Different Ways of Listening
If you are not a good listener, there is no way you can develop real mastery in any discipline. — C. Otto Scharmer
As we mentioned in the previous article, being present to the present moment puts us in a posture of listening that’s open to taking in new information. From this posture of openness, we can begin to access more choice in how we listen.
When we teach listening skills in leadership development workshops, we take care to emphasize the idea of choice. Too often, our patterns of listening are habitual and automatic; in other words, we forget that we have choices available to us in how we take in and process the data coming at us.
It can be helpful to think about the choices available to us in listening as comparable to looking through different lenses. Each lens highlights different elements and colors our perception of what we’re taking in. And different lenses are more appropriate for some situations and less so for others.
The following chart reflects some of the different choices available to us as we listen. We’ve adapted it from the work of Otto Scharmer and the Presencing Institute.
Each of the four “listening choices” listed above has an appropriate application. None is better or worse than the others — rather, it’s all about fit.
The Reflexive/Habitual mode of listening is actually not really a choice. Rather, it’s closer to the fight/flight/freeze response enacted by our amygdalas in the presence of a survival threat. It’s not fair to say we choose to be triggered — rather it happens as an automatic response. In the presence of an actual threat to our safety, this mode of listening and response is quite valuable! However, consider how often we can find ourselves triggered by perceived threats that aren’t actually true survival threats. In those cases, if we can notice when we’re in a triggered state but not in true danger, we can make a choice to self-regulate, come back to center, and make a different listening choice.
The Pattern Matching / Problem-Solving mode of listening is a way of processing information based on learned patterns. In this mode, our listening is often more of a form of sorting. We recognize familiar patterns in what we’re hearing, and we can quickly sort the information coming at us into categories of knowledge we’ve already gathered. You might imagine a colleague sharing a product idea with you that immediately reminds you of something the team tried last year that didn’t work. Your brain matches the new idea with the known pattern and quickly makes a judgment. Again, this mode of listening has incredible value. In fact, we need to be able to access this mode to build expertise in our disciplines. And it can help us solve problems quickly. On the other hand, this mode also has its limitations. At some point, if we only sort new information based on known patterns, we may miss opportunities to recognize outlier data or to recognize possibilities for innovation.
We engage the Empathetic mode of listening when we, at least temporarily, suspend our attachment to our own experience and attempt to see and feel things through the perception of another. Our goal when using the empathetic mode is not to fix or solve, but rather (at least at first) to connect. By seeking first to connect and see through another’s eyes, we can open ourselves up to new ways of thinking, and we can strengthen the trusting bonds between us and others. It’s not just about the touchy-feely — empathetic listening has all kinds of practical implications (think of designers who know that empathetically connecting with users is a crucial step in the design process). Furthermore, as leaders who are often called to be the “chief problem solvers” of our organizations, we can do well to remember the value of the empathetic mode. Often, when people come to us with challenges, their primary desire is to be met with empathy. If we rush to problem-solving too quickly, we can risk eroding trust by treating people transactionally.
The final mode, what we call Mining for Potential, builds on the foundation of openness in the Empathetic mode. This is where we turn our curiosity into action by asking questions. This is the mode of coaching, ideation, and innovation. The questions we ask come from true curiosity and a sense of possibility, and they open us up to an emergent future we would likely miss if we were only operating in the Pattern Matching/Problem-Solving mode. This kind of inquiry-driven, active listening, can be a great fit for visioning and strategy sessions, and in 1:1s with direct reports, especially when we’re supporting folks in working through complex challenges for which there are no easy, “right” answers.
There are other helpful frameworks for thinking about the various modes of listening available to us. The most important thing is to have a working model that can assist us in recognizing the choices available to us and actively choosing the right mode for the right time.
I’d encourage you to reflect on your own patterns of listening. You might use the following prompts:
- What is my go-to mode of listening under normal circumstances? What about when I’m stressed?
- What mode(s) do I under-utilize?
- How might I shift my listening choices to get different/better results in my life and work?
As leaders, you have a choice, first and foremost, in how you process the information that’s coming at you at any given time. In this clip, Andy Crissinger, describes Information Processing Choices, a framework and tool that Reboot often uses in our leadership development engagements, bootcamps, and in one-on-one coaching.
