Jesse Jacoby
Listening with empathy is held up as the acme of great leadership. The best leaders have inspiring visions, are effective communicators and possess what may seem like boundless energy; but above all they know what it means to listen.
Listening is a lost art; and it is an art. It requires creative thinking. You can’t go to your favorite department store and buy a box of listening, pick the one you like, and then put it on like you would a pair of coveralls. Instead, you have to adapt according to the need of the moment; and that need will vary from person to person, conversation to conversation, and within any communication – long or short.
You could be forgiven for thinking, however, that it was otherwise. The Internet is flooded with advice on how to listen empathically. A Harvard Business Review blog article suggested the following as a possibility:
“You seem excited (happy, upset . . .) about this situation, and I would like to hear more about your perspective.”
Who actually talks like that and, where they do, how many would feel that the speaker knew anything about empathy?
The root of that word is –pathy. It comes from the Greek word pathos. The opposite of pathos is “no” pathos, or dispassion. In order to listen empathically, you have to get down to a personal level with the people who are talking to you. Lofty phraseology not only sounds dispassionate; it also feels impersonal. Neither of these will enable you to connect with people the way you need to in order to communicate the pathos you claim to have. And when that happens, you cease to be believable. Instead, you’re perceived as pretending.
Listening is inaction – sort of
Believe it or not, there’s an International Listening Association. On their home page is a quote by Scott Peck. It reads, “You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.”
No phone.
No text.
No email.
No one poking his or her head in the door and saying, “I just have a quick question.”
It means NO interruptions.
What else?
It means that you don’t interrupt. An interruption could be in what you say. Maybe you finish the sentence of the person speaking to you.
You can also interrupt with your body language. A sigh would do it. Allowing your eyes to drift onto something else – your watch or cellphone, or computer screen. Maybe your office door.
These things all suggest impatience, frustration, or a time pressure that you’re feeling. Maybe you’re thinking, “This shouldn’t be taking this long. Get to the point. I have a golf date.”
When you interrupt, it could also be seen as competition from you, which really contradicts what you say you’re trying to do.
There’s a powerful lesson that you can learn from some of the most successful business people on the planet. A common characteristic among them is that whatever they are doing, they are 100% in the moment.
If they’re on vacation, that’s all that they’re doing. They aren’t checking their business every five minutes or calling the office to find out if everything is okay.
If they are at work, then their full attention is on it. And if they’re listening to you, then nothing else matters.
Maybe you’ve noticed this in your business friends. They seem to have a persona that is situation-specific. If you call them at work to discuss Saturday’s barbecue, then you may well get a response that’s a bit less friendly than you expected.
Listening is action
Listening also implies action.
We may accuse our children of not listening when we say that something went “in one ear and out the other.” Why would we think that? It’s because they didn’t do what we said.
When that happens, then we often assume that they weren’t listening. That’s actually quite a gracious attitude. It could be that, like many leaders, they heard what you said but chose to ignore it. In other words, they decided to act as if they hadn’t heard it.
Empathetic listening, from the perspective of the person who’s doing the talking, is that you will help them in some way or in the way that they ask as a result of listening. Failing to do that means one of two things: Either that you didn’t understand, in which case he or she will attempt to explain it until you do – that is, you do what has been requested, or you don’t care. There are no gray areas.
It is essential that you give positive cues that you are listening. Nodding your head at the appropriate places, such as when you agree or saying – and this is difficult to put into print – “mmm-hmmm” when you should. But there’s a big difference between nodding in agreement and nodding off. Make sure that your eyes don’t happen to be glazing over or your lids aren’t drooping at the same time.
Of course, you know all this, though it is worth reminding you.
We all forget the basics sometimes.
