All projects: Gel, Jobs, Good Todo, Games, Uncle Mark, Blog, Bit Literacy
Listening is hard
What do the tennis match, the presidential address, and the awards ceremony all have in common? In each case, somebody wanted to say their piece instead of listening to someone they disagreed with.
And it's not uncommon. We can call this an uncivil moment, or an unusually harsh season for public discourse, but it happens all the time. All around us. You, reading this, have played the part, and so have I. Not necessarily in the semifinals, but in everyday circumstances. We tend not to enjoy listening to people we disagree with. I'll go further and say we tend not to enjoy listening at all.
The thing is, listening is DIFFICULT. I'm not referring to hearing, i.e., using an auditory nerve to detect sound waves. Having the tools says nothing about whether one has the skills to use them to some meaningful end.
Listening - real listening - is difficult because it requires a real investment: of focus, and empathy, and time. Worse yet, it's not even clear what the payoff is going to be. (You have to listen to find out!) It's easier to leave it undone and move on to the next thing.
Anyone who works at creating better experiences - for customers, or patients, or students, or readers, or viewers, or parishioners, or constituents - will tell you, or should be able to tell you, two universal truths:
1. You can't create something better for someone unless you understand what it is they need.
2. Finding out what they need - often by listening to them - is hard.
This brings to mind the cliche, "If it was easy, everyone would do it." I'll add a converse: since it's hard, not many people are doing it. Listening is hard.
But some people do it. To some extent, in fact, I've built my own professional career on a willingness to listen, or at least to encourage others to do so. My company's consulting process is centered on "listening labs," named so to distinguish them from other research methods that don't include actual listening to customers. In our Councils we bring together executives to listen to each other, so as to be able to give help to each other in an environment of community.
And the Gel conference, being focused on "good experience," not surprisingly has had a number of great talks that draw heavily on listening. Just one instance from this year's conference was Robin Nagle, who studied sanitation workers by listening to them - really, becoming one of them - and was rewarded with a wealth of knowledge about their profession and our relationship with trash. Really a fascinating talk: watch the video here.
Our first Gel Challenge, incidentally, has the theme of LISTENING and is still open for entries. What's your idea for improving an experience around listening better? All details for the Gel Challenge here.
Mark
since your theme is listening you may want to see the just-released book Just Listen by Mark Goulston.I got an advanced copy and believe it is the best book I've read on the topic
Kare
good call - what motivates me is a deadline to deliver the goods - if you claim to be observing/interviewing "x" number of the right people, show me the money! often, failed interviews are obvious by the lack of content - 30 minutes yields a great deal - doing interviews are hard or at least take active listening to yield insights, knowing when to drill down real time, while taking scratch notes and writing down time codes (ech) is something that takes practice - after 1000+ interviews, the fear of delivering junk motivates me to listen - being one week away from a deadline and realizing that your poor listening has yielded zero gets me to listen.
(btw) understanding comes later - it takes much work, people aren't willing to pay, are you listening!
I agree with your thoughts on listening. Recently, I purchased a hotel room making my purchase decision based on the headline in an online ad which quoted the area I needed to stay in. When I received my booking the hotel booked was not located in the area outlined in the ad. When I called to complain I spoke with a number of staff to include the customer service manager. Each person tackled my complaint from a different perspective to include my expectations for a centrally located hotel while this was on the outskirts, my perceptions that it was too far to walk, my lack of knowledge of the area or in how hotels report distance etc. When I finally, via email, gave the manager the hotel name and phone number from my confirmation document and suggested he call to confirm its location, a system error was discovered.
With this in mind, I’d like to suggest we add a piece that I believe helps us engage in “better listening”. I propose that we need to understand ourselves, our frames and our drivers to really listen. When we listen (or in fact when we do anything), we do so through our Frame of Reference. Each person has a difference FOR (coloured lens used to view the world). Our FOR is unique to us as is comprised of our personality, our culture, our life experiences, our frames etc. In understanding our FOR and its influence, we can understand how this impacts us to include how we listen and what we hear enabling better listening.
Let me see if I can explain how this works a bit better. Continuing with the online hotel booking example, the staff’s frame and FOR was that customers who purchase that type of product will be unhappy due to their expectations, systems are flawless etc and they acted on these frames and their FOR in our conversations. Listening to me and what I was saying as well as asking some additional questions might have helped but they had trouble listening because their FOR was in the way. Another way this works is; say for example my FOR is “need for speed “(personality related based on Jungian theory) then even when I listen my “need for speed” dimension will influence my listening and my interpretation of what I hear. If I know I have a “need for speed” dimension, then I can be conscious of this and take this out of the equation enabling better listening. Another example, within the FOR some individuals have a need for concrete data while others prefer conceptual data. The need for the different types of data will compel the listener to dig for information in their preferred format; they will have difficulty hearing data presented in another way. In this circumstance, even listening hard will be difficult. Understanding our own FOR, and in this example the need for concrete or conceptual data, will help the listener be aware of the potential for diversity and more open to listening for data in different formats.
I promote the practise, which I call “sentient working”, of understanding our FOR and how this might impact our actions. Understanding ourselves and the impact of our FOR on our actions helps us perceive and gain some insight into how this might influence us in our interactions, in this instance, our listening. Understanding our FOR will help us listen and make listening easier.
I suggest this is of particularly importance when working with customer or user experience and I believe we need to be mindful of the concept of FOR and in the frames our staff have, with the above hotel booking being a good example.
I faced this problem literally a couple of weeks ago when I was ordering a design for one of our projects. The designer failed to listen my arguments and refused to make the demanded changes just follow his vision. For him it was more important to follow his own opinion not a client's one, i.e. our one. As a result, he had missed us as a client. Did he win? Hardly.
Most people find it difficult to listen because their pride does not allow them to have much empathy for another person.
I'm glad to see this article. Communication is still too often thought of as one's ability to articulate a message. I suppose this is partly from the "nexting" (over nexting) we do, as described in Daniel Gilbert's fine book, Stumbling on Happiness.
I'll also check out Just Listen by Mark Goulston. Thanks Kare.