reinvigorate and re-inspire efforts that may
have been temporarily halted. Cultivate
patience Skillful listeners are patient. They are
willing to temporarily suspend what they have to
say to give way to others who have something to
say. They can control self expression and let
others continue to express their point. With
practice and the understanding of the benefits of
patience, a person can learn to cultivate
patience within.
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52 Listening Skills
Become someone who can hear hard truths Learning
to listen to hard truths stretches our minds and
hearts to topics that are sensitive to us. They
challenge us to control ourselves from negatively
reacting. To become someone to whom difficult
truths can be readily told, we must learn to
express value and praise to such truth-tellers.
In the end, we can develop the capacity to
receive the gifts from such massages. Be mindful
of age, race and gender bias More often than not,
we subconsciously filter what people are saying
with gender bias, race and age. Skillful
listeners are conscious of these biases and they
correct any deficits in their listening
accordingly. We listen better when we listen to
the hearts and minds of people and not their age,
race or gender bias.
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52 Listening Skills
Break the I habit The word I creates problems
by always shifting the topic to yourselves. Thus,
creating a barrier in learning anything new from
conversations. It hinders creative partnership,
teamwork and finding new ways to fulfill others
needs. The word you will open up a new world
in conversations that are limited by I. Ask
specific, clarifying questions We often assume
we understand what is being said to us, but more
likely is that we do not understand these things
in the way the speaker wanted to point out. First
thoughts are like first drafts in writing, they
require a god editor to clarify the intent of the
text or, in this case, the words. As listeners,
try asking questions to clarify these vague ideas
and find ways to get the speaker to be
specific.
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52 Listening Skills
Say whats useful say whats true The approach
of a skilled listener is to be factual, true and
beneficial to others. Being a skilled listener
is also being able to understand what others are
able to or ready to hear, in addition to being
truthful. Stop and stoop to listen Good
managers and leaders know that it is more
effective to listen to their subordinates at
their own level. Listening sometimes works best
when you stoop down to their level. The practice
is not an issue of superiority, equality, or
inferiority but more of respect and practicality.
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52 Listening Skills
Use intention clarification When in break of a
heated discussion, ask the person regarding the
intention of their communication? They may not be
able to give an answer immediately but after a
few minutes they will be able to tell you what.
Inquiring about a persons intention helps them
get back on track they think about it then come
up with a response. At the same time, the
listener is able to gather thoughts on how to
further the discussion. Inspire and encourage
robust dialogue Robust dialogue often occurs in a
culture of accountability. Robust mindedness that
originates from open mindedness and no ulterior
motives sets the atmosphere where ideas can be
freely expressed.
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52 Listening Skills
Learn to listen beyond your own filters Because
of the way we are shaped as children, we learn to
pay attention to some things and filter out
others. As a result there are gaps or spaces in
our knowledge. As listeners we must recognize
that these gaps and spaces exist in us. Thus we
become more open and compassionate to others and
to our own shortcomings. Practice strategic
questioning Strategic questions are asked to
reveal ambiguity and open up other options and
solutions. Strategic questions invite growth and
new possibilities. These questions assume human
equality and are respectful to people and their
individual capacity to grow in healthy ways. They
intend to support human personal and professional
transformation.
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52 Listening Skills
The ears can be ready when the hearts just
not Things that we cant face have great power
over us whether we are aware of it or not. These
are the taboo topics that we often avoid for
whatever reason. What it has to do with skillful
listening is that we have to acknowledge its
existence and acknowledge that it makes you feel
uncomfortable. When other people raise it up for
discussion, they are most likely not trying to
cause you pain. Dont blame the victim It is
common in many cultures to put the responsibility
or blame to the people who have suffered. Blaming
the victim removes our own feeling of being
powerless. Practice not blaming by listening to
someones difficult story even if you have heard
it before. Try to keep an open mind and listen to
new things that may come up, all the while
trusting that listening is often all thats
required.
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Recognize your own exit strategies Exit
strategies are the things we usually do to turn
away from situations that make us anxious. Any
attempt to reduce anxiety can be considered an
exit strategy. Skillful listeners learn about
exit strategies and use it to overcome fear and
anxiety that troubles them. Another reason to pay
attention is to gather options on how to deal and
react to these anxieties. Continually minimize
distractions Eliminating or reducing distractions
in the workplace is a requirement to become a
skillful listener. Distractions both internal and
external must be dealt with to become a skillful
listener. Examples of both internal and external
distractions are phone calls, personal concerns,
ambient noises, etc.
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52 Listening Skills
Practice taking crap When someone is sending or
projecting negative energy, do not face the
negative energy head-on but instead stand up,
move around, become a moving target for the bad
energy but never lose control. It is important
not to face someones negative energy with your
own negative energy. This will prove to be an
extremely worthwhile and beneficial
practice. Learn to say no Saying no can be
very difficult, but to say no is better that to
simply say yes just because you are afraid to
say no. When someone requests for you to
listen, it is just fair to ask for time and think
it over. It is only until such time when you can
say no that people will believe that your yes
means yes and your no means no.
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Dont interrupt unnecessarily When we listen to
others, there are things they say that activate
us to speak up in some way. These impulses of
ours must be controlled to become a skillful
listener. When we interrupt a speaker, we send
out the message that what you have to say is more
important than what the speaker is saying. By
learning how to control our tongue, we
considerably improve our listening skills. Give
up the need to be right Many business
conversations end up in head-to-head arguments on
who is wrong and who is right. Skillful listeners
recognize the benefits of not always having to
prove themselves right. The insatiable need of
always having to be right creates a fear of being
wrong. Skillful listeners initiate, invite and
help manage it for themselves and others as
skillfully as possible.
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Educate and engage in a culture of
practice People work in companies for the company
of others. We like doing things with people who
also like doing things with us. We organize what
is known as cultures of practice-- it is when
people in the group reinforce positive behavior
that adds to our skill. As we work with others
and practice becoming skillful listeners, there
becomes great understanding and appreciation to
details of work.