- By Lea Dev ***
-The three things that prevent us from being superior listeners -- leadership-quality listening wonders, mavens of listening excellence -- are our deference to our emotional triggers and filtering, our attitude about listening in general, and our facility at remaining tied to both.
Chief among these is our deference to our emotional triggers and filtering. In many listening articles and courses, we are urged to "be open", "not to interrupt", "encourage others to speak", "don't judge".
The fact is we are not being told or shown how to effectively do the things that are supposed to transform us into an individual of quality listening ability. We are simply being told to do them.
Understanding and managing our emotional triggers and filtering will provide us with the foundation for becoming superior listeners. Why? Because with this knowledge we can give ourselves the opportunity stop compromising our listening ability by judging at the wrong time. In our case, the wrong time is when we should be attending.
The Solution:
Emotional triggers and filtering, and our almost automaton devotion to them, are single-handedly the key reasons why we tend to be listening-depraved.
Emotional filtering is the change in our willingness to pay attention to the speaker as a result of our affective interpretation of the speaker's words, phrasing, or non-verbal expression.
Emotional triggers are the attitudes, beliefs, and psychological associations and interpretations that we, individually, have acquired and kept since childhood right through to this very minute. (They are our effective interpretation of the speaker's words, phrasing, or nonverbal expression.)
We judge the speaker's expression, and sometimes, even the speaker, based on how we manage our emotional filtering process, which is directly proportional to how we manage our emotional triggers.
Once we wade, knowingly or not, into the judgment pool in a conversation, we have effectively shunted our ability to sincerely "be open", "question", "maintain eye contact", "encourage others to speak", "don't interrupt", etc., and, of course, "don't judge". In other words, we have shut down our ability to implement the tenets of superior listening because we have violated the "don't judge" rule, which directly influences how well we implement the other tenets.
We tend to judge. It's a shortcoming of the human condition. Live with it. Understand it. Embrace it. Shake it loose. Let it fall.
The best way to shake it loose and let it fall during conversations occurs in two steps: 1). identify our emotional triggers and understand our emotional filtering process; 2). manage them both so they stop making listening Neanderthals of us.
To identify our emotional triggers, we first ask ourselves what words, expressions, and acts cause us to become excited. Secondly, we explain to ourselves why the word, expression, or act causes us to become excited.
To understand our emotional filtering process, we simply replay a few of our last conversations and figure out the words, expression, and acts that made us stop listening to the speaker.
Does this sound like you, too? My emotional triggers are the words, "everybody" and "nobody". Why? Because my view of the world is that "everybody" and "nobody" ever did a damned thing, and anybody who thinks they did is not telling me the truth.
Let's take this further into how this impacted my emotional filtering process.
An example of a phrase that could place a Vulcan death-grip on my ability to pay attention was if the speaker said something like, "I'm honest with everybody." Why? Because as soon as I heard it as I was listening, my emotional trigger would kick in, directing my emotional filtering process. In rapid succession these things would occur: 1) my association with the word gained focus; 2) my attention shifted from the conversation to the speaker who was now trying to make me believe something that simply could not be true; 3) my effort to defend myself against the speaker's arrant and aggressive attempt to control my very mind became my number one purpose for existing at the moment!
The issue is not our emotional filtering process; it is how well we manage that process during conversations. Why? So that we can "listen without judgment", "be open", "encourage others to speak", "not interrupt", and so on and so on.
As long as we are reacting to our emotional filtering process, we are not directing it. We are overriding our success at listening and probably a lot of other opportunities that we can't possibly see because we're reacting like a worker-bee, instead of directing like a leader.
How do we stop being kidnapped by our emotional filtering? How do we start to enact the sage instruction for significantly improved listening ability?
STEP #1: Acknowledge that we have emotional triggers.
We all have something. It isn't new or unique.
STEP #2: Identify our emotional triggers.
The easiest way to identify our emotional triggers is to observe ourselves while we're listening to somebody else. As soon as we change our willingness to pay attention to the speaker, we have just elevated our emotional trigger ahead of our emotional filtering management.
Find a comfortable spot to reflect on the conversations of the day. Make a list, mentally or physically, of what you reacted to and why.
We can't manage our emotional filtering unless we know what our emotional triggers are.
STEP #3: Manage our emotional triggers out of our emotional filtering process during conversations.
This is the heart of a how we actually implement the tenets of superior listening. We have acknowledged and identified our emotional triggers in the first two steps. Now, we want to nip them the bud and tuck them out of sight during conversations with others.
The nip. During conversations, when we feel ourselves becoming agitated, do a quick examination of what's going on with us. Our goal is to pinpoint the word, phrase, or expression that now has our attending wandering away from the speaker.
The tuck. Since we really are the masters of our emotional triggers and the architects of our emotion filtering, we have dominion over both at all times. Take control of this thing that bothers us by directing it away from the conversation and our focus. In this way, we manage this word or phrase out of our emotional filtering process. We effectively ignore it.
STEP #4: Accept and embrace the fact that listening is much more important than speaking.
Do you know that we spend 80% of our day in situations in which we are required to listen in order to:
• Make decisions
• Take instruction
• Provide input or feedback
That makes listening our most daily used communication skill.
Therefore, it is more important to listen than to speak.
STEP #5: Make managing our emotion filtering process a habit, not a novelty.
Implement these five steps all day, every day. In the beginning you may slip more times than you're comfortable with, but keep at it.
If you don't do this, then your poor listening skills will be your fault!
No comments:
Post a Comment