Do you know someone who is a good listener?
It might be a family member, a friend or a work colleague who simply has the ability to listen when we need them.
Many of us think we’re good listeners; we don’t talk when others are speaking, we offer appropriate facial expressions and ‘mirror-back’ what we’ve just heard.
However, research suggests these behaviours fall short when it comes to good listening skills.
Poor listening skills increase the likelihood of information being misheard or misunderstood. This can lead to confusion and frustration within a team. Poor listening skills may also lead to incorrect assumptions being made, which results in poor decision-making and costly mistakes.
In order to find out more, data describing the behaviour of 3,492 participants in a program designed to help managers become better coaches was analysed by Zenger Folkman.
Analysts compared those perceived to be the most effective listeners with the average of all the other people in the data set.
In doing so, there were four clear findings:
- Good listening is not about staying silent, it’s about asking questions to promote discovery and insight
- Good listening included interactions that helped to build a person’s self-esteem
- Good listening was seen as a cooperative conversation with feedback flowing in both directions
- Good listeners tended to make suggestions, offering alternative paths to consider
Some of these points around what constitutes ‘good listening’ may be counter to what we have been told in the past. Rather than a passive activity, it is very much active and requires effort on the part of the listener.
