Obstacles to Strong Listening Skills

by Everett A. Chasen

In Seth’s recent posts, Defining Coaching Presence and Levels of Listening, he wrote about the importance of strong listening skills in any coaching relationship.  But assuming that a person has reasonable hearing ability and fluency in the language being spoken, why should it be a difficult task to understand and retain the words of people who are talking to you?

In my book, The Manager's Communication Toolbox, my co-author Bob Putnam and I offer five reasons why strong listening skills are hard to develop and to use.  They include:

Lack of Motivation: In our modern era of multi-tasking and easily available diversions such as those every smart phone contains, it’s not unusual to find that you’re not very interested in what someone else is saying.  Coaches and clients, however need to make an affirmative decision that they want to, indeed must, listen closely to everything the other says—and make the commitment to do so effectively.

Distraction: Even if you’ve decided to listen intently, holding your attention on the words a client or a counselor is saying can be like “a house trailer clinging to its lot in a tornado.”  External stimuli, such as ambulance or fire sirens or music playing softly in an adjacent room or office, or internal stimuli, such as a speaker’s appearance or clothes, can easily distract you.

Speed difference:  There’s a significant gap between the speed of speech and the speed of listener comprehension.  The average person speaks at a rate of 110 to 150 words per minute—while the average listener can process 300 words per minute and retain full comprehension.  So about half the time you’re listening, you can be thinking of something else—hopefully about what you’ve heard, but possibly other, unrelated thoughts.  If you’ve got time on your hands during a conversation, use it to process the kinds of feedback information Seth described in his Levels of Listening post.

Emotional reactions: Even if you are sharply focused, you may have a strong reaction to something that’s been said.  When that happens, your thoughts may mildly digress—possibly taking you for a brief trip down memory lane—or they may sharply veer into a strong emotion.  Whether it’s a mild or a significant digression, the danger is that you will “tune out” the speaker for a short or longer period of time.

One-upmanship: Some listeners simply cannot resist the temptation to “one-up” or “me, too” a story, and will interrupt a speaker to tell their own tale.  That may sometimes be appropriate in a coaching situation—but if a speaker is telling his or her story to make a larger point, even thinking about a “one-up” story can be a barrier to effective listening.

Hopefully, simply being aware of these problems is the first step towards dealing with it.  Coaches and clients alike should understand these tendencies, and do all they can to avoid them.   Avoiding these pitfalls is a major step towards developing the kinds of strong listening skills every coach should have—and every client should strive for.