Posts Tagged ‘multi-tasking’
Short Term Listening at the Expense of Long Term Value: The Value of Listening Skills
Even people who know all the good listening techniques fail when they only pay attention for a brief period of time. They focus just long enough for the speaker to share partial information, opinions, problems, or ideas. These fly-by listeners don’t carve out time for the speaker to say all that needs to be considered, nor do they listen for implications, applications and unintended consequences.
For example, “’leadership by walking around” can lead to short term listening. The idea was to get managers out of their offices and into the cubicles of staff. Many managers complied by making rounds, much like a hospital physician. Yes, employees were visited, but the interactions were often hollow and pro-forma; thus not meeting the original expectation that the visit would result in real, meaningful conversations that lead to higher performance, better decisions, and enhanced relationships.
The causes of short term listening are expressed in these phrases:
I’ve heard it before.
I don’t have time.
This person’s rambling.
I know the answer.
Maybe a good idea, but we don’t have the resources.
My boss’ll never go for it.
Poor timing.
Out of my jurisdiction.
And the results show up as:
I’m frustrated, demotivated, disengaged.
What’s the use of creating new ideas if s/he won’t give me the time of day.
Tough. I’m going to do it anyway, even if I have to go it alone.
If s/he won’t think beyond the moment, I’ll find someone who will or I’ll jump levels.
Resources, that’s a crutch. I’ll just rearrange the budget to fund this initiative.
This proposal has not been heard before—guaranteed.
Tips to reduce short term listening:
- Set aside time to hear a complete message. It’s better to say, “I can’t pay attention right now, how about tomorrow morning at eight?” than “Walk down the hall with me on my way to a meeting to tell me what’s on your mind.”
- Paraphrase back to the speaker to check for understanding.
- Stop what you’re doing, grab a pen/computer/white board, and make notes.
Learn and practice the art of inquiry—a leader’s job entails getting to mutual understanding with employees, and that takes asking a lot of intelligent, probing questions, followed by even better ones. Employees generally know a leader has gotten to his/her position by having smarts and experience, so there’s no need to pontificate.
I like to think of listening as an investment in the bottom line. Done frequently and well, information is shared, understood, and acted upon. That requires a commitment of time, respect, and patience.
I have a plaque in my office that reads:
Yes, of course I have a minute for you
My Rates
$5.00…….Listen
$10.00…..Pretend Interest
$20.00…..Sympathize
$25.00…..Care
Listening at the Airport—Notes from the Field
I’m so inured to air travel that I don’t pay much attention to what’s going on around me. But tonight, in the Minneapolis Airport on my way home from working in NC, I did lift up my head and listened around me.
One man talked on-and-on without pausing, asking a question, or seeming to be in conversation with anyone else. Nearby, a couple sat next to one another, held hands, and made no other connections. When he stood up, she scowled and seemed indignant. He stretched, but didn’t wander as though he knew the limits, beyond which it would not be all right to stray.
Many people were on mobile phones, some talking so loud that anyone who cared to could hear every word of their interactions. I eavesdropped. One woman was helping an offspring work through a homework problem. One woman was gossiping about an errant family member. One man was berating someone over a business decision. One man was talking on the phone and poking his nearby wife’s arm to emphasize a point. And more than one person was talking, typing, and doing yet something else such as filing nails, eating, reading, and putting on makeup, all simultaneously.
I kept on wondering if any one of the people was listening. If so, what were the indications—laughter, raising or lowering of voices, pauses, or even silence? The one couple didn’t even need to say a word to one another to be able to read intent and expectations.
I’d love to ask each of the people I watched if their interactions were satisfactory and if they felt heard. Short of that, I looked for positive or negative signs. But, for the most part, people were blank and went on to whatever was next.
My conclusion is that listening is elusive and hard to describe even though it’s a huge part of our every day.
Cognitive and Listening Fluency
Just what does the adage “In one ear and out the other” mean? Does any listening occur or is the information treated like water flowing down a slide at an amusement park—fast, fun and recycled without adding any benefit or outcome?
Or does it mean the listener is so adept that the information is grasped with little effort? My guess it’s the former, but there is something to be said about being aware and facile.
What is fluency?
Cognitive Fluency means that people prefer things that are easy to think about. For example, companies with easier to remember names tend to outperform those with more obscure ones (thus Listening Impact rather than The Impact of Good Listening for our organization’s name).
Listening Fluency means that people can grasp meaning from one listening habit to another with equal ability. For example, a person can hear as accurately in the mode of an Inner-Personal listener as in the mode of a Problem-Solving listener.
What’s enough fluency and what’s too much?
We can dummy down cognitive fluency to such a degree that there won’t be enough interest to challenge even the laziest of minds. There must be something that sparks attention.
Following are some examples of where cognitive and listening fluency intersect:
- You’re in a meeting and the presentation is full of details, new concepts, and technical words. That’s stretching your cognitive and listening fluency beyond your capacity, so you tune out.
- You need to purchase a new TV and the salesperson tells you the three major features of the set you’re looking at. You can take in the information without a problem and are confident the salesperson can answer any questions you have. Neither your cognitive nor listening fluency is overly challenged, so you stay engaged.
- Your customer, in an industry that you’re familiar with, tells you about her business and their needs. Because you know the industry you have cognitive alignment, but your Extra-Personal listening skills must remain sharp to listen to the particulars of her situation.
How do you know if you’re being fluent? Here are some questions you can ask yourself?
- Am I using simple words that most people will know?
- Do I make no more than three clear points?
- Do I use descriptive language to illustrate my ideas?
- Am I addressing all four (4) listening habits?
What other questions would you suggest that people use to check their cognitive and listening fluency?
Excerpted from: MAURITIUS BUSINESS GROWTH SCHEME by Henri E. Stetter
“Information overload” is one of the biggest irritations in modern life. There are e-mails to answer, virtual friends to pester, YouTube videos to watch and, back in the physical world, meetings to attend, papers to shuffle and spouses to appease. A survey by Reuters once found that two-thirds of managers believe that the data deluge has made their jobs less satisfying or hurt their personal relationships. One-third thinks that it has damaged their health. Another survey suggests that most managers think most of the information they receive is useless.
Commentators have coined a profusion of phrases to describe the anxiety and anomie caused by too much information: “data asphyxiation” (William van Winkle), “data smog” (David Shenk), “information fatigue syndrome” (David Lewis), “cognitive overload” (Eric Schmidt) and “time famine” (Leslie Perlow). Johann Hari, a British journalist, notes that there is a good reason why “wired” means both “connected to the internet” and “high, frantic, unable to concentrate”.
They raise three big worries. First, information overload can make people feel anxious and powerless: scientists have discovered that multitaskers produce more stress hormones. Second, overload can reduce creativity. Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School has spent more than a decade studying the work habits of 238 people, collecting a total of 12,000 diary entries between them. She finds that focus and creativity are connected. People are more likely to be creative if they are allowed to focus on something for some time without interruptions. If constantly interrupted or forced to attend meetings, they are less likely to be creative. Third, overload can also make workers less productive. David Meyer, of the University of Michigan, has shown that people who complete certain tasks in parallel take much longer and make many more errors than people who complete the same tasks in sequence.
Why the addiction?
Some do so because it makes them feel important; others because they may be addicted to the “dopamine squirt” they get from receiving messages, as Edward Hallowell and John Ratey, two academics, have argued.
Encouraging Changes:
Most companies are better at giving employees access to the information superhighway than at teaching them how to drive. This is starting to change. Management consultants have spotted an opportunity. Derek Dean and Caroline Webb of McKinsey urge businesses to embrace three principles to deal with data overload: find time to focus, filter out noise and forget about work when you can. Business leaders are chipping in. David Novak of Yum! Brands urges people to ask themselves whether what they are doing is constructive or a mere “activity”. John Doerr, a venture capitalist, urges people to focus on a narrow range of objectives and filter out everything else. Cristobal Conde of SunGard, an IT firm, preserves “thinking time” in his schedule when he cannot be disturbed. This might sound like common sense. But common sense is rare amid the cacophony of corporate life.
**********************
I’m sharing some of Mr Stetter’s well-stated article because what he has to say is extremely relevant to our discussions on listening. By now we’re sure it’s not possible to listen and do much of anything else that requires enough brainpower to pay attention. Yes, I can put on lipstick and listen to the news on the radio, but not drive sanely at the same time, or comprehend much of the news. I write my blog posts in silence, total silence, in an office away from anything else. I attend early morning yoga that prepares me to handle the day with calm energy.
All that said, my stomach tightens when I check emails in the morning and realize there are so many that I’ll either have to ignore some or carve out more time than I’d like to address each one. Or my ever-evolving ‘”to-do” list lies fallow.
What are your experiences with overload as described by Mr Stetter, and what do you do against its ravages?
More than One Way to “Get to Carnegie Hall”
Many of us know the old saw about the person walking in New York who stops someone to ask, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” She is told, “Practice, practice, practice.”
In my June 7, 2011 blog post I concluded with:
I’m often asked if there’s a process to make real change, not just cosmetic upgrades, but lasting and significant change. From what I’ve read, researched and observed, there does seem to be a process. It is:
test, practice, reflect, modify, practice
Why test first?
The simplest answer is, it’s least expensive to test at the draft or prototype stage. We know that software developers test and test early on to get bugs out and to determine market acceptance. It is quite similar for organizational change.
Suppose you were the head of a company and you concluded that Sales and Marketing should be merged into one department called Customer Interface. Maybe that would work, but without testing it on the stakeholders: current department employees, customers, vendors, other department heads, etc. you’d most likely just build resistance without truly understanding the merit of the idea.
Setting up and conducting a test early in the process increases the likelihood that glitches will be discovered before they become too costly to handle.
Practice what?
Let’s say the test has shown there’s sufficient interest in merging Sales and Marketing. What most commonly happens then in a change initiative is “full steam ahead.” Such all out efforts are still too big for a change initiative. What might be better is to practice it on a small piece of the business to see what it will look like in real time.
Reflect for how long?
Change requires constant reflection on what is, is not working. I find that groups in change spend more time talking about what they agree upon than the sticking points. That’s a waste of time and resources. Instead, there needs to be dialogue on what and how to modify.
How little can we modify?
By this time in the change process all eyes should be focused on tweaks, or the remaining bugs. In our example, everyone will understand and stand behind the change to the Customer Interface department, will have clear roles and responsibilities, and customers will be on board. There still might be a few pieces left to modify: e.g. business cards and wording on org chart revised, report templates, frequency of sales calls… details, but nothing structural.
Is this our last practice?
Change is an on-going and iterative process, so there is never an end. Instead this cycle continues, but with fewer alterations. The Customer Interface department will not have to be renamed, re-populated, or re-policy-ed. It will have to be monitored, but all aspects of a dynamic organization require on-going scrutiny to keep it moving forward.
When George Land wrote his seminal book, Grow or Die, he wasn’t advocating getting bigger; he was saying, “keep inventing.”
Even such a venerable institution as Carnegie Hall changes constantly in order to be able to host many kinds of talents, events and audiences.
More Research Findings
I think part of my responsibility as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) on Listening is to share some of the research that I come across on the subject. Following are a couple:
- TIME Magazine, February 21, 2011, Wired for Distractionby Dalton Conley.
In light of full disclosure, I should tell you that Dalton’s parents, Ellen and Steve Conley are long time friends, and I knew Dalton as a child, but haven’t seen him in years.
Dalton cites a study conducted at Stanford on multitasking. They learned that students who did the most media multitasking performed worst on a test than those who did the least media multitasking. The article continues, “’Each time we get a message or text,’ Anthony Wagner, one of the Stanford study’s co-authors, speculates, ‘our dopamine reward circuits probably get activated, since the desire for social connection is so wired into us.’ The result, he suggests, could be a forward-feeding cycle in which we pay more and more attention to environmental stimuli—Hey, another text!—at the expense of focus.”
Marian’s Thoughts: The impact of multitasking on listening is profound. We cannot listen fully and use media at the same time. Period. But, how do we get people in the workplace to multitask less and focus more?
- 5 Spices that are good for your brain, Daniel G. Amen, M.D. and Phil Lampert, The Supermarket Guru.
Turmeric: UCLA study showed that curcumin, the active ingredient in turmeric, “broke up brain plaques of amyloid beta, the abnormal protein buildup” that might be related to Alzheimer’s.
Saffron: University of Tehran study discovered that “a twice-daily dose of saffron works as well as Prozac in treating mild to moderate depression.”
Ginger: Roger Cady, M.D., director of the Headache Care Center in Springfield, MO, conducted a study that found “more than 80% of migraine-prone patients with mild headaches who were treated with a combo of ginger and feverfew staved off migraines.”
Garlic: A 2007 study in the journal Cancer noted, “garlic compounds eliminated brain cancer cells.”
Cinnamon: A recent study found that chewing cinnamon gum “speeds the rate at which your brain processes visual cues. One reason the gum may help: cinnamon regulates blood sugar levels, and this helps you stay focused.”
Marian’s Thoughts: A sharp and focused brain is critical to listening. Let me know if you value these research updates as well as how you use the information.
The Power of Listening
I came across this blog in my research and thought it worthy of sharing with you. Please honor Mathew’s copyright privileges.
Marian
The Power of Listening
We tend to listen (think) four times faster than we can talk. You’d think that was good, but actually it’s not, because our minds get bored and wander off.
Staying focused on someone else’s thoughts is tough, especially if the other person is anything less than a scintillating speaker. And few of us are.
But there’s nothing more powerful in the communications world than a skillful listener. We’ve all heard the old statistic about forgetting half of everything we’ve heard within 48 hours, and most of the rest within several days.
My suspicion is in today’s over-communicated world, the numbers are even worse. Sometimes I can’t even remember the sponsor of a favorite TV commercial minutes after it ran.
I was cleaning out some old reference files the other day, and came across a program developed by Sperry Corporation in the early 80s for its employees. More than 40,000 Sperry employees received the training over a 5-year period.
The program was developed by listening expert Lyman Stiel, a former associate of Ralph Nichols at the University of Minnesota. Nichols is generally regarded as “the father of listening” and Stiel is no slouch.
According to the Sperry program, here are ten keys to effective listening:
1. Find areas of interest – Don’t tune out dry subjects, ask “What’s in it for me?”
2. Judge content, not delivery – Don’t be distracted by poor delivery, look for the meat.
3. Hold your fire – Wait until you have received the whole message, ensure comprehension.
4. Listen for ideas – Get beyond the facts, listen for central themes and basic ideas.
5. Be flexible – Take fewer notes and concentrate more on the speaker and his/her message.
6. Work at listening – Relax and listen actively with facial movements, shakes or nods.
7. Resist distractions –This is for you cell phone junkies and laptop addicts. Put those away.
8. Exercise your mind – Use the speaker’s heavier content to stretch your mind. Dig in, don’t tune out.
9. Keep your mind open – Don’t get hung up on certain words, especially emotional ones.
10. Thought is faster than speech – Use that to your advantage: anticipate, summarize, weigh the evidence, and look between the lines.
The Sperry program was not intended to create “expert” listeners. They only professed to appreciate the importance of listening better, and they took the extra step of equipping their employees with specialized training.
Posted by Mathew Anthony (Parokkaran) at Thursday, January 20, 2011.
Listening and Improvisational Theater
A friend is taking improv classes, and when we were talking about her experience, I immediately connected what she was saying to my work on listening. Of course, a major part of improvisational theater is a person’s ability to listen.
Following are some thoughts on the matter:
“One of the things I love about improvisational listening skills is the concept of the “yes.” Your job as a listener in improv is to accept all offers, say “yes” and add on. There is a habit of competitive listening in our culture that disrupts the fecundity of group thought. In improv our job is to make everyone’s offer look good – and say yes to unknown possibility.”
Kirsten Wilson, Improvisation for Work and Life: Playback Theater, Boulder, CO
The key to improvisation is the “Yes, and” principle, and it’s an idea that is particularly relevant to business. In performance improvisation it means listening to what someone else says, accepting what they say, and then building on that. In business terms it means accepting any idea that’s brought to the table and then taking that idea further.
Robert Kulhan, adjunct assistant professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and Lakshmi Balachandra teacher of Improvisational Leadership at MIT Sloan School of Management
Kuhlan goes on to say that there’s a misperception that we have to 100% correct 100% of the time. While we only have to be correct about 10-15% of the time, we do need to be listening at least 50% of the time to make good decisions.
Improv Principles – Listening
From: newchoiceimprov.com/principles/listening.html
Improv can be scary and intimidating.
That’s why this site approaches improv with an emphasis on scene and character creation, rather than emphasizing “getting the laugh”. When the performers do the work of establishing who, where and complication, the humor will appear as a naturally-occurring by-product.
So, focusing on the scene and the characters takes the pressure off of you, the player, to ”be funny”. Another way to make the improv easier is to Listen.
One of the magical effects of improv is the group chemistry and collective unconscious that develops among the players. Inevitably, someone in the game or exercise will say or do something that sparks an idea or reaction in you.
This is serendipity, the gift of improv, the valuable and lucky idea you come across by accident.
You will miss it if you are not listening.
You will miss it if your mind is racing ahead in the scene to the next time you get to say something.
You will miss it if you fail to admire the creativity of your fellow performers.
Train yourself to listen by doing the following:
- Incorporate something the previous speaker just said into your responding comment or action
- Maintain eye contact with the other players
- Expand on what the previous speaker just said
Improv isn’t about being funny or comedy; it is about being present and listening.
How Do You Know?
My dear friend and colleague Allan Ackerman, replied to me (not on my blog) after my last post on multitasking:
“When I’m on the phone with someone who’s typing I can tell because I can hear them typing. Also, their replies get very mechanical and less frequent, and make less and less sense in relation to the conversation, stay on the surface and never go either to an especially insightful level or to any kind of free association.”
That response prompted me to search for information about what is being done to counter multitasking. Here are a couple, but not much going on:
A missed stop sign can have a devastating effect on more than one car or pedestrians at a street crossing; however by placing a solar powered stop sign with the flashing LED lights at each corner, more accidents could be prevented because the flashing LED lights could help attract the attention of distracted drivers and they will hopefully proceed with caution. Posted in Geeky Speaky by Kolleen, go to articles/computer technology/ technology for Dec. 2, 2009.
In The New York Times on June 6, 2010 there was this little bit of news that could be considered encouraging:
At the University of Rochester, researchers found that players of some fast-paced video games can track the movement of a third more objects on a screen than nonplayers. They say the games can improve reaction and the ability to pick out details amid clutter.
Back to Allan. He’s very insightful and expects meaningful conversations, so imagine how frustrating a fragmented conversation would be to him.
Let us know how you can tell when someone is multitasking and not focusing on you?