Leadership Advice from Chalmers Brothers - LISTEN

Link to Chalmers website......

https://www.chalmersbrothers.com/blog/leadership-skills-coaching-tip-listening-vs-hearing-results/?wt=3&utm_source=website&utm_campaign=wordtwit&utm_medium=web

Leadership Skills Coaching Tip:

Listening vs. Hearing (and Results)

Success in organizations – as well as in any set of relationships, for that matter – has a great deal to do with the level of shared commitment to common goals that is achieved. And shared understanding is a pre-requisite for shared commitment. Shared understanding is produced in conversation, which includes both speaking and listening. Below are some ways of looking at the connections between listening and Results that I have found to be valuable – I hope the same is true for you:  

• Listening and hearing are 2 very different phenomena. Hearing is biological and has to do with a small bone vibrating by the eardrum. Listening is linguistic and has to do with active interpretation, with making sense, building an internal narrative, telling a story to myself. Listening is generative and creative.  All human communication is based on listening, on interpretation – not direct data transfer.
• Two people can hear the same thing, and absolutely listen something different!  Because of this, it’s not what we say that’s so important – it’s what others listen (interpret). Did we or did we not produce the interpretation we wanted to produce?  Do we have shared understanding?
• Organizations are all about coordinating action, the goal being impeccable coordination of action. And how well we coordinate action is directly tied to shared understanding of promises or commitments, as well as to how we’ll manage our promises in an ongoing way. In this way, we can greatly reduce the poor productivity and resentment that usually accompany broken promises.
•  An “event” is not equal to your (or my) “explanation.” The event belongs to itself, while my explanation belongs to me, your explanation belongs to you. Some explanations are more powerful, more helpful, than others. Our explanations are created in our listening. And our explanations – not the events themselves – are the primary influencers of our Actions and Results in the world.
  
• Listening with the intent to reply is not the same as listening with the intent to understand.  Starting our internal response while the other person is still talking takes us away from being present. Say to yourself “Quiet” to still your inner dialogue before important conversations.
• Our listening is much more connected to 1) our moods and 2) our beliefs than is our hearing. And many of us are not very good observers of this, which limits our possibilities.
• We are each fully responsible for how we listen. And we are each partially responsible for how we get listened. I cannot “make” you listen a certain way… but I can take as a given that you will interpret what I say, and can then take time for us to check our listening before we set off to coordinate action.