One of the first commands we are given as children by our parents is “Listen to me.” As we grow, we get that same command – in its various forms – from teachers, family members, friends, bosses, and nearly every person with whom we interact. With this much experience, one would think that we knew how to execute this seemingly simple command. Our textbook notes that “we learn to listen and talk before we read and write” Afterall. (Moran, 2014) Unfortunately, many of us still find it difficult to listen. Our inability to listen properly may stem from our lack of understanding the types and forms of listening.
A popular topic for human resource managers during the last few years has been “active listening” in a corporate environment. A quick search on the internet will uncover numerous articles on this technique in publications from the Harvard Business Review and Forbes to resources offered by the Society of Human Resource Management and the American Marketing Association.
An article in the Harvard Business Review told the story of an up-and-coming vice president for a Fortune 500 company who, during his annual review, learned that he had a “listening deficit”. (Charan, 2014) To his surprise, coworkers and clients alike gave this unfortunate feedback. This problem was certainly putting a limit to rise in the company. The article says that “active listening and probing energizes groups […] and helps them arrive at new and better solutions.” (Charan, 2014)
Our book tells us that there are both positive and negative types of listening. Most people may know that active listening is a positive form where the listener works to demonstrate understanding. What many may not know are the techniques that can be used to accomplish understanding; these are paraphrasing, conducting perception checks, and summarizing. (Moran, 2014)
In addition, it may not be widely known that there are negative forms of listening. Negative forms are very interesting because they feel counter-intuitive. For example, polite listening is a negative form (how could anything “polite” be negative?). This type of listening only requires bare-minimum effort; just enough to offer a simple reply. Other forms of negative listening are defensive listening and offensive listening. These are most interesting in the current political climate.
Defensive listening is when a person listens for points that can be disputed in order to not disrupt his or her position. (Moran, 2014) An example of this is:
Person A: I think that NFL players kneeling during the American national anthem prior to football games have the right to do so under the First Amendment of the Constitution. Since I believe in the Constitution, I support the players’ rights to call attention to police brutality in this way.
Person B: If you truly supported the Constitution, you would support the men and women who died for this country and demand that the players stand to respect the anthem and the flag.
Person B did not meaningfully engage with the argument put forth by Person A. Instead, Person B insinuated that Person A does not support the country because he should not approve of people who disrespect the anthem and flag by kneeling.
Offensive listening is even more sinister whereby a listener looks to “trap” the speaker using his own words. (Moran, 2014) A recent political example of this form is when New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, in attempting to explain that America hasn’t always been a perfect nation, drew upon President Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” to unfortunately say “America was never that great”. Although it was clear that the Governor didn’t mean that American isn’t great (just that America wasn’t all great), the opposition was eager to pick up on the slip and use that sound bite to damage Cuomo’s campaign. This negative form is actually a common practice in politics.
Since the act of communicating is circular – requiring participants to be both speakers and listeners, encoding and decoding, at several points in a conversation – it is imperative that people gain the basic skills to listen in order to have more meaningful relationship with family, friends, coworkers and even acquaintances. eHarmony, a dating website, has even felt it necessary to offer its members an article entitled “I’m Right, She’s Left. Are we Doomed?” where under a subtitle called Listen and Learn, it instructs couples to “genuinely listen to each other and to more fully understand where the other person is coming from”. (eHarmony, 2018) Perhaps people who can’t take this class will stumble on the dating site and get some advice on listening.
References
Charan, R. (2014, July 23). The Discipline of Listening. Retrieved September 14, 2018, from https://hbr.org/2012/06/the-discipline-of-listening
I’m Right, She’s Left. Are we Doomed? | eharmony Advice. (2018, March 05). Retrieved September 16, 2018, from https://www.eharmony.com/dating-advice/relationships/im-right-shes-left-are-we-doomed/
Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing Cultural Differences (9th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
Vazquez, M. (2018, August 16). NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo says America ‘was never that great’. Retrieved September 16, 2018, from https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/15/politics/andrew-cuomo-america-was-never-that-great/index.html