Are You Listening to Understand?

When participants are in a workshop with us, and we begin to discuss the importance of listening, we tend to get a familiar response: “oh, I know how to listen.” You can feel it in the room. Most people, unless it has been pointed out to them many times, will assume they are a “good listener”. And while that may be true, how aware are you of when your listening goes out the window?

Listening is not a binary skill — it’s not that you either are or are not listening, it’s a matter of degrees. How MUCH are you listening to your colleague or client, and how much are you paying attention to the thoughts in your head, going over the list of things you need to be doing, trying to figure out what the last episode of your favorite series was all about, or assuming you already know exactly what that person is going to say so you are merely waiting for them to stop talking so you can launch into your already-created response?

What becomes obvious in these workshops is that there are conditions where it is easy to listen more fully, and conditions that trigger us to stop listening. So, it’s really important to know (a) what those conditions and triggers are, and (b) how we can quickly get back into the present to listen.

One of the many tools improvisers practice and internalize, is that we have honed the art of listening fully until the person speaking has stopped talking. We know from experience how counterproductive it is to assume we know what is being said and will be said, and so we trust that we will have a fantastic reply once we hear everything said to us. We want to use everything our partners are saying to us so that our response is the most useful and appropriate. So, our main job when someone is talking is to make sure we are listening to UNDERSTAND.

Researchers have identified different modes we are capable of listening in, one being this Listening to Understand mode. It makes us value what is being said, and keeps us attentive, never assuming we already know. Another mode that many people use to listen, especially when there is stress, a time crunch, or you’ve been caught off-guard, is Listening to Respond mode. This mode is focused more on the SELF than the OTHER, it’s looking for the relief of when you can finally talk and move on. It does not seek to understand, it seeks to show what you already know, solve the problem quickly, or a variety of similar motives.

So, maybe next time you’re in a situation that could be a trigger for your stress, see how you listening is going and pivot to trying out the mode to Understand first and foremost.