Author: Don McMinn

I have big plans for my five-year-old grandson, Benjamin. Last summer I taught him to swim. We’re working on the alphabet, math, spatial recognition, emotional intelligence, memory, and other subjects.

I’ve added a new item to the curriculum: I want to teach Benjamin how to listen. It’s a critical life-skill that some people never learn. I want him to excel at it. 

Here are some basic thoughts relative to listening. I haven’t figured out how to teach these to a preschooler, but I’m going to try.

There’s a difference between hearing and listening.

Hearing is an involuntary, physiological function. Unless you’re hearing-impaired, it just happens. Just like your kidneys function without your permission, your auditory system is constantly on, so you’re hearing every moment of your life.  

Listening occurs when your mind chooses to focus on a particular part of what your auditory system is receiving. Listening is active; you decide when to listen and what to listen to. It’s like a toggle switch that you can flip on or off. Of all the various sounds you’re hearing at any moment, you choose to focus on some of them and try to make sense of and find meaning in what you hear. If you choose to focus on what a person is saying, you try to garner meaning from her words and sentences.

Listening is difficult because it requires intense focus and concentration. At any moment your mind can choose to focus on stimuli from any of your five senses—what you see, feel, taste, touch, or hear—or any random thought your mind conceives of. Your thoughts can also be affected by your emotions. Even after choosing to focus on something you are hearing (as opposed to something you’re seeing, etc.) your mind can get distracted and drift. 

Listening is a skill that must be developed. 

Just like we’re not born with the skill to play tennis, or fly a plane—these skills must be developed—listening is a skill that must be cultivated. It’s not a natural endowment. On a scale from 1-10 (1 being we are inept at listening, 10 being we have advanced listening skills) we all start out in life at level one. Sadly, some people stay in the low digits their entire life. 

It takes conscientious effort to develop a skill. A curriculum helps, as does a coach. But most of us have never taken a considered approach to developing listening skills. Our current skill level was most likely developed through trial and error and fragmented bits of instruction. 

There must be a better way. 

Why is listening so important?

We learn by listening. 

All five of our senses are entry-ports for information and stimuli that we use to learn about our world. Indeed, they are the only source of information. Second only to seeing, listening is the primary faculty for learning. But as mentioned in the previous section, just hearing is insufficient; we must listen—focus and engage the mind—to learn. 

Listening is essential for healthy relationships.

The health of all relationships (individual and corporate) rises and falls on communication, which is best expressed through dialogue, which involves both talking and listening. Productive talking is also a skill that must be developed, but listening is the more difficult of the two.  

Author David Augsburger suggests that, “Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.”

Professor Ralph Nichols wrote, “The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.”

Relative to healthy dialogue, I highly value Stephen Covey’s statement, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” First listen, then talk. 

Good communication is the oil that lubricates the working parts of relationships and active listening is the foremost component. 

Suggestions for improved listening

When someone is talking, focus on listening to what he is saying. Don’t spend those moments developing your response to his comments or crafting the next thing you want to add to the conversation. 

Don’t interrupt. Doing so devalues the speaker and infers that what you want to say is more important. 

After listening, sometimes it’s helpful to repeat to the speaker what you think was said: confirm that you understand correctly. But don’t do this mechanically or automatically or it will appear contrived and patronizing.    

The best example of good listening I’ve ever seen was hearing a conversation among members of the Juilliard string quartet. Click here to read the post.

 

You’re interviewing candidates for a position on your team. The three finalists appear to be equally qualified, but you discover that one of them graduated from your alma mater. Suddenly you have a slight preference for that candidate.

Implicit egotism is exerting its influence. 

Implicit egotism refers to the idea that we naturally gravitate toward people, places, and things that resemble ourselves. We unconsciously choose ego-friendly things. This preference for self drives a lot of our thinking and decisions. 

For example, we strongly prefer the letters in our name, the numbers in our birthdate, and memorable moments in our life.

• • A person named Fred might be attracted to the notion of living in Fresno, working for Forever 21, or driving a Ford F-150.
  • We may use the year we were born as an anchor-point for remembering other dates. For example, I remember the date of the Yom Kippur War (1973) as being 21 years after I was born in 1952. 
  • A man proposed to his future wife at Logan Airport, and they named their first child Logan.
  • When I first met my wife, I was intrigued by the fact that we were both born at Baylor Hospital in Dallas.
  • My grandson, Ben, will probably develop a preference to the letters B, E, N, because they are the first letters he learned and every time he writes his name those letters are reinforced in his mind. 

 Implicit egotism is not inherently wrong, unless it adversely affects our decisions. In my opening example, the candidate that has the same alma mater as the interviewer should not be preferred—it’s a weak link. Likewise, I don’t think Fred should purchase a Ford F-150 just because it starts with the same letter of his name. 

In his book, The Art of Thinking Clearly, Rolf Dobelli gives this example of  implicit egotism: “A friend who deals in oil pumps told me how he once closed an eight-figure deal for a pipeline in Russia. ‘Bribery?’ I inquired? He shook his head. ‘We were chatting, and suddenly we got on to the topic of sailing. It turned out that both of us were die-hard 470 dinghy fans. From that moment on, he liked me; I was a friend. So the deal was sealed.'” (page 66)

When making decisions, make sure implicit egotism is not adversely influencing the process. And when you’re selling something, look for a personal connection with the buyer.

 

I’m always amazed at the oversized impact that small gifts can make. 

Small physical gifts can be impactful.

During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union were hostile enemies engaged in a high-stakes race to achieve supremacy in space. The Russians used dogs in their program, and two of them—Belka and Strelka—became the first animals to orbit the Earth and return alive. 

In 1961, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev came up with the perfect idea to improve relations between the two countries. He sent President Kennedy a puppy: Pushinka (a puppy born to Strelka).  

The gift helped thaw their frosty relationship. Kennedy warmly thanked his Soviet counterpart in a letter, noting that the ride Pushinka took from Russia to America might not have been as dramatic as the one Strelka took, but it was still “a long voyage and she stood it well.” Kennedy and Khrushchev remained on cordial terms, even though the Cold War lasted for three more decades. 

A simple, kind deed can have an enormous impact. 

The African bishop, Desmond Tutu, was once asked why he became an Anglican priest. He replied that in the days of apartheid, when a black person and a white person met while walking on a footpath, the black person was expected to step into the gutter to allow the white person to pass and then nod his head as a gesture of respect.

“One day,” Tutu said, “when I was just a little boy, my mother and I were walking down the street when a tall, white man, dressed in a black suit, came toward us. Before my mother and I could step off the sidewalk, as was expected of us, this man stepped off the sidewalk and, as my mother and I passed, tipped his hat in a gesture of respect to her! I was more than surprised at what had happened, and I asked my mother, ‘Why did that white man do that?’ My mother explained, ‘He’s an Anglican priest. He’s a man of God, that’s why he did it.’ When she told me that he was an Anglican priest, I decided there and then that I wanted to be an Anglican priest too. And what is more, I wanted to be a man of God.”

Desmond Tutu not only became a priest, he influenced his entire nation. He, along with Nelson Mandela, led the successful fight against apartheid, which changed South Africa.

The priest that deeply impacted young Tutu’s life probably never knew “the rest of the story”; but through one simple act of kindness (not one word was spoken), he deeply impacted one life that would deeply affect an entire nation. 

A few choice words, spoken at the right time, can have an oversized impact.  

In a previous post I wrote about the life-giving and life-changing sentence that Benjamin West’s mother spoke to him when he was a child. One choice phrase solidified his destiny in life. In like manner, we can use simple phrases— “I’m so proud of you.” “I’m so sorry that…” “You’re so good at that.”—to deeply impact other people.  

Don’t underestimate the power of small gestures and choice words.

Warren Buffet has been called the Oracle of Omaha. He’s the most successful investor in history. His estimated net worth of nearly $85 billion, makes him the fourth-richest person in the world. He has pledged to give 99% of his fortune to charity during his lifetime or at death. He has given $37 billion dollars to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 

A reporter once asked Buffett why he’s giving most of his money to the Gates Foundation when he could easily start and fund his own foundation. His answer: 

“I don’t think I’m as well cut out to be a philanthropist as Bill and Melinda are. The feedback on philanthropy is very slow, and that would bother me. I’d have to be too involved with a lot of people I wouldn’t want to be involved with and have to listen to more opinions than I would enjoy. In philanthropy also, you have to make some big mistakes. I know that. But it would bother me to make the mistakes myself, rather than having someone else make them whom I trust overall to do a good job. In general, Bill and Melinda will have a better batting average than I would.”

Warren Buffet knows what he’s good at (allocation of capital) and focuses on that and looks to other people to do things he’s not good at. We should follow his example. 

Know your strengths

Every person has a few core strengths—perhaps one or two. They are normally innate; you may have studied and worked hard to develop your signature strength, but it was probably in you at birth.

What do you do well? What comes naturally for you? Some extreme examples would include: Picasso—artist, Michael Jordon—athlete, C.S. Lewis—philosopher, Einstein—scientist, Edison—inventor, Dickens—writer. For most of us, our core strength is not this obvious; we have to search for it, but it is there.

Here are some suggestions on how to discover your strengths.

Focus on your strengths

If we’re only good at a few things, that means we’re not very competent in many areas. Should we try to shore up our weaknesses or focus on our strengths? 

Professor Martin Seligman wrote, “I do not believe that you should devote overly much effort to correcting your weaknesses. Rather, I believe that the highest success in living and the deepest emotional satisfaction comes from building and using your signature strengths.”

Granted, sometimes we have to do things we’re not good at because we’re not able to delegate them to others, in which case we just need to be conscientious and diligent. For instance, if you’re not good at math and financial accounting, try to find someone who is and ask her to help keep your finances in order. But if no one is available, you’ll have to do it yourself. This also applies at work: if your job requires you to do something you’re not good at but you can’t delegate this to someone else, you’ll need to do the best you can. 

Often, lack of funds forces us to do things ourselves. I know there are skilled workers who are better than I am at certain tasks, but I don’t have the money to pay them, so I do the work myself. Buffett has no such restraints, but I do.

In general, discover your strengths and then arrange your life such that you spend most of your time and energy doing what you’re good at. 

I agree with business consultant Marcus Buckingham when he says, “Look inside yourself, try to identify your strongest trends, reinforce them with practice and learning and then either find, or carve out a job that draws on those strengths every day. Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was put in.”