Listen and Lead

International Listening Association's Milwaukee Conference

It is the eve of the International Listening Association's 2009 conference and I have some butterflies.

I am going so that I can listen -- of course -- to people who have made listening and the study of it their life's work.

I am but an amateur who picked up a few things while working in newsrooms.

Here is one thing I have already picked up from the group: We know from common sense that one cannot listen well to another person if he or she does not first respect that person and that they have a valid point of view. We cannot fake people out by miming the actions of real listening.

But if we take deliberate, careful listening into an organizational environment solely to gain information to help us run that organization better, this is fake listening taken to a higher level. The problem is the same -- a lack of respect. And we have that old problem of superimposing our agenda on the speaker's.

So, yes, leaders, listen well to the people in the organization. But don't do it solely for your benefit or the benefit of the organization. It just won't work. You have to listen for the benefit of the speaker, too. And, in the end, doesn't giving the workers a voice help better than just about anything else?

Words Per Minute, Speaking and Listening

David A. Paterson has two qualifications that might make a case for him as a leader who listens. One, he is governor of New York. Two, he is legally blind. While blindness means he must rely more on sounds than most other people, it does not necessarily mean that he listens better.

But listening does play a role in how he leads -- or at least how he learns.

As he cannot read briefings, documents and messages the way other leaders do, he has to take a lot more of this material by ear.

An article in today's New York Times describes the way he goes through his day and the way he ingests information.

The reporter, Jeremy W. Peters, writes that Paterson, left, gets his updates and briefings over a special phone line, where the messages wait in line, like so many voice mails. Each is typically about five minutes long and, on the day the Times was describing, he had 43 -- more than three hours' worth.

J.R. Williams, who studied the rate at which people can comfortably hear speech, suggested that books on tape be read at 150-160 words per minute. That's a little slower than normal conversation, which might run to 200 words per minute.

And there is the problem.

Researcher Ronald Carver has shown that listeners can absorb  spoken information at about 300 words a minute -- even faster than a speeding auctioneer.

The challenge to focusing and really hearing the message is that most of us can hear almost twice as much content as most other people can speak. Our brain can be operating at half speed and still catch every word. But our brains do not typically operate at half speed and wander off in search of other things to occupy them. Sometimes, those fillers, which we subconsciously choose, are more interesting than whatever it is we're hearing, and can push it into the background.

Now, back to the governor, who is forced to absorb information at half the rate he is capable of. How can he keep up with the demands of his office?

One tactic, he told the Times' Peters, is to play back some of his recordings on a special device that can speed things up to twice the normal rate. That would bring the books-on-tape speed up to our rate of hearing. And, Peterson, told the reporter, if you do it often enough you hardly even notice that everyone sounds like a chipmunk.

Breaking the Pull of Distraction

I find that people frequently interrupt me while I am trying to listen.

Most of them don;t mean to be rude. They are just saying hi. But it can be a challenge.

Several times a year, I interview people at a job fair. In most such arrangements, there is me, parked at a table, facing the candidate, parked across the table. Behind the candidate is a steady parade of people on the way to their own interviews or circling, like sharks in the water, looking for an opening. Oh, I don't mean to make them sound predatory. Most of them are anxious. They are circling, though.

Because some of these job fairs are at conventions, help annually, I know many of the circling passersby. We have interviewed before and may not have seen each other for a year.

So, quite naturally, the smile and wave from behind the candidate's head. I find this to be an almost irresistible distraction.

In some cases, I nod in reply. This causes some candidates to turn full around in their chairs to see whatever could be more interesting than what they are saying. Ouch!

The same thing happens in my office. Like many offices, I have a desk with two chairs just in front of it and a window beyond that. That window happens to be just above the newspaper racks in our newsroom where people can pick up one of the office copies. And extending almost 100 feet straight out from that window is the aisle that a lot of people use to come into our newsroom. There is a lot of potential for distraction.

When I am on my listening game and there are distractions present, I do this: Rather than engage in even more eye contact with the distractor, I look down at my desk and refocus on the listening I am trying to do. In some cases,  this brief break is enough time for the distraction to pass. I every case, this gives me the time I need to compose myself and then elevate my eyes, just high enough to see the speaker, and not everything else.