bcg blog

You Can Hear, But Do You Listen?

Yes, it has become an ability, a skill, a talent. 
Hearing is innate for most. Listening is not. 

Hearing is “the process, function or power of perceiving a sound.” 
Listening is defined as “to hear something with thoughtful attention.”

Clearly our society is lacking in its ability to listen. You can even leave out the ‘thoughtful’ aspect of the definition. We rarely have any attention.

Why Should We Care?
As a teacher and coach, I’ve noticed a considerable decrease in people’s ability to follow simple directions. And, if the directions happen to require multiple steps or extended time between actions … forget about it.

The inability to consistently listen leads one to a few additional questions: Why and what else?

Why don’t we listen? Are we too busy? Do we have too many things begging for our attention - other people, social media notifications, duties and jobs? Do we just not care? All are potential answers at different times I’m sure, but I don’t subscribe to any of them in their entirety. 

I think our desire, willingness, and appreciation for the details is declining rapidly. Combine that with a growing focus on ourselves, rather than others and you can easily see why the inability, even unwillingness, to listen is thriving. We’re quicker than ever to judge and dismiss the thoughts, opinions, and ideas of others. Besides, why would we listen when we already know.

This also points to the next question, what else? What else are we not paying attention to? What else doesn’t matter? What else do we gloss over as if it were never said? If we can’t execute one simple direction, what are the chances we can execute on multiple ones when time is of the essence and our performance depends on it. Not good I’m afraid.

As a leader, our ability to listen is paramount to our impact. We can’t expect to garner trust without the genuine desire to listen and understand the people on our team. It’s not a leap to proclaim the ability to listen as the most important skill of a leader. 

If you work in isolation, there are a lot of skills that could trump listening’s importance. But, you don’t work alone - no one does. Therefore, the ability to listen is paramount.

REAL TALK - Action Steps
Improving our listening skills isn’t an easy endeavor to undertake. It requires very intentional actions mentally in order to gain the proper perspective when interacting with your team. 

• Think Curiosity 
  
  • Wonder is a powerfully attractive attribute. Expressing and acting on it daily opens the window for listening to take place. When we are curious, we are seeking to understand, to gain more information. This is at the core for good listeners. They are always mining for new perspectives, new ways of looking at something. These new ideas may or may not align with their current views. That doesn’t matter, they maintain their wonder.
    

• Think Acceptance
  
  • Great listeners are not judging. As a matter of fact, they aren’t even comparing it to their beliefs. They are simply observing what is. Nothing more and nothing less. There is no good or bad for those adept at listening. They accept reality and continue exploring while moving forward. 
    

• Think Others
  
  • The overriding concept we garner from listeners over people that just hear what is said is that they care about others. It’s not about themselves and they’re good with that. Listeners go out of their way to make team members feel safe, valued, and wanted. Few things impact a team more.
    

Listening as the most important skill of a leader … seems too simple, doesn’t it? There are a lot of things important for excellent leaders to do and the argument can be made for a vast number of other attributes. But, don’t dismiss listening casually due to its simplicity. That’s where excellence resides.

For more information on building excellence in your teams, visit us at www.bluecollargrit.com. 
We would love to know how we could help!

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