Are You Listening Or Waiting?

There is a great quote from Daniel Pink where he says: 

For many of us, the opposite of talking isn't listening, it's waiting.

Do you consider yourself a good listener?
What are you listening for?
What aren't you listening for?

These questions came up recently when I was working with a group of coaches and leaders.

Using our shared book, we could have spent our time having an intellectual conversation about the importance of listening, but instead I created a space for them to practice listening in different ways.

Using a short segment of a talk, I invited the leaders to listen in 3 different ways.

1. Listen for the number of times the speaker used the word "THE"
2. Listen to gather evidence in order to prove them wrong.
3. Listen to understand the person's values and what they stand for.

Using this shared listening experience, they went off into breakout rooms to connect this experience to the content of the book, in order to generate ways to tweak their own listening practice.

Here is some of what I heard that I found worth noting:

• how we focus determines how we listen
• intention determines attention
• how much we miss when we have a specific focus
• whether value-based listening is always relevant
• how confirmation bias gets in the way of our listening
• Can we really change people's minds?
• listening to convince or persuade, versus listening to understand or explain
• how stereotypes get in the way of listening

At the end of this activity, I invited them to identify 1 person whom they work with that they would like to listen to differently.

Would you say you are a listener or a waiter?

Originally posted on LinkedIn with comments.

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