1.5 - About University

8.7 A CTIVELY L ISTENING FOR C ONTENT,F EELING, AND M EANINGInspired by David Godfrey, Carl Rogers, and Stephen Covey.Human nature being what it is, we tend to take rigid positions when emotions are runninghigh. As such, stress and conflict can cause a leader’s listening skills to wane. The steps listedhere build on each other, and will help you develop an extra antenna for hearing others, evenin stressful times.1. Set the physical and mental stage for good listening. Physical: Arrange the physical aspectsof a room for optimal listening. Mental: Clear your mind to allow room to focus onwhat the other person is saying.2. Prepare your ears and eyes for listening. Research suggests that words represent only about10 to 15 percent of people’s communication. Most information is contained in thenonverbal aspects of the communication—tone of voice, rate of speech, eye contact,body posture, gestures, and so on.3. Keep appropriate silence. Remaining quiet at appropriate times can yield surprisingly positiveresults. Given an extra few seconds, another person might just go a level deeper.Also, give people at least about 50 percent of the airtime. It’s an excellent way of modelinghow you would like to be heard.4. Ask good questions. Ask questions that allow and encourage people to arrive at their ownanalyses and solutions. This is a particularly powerful form of communication knownas the Socratic method. The ancient Greeks honed this method to perfection. Askingthoughtful questions also shows that you are listening deeply.5. Listen for content. The content is the what of the problem; the process is the how. By content,we mean the technical or business part of a problem (i.e., the facts) as distinctfrom the process—how the problem is being solved. A bread-and-butter skill for leadersis actively listening at the content level.6. Listen for process. Listening to process means listening to how a person is solving theproblem—the steps being taken to reach a solution. Many leaders prefer to stay in thecomfort zone of content, often jumping to causes, solutions, and action. Actively listeningto process as well as to content, however, allows a leader to provide both goodcontent advice and effective process suggestions. After all, effective process is the veryessence of leadership, whether a planning process, an interpersonal process, or a problem-solvingprocess.7. Listen for emotion. No matter the concern—accounting problems, systems difficulties,maintenance issues—human emotions will be involved. Not infrequently, people havedifficulty expressing their emotions during stressful moments (e.g., when disappointmentor anger is expressed). This is a moment of truth for a leader, not a time to deny,downplay, or ignore the situation. Leaders can learn how to be comfortable when emotionsare running high. Since you can process information at a faster rate than othersSECTION 8 TOOLS FOR COMMUNICATION 251