David J. Parnell’s Professional Listening Series | Part 4 of 4 | Habits & Strategy

Today we are going to finish our 4 part professional listening series by talking about quality listening habits that you can begin developing right away and we will look at skill preparation and development at the Macro and Micro levels.

First let’s talk about developing quality listening habits. There is simply no silver bullet for doing this. Countless studies have shown that NOT using old habits atrophies the neural net that produces the habit and REPETITION develops new neural nets that create new habits. So the first step is to bring cognition back into the picture. We have already talked about potential bad habits so to complement that I have provided a fairly comprehensive list of quality habits that you need to begin developing while you are listening to your communication partner.

1. Establish your motives upfront – As you find yourself beginning a new communication, bring into your consciousness the reason/s WHY you are doing this in the first place. Take yourself out of the stimulus/response mode briefly to place a bit of overlying framework on your motives. This will serve you well with respect to filtering out time wasting conversation and when you do engage in a meaningful communication it will serve as a compass to keep you on track and mindful.
2. Be present – When you have determined that this is a meaningful/useful discourse, stay in the ball game for the entirety. The mind is set up to handle many things at once and often does so. The downside to this is ineffectiveness if the multitasking process is not controlled. Work to keep your attention on the matter at hand. If you have pressing needs it may make sense to jot them down quickly so that your mind is not trying to “remind” you to deal with them.
3. Process communication as a whole – Be forever cognizant of the fact that your subconscious will be evaluating the speaker on several different levels (the way they look, their dress, their tone, their hair style, etc…) IN ADDITION to evaluating the content and quality of the information they are conveying. Pay attention to all of this as a whole and use any internal signals as a prompt to dig further and explore RATHER than as a definitive judgment.
4. Be prepared for any potential emotion spiking – Emotional spiking is the result of the introduction of an emotion that is relationally dissimilar to your present state due to the conveyance of emotionally stimulating content or verbiage. This is unique to each person and can really be represented by everything under the sun. Cursing, certain value thresholds, particular subject matter such as sex or violence, etc… The key is to know your own hot buttons and MENTALLY PREPARE yourself with respect to how you will handle them if they arise. The spike in emotion is your body preparing you for protection because it is thinks it is in danger and the result, as of that moment, is unpredictable. So it fires up the engines to get ready for the worst. By mentally rehearsing how you will handle any of these situations, you can and do INSERT predictability into that scenario and your subconscious will go easier on the hormone release and cooler heads will indeed prevail.
5. Don’t interrupt – Just like it says… don’t interrupt. If you have something you want to say then hold onto it until they are done. 9 times out of 10 it is wholly sufficient to repeat a word in your phonological loop WHILE listening to the speaker and processing their communication. If your concept is too complicated or more abstract than what a single word can encapsulate, then set an anchor for yourself. Squeeze your pinky finger and thumb together as a reminder or place your pointer finger on your elbow. Use your imagination… whatever works for you.
6. Never mind read – When someone is communicating with you, what you are receiving from them is the culmination of all of their experiences, values, beliefs, visualizations, information acquisition, etc… Every single human is such a dynamic and unique package. The possibility that you will know EXACTLY what they are thinking at any given time is improbable at best. You may be able to hit it somewhere in the park, but you will not hit it on the head. So let them express themselves, give them time and plenty of room to roam around their mental lexicon to find the right words for them. Otherwise you will be coloring their communication with your own experience and this dilutes your own informational acquisition.
7. Only OFFER your help – In dire situations where they seem to be stuck, then OFFER to help them and wait for their answer. If they want help, then help… If they don’t, be patient.
8. Pay close attention to abstraction level – In my experience this is the number one culprit of miscommunication. Time and again I will see communication breakdowns occur as two people argue about a concept that they are actually agreeing on. Take the example of the security sales person we discussed earlier. Both parties agree that they house and family needs to be secure, they are simply looking at it from different “heights”… One is at a 50,000 foot view and the other is at a 200 foot view, what is important is that they are both taking in the same view… So pay close attention to the height of your communication partner’s view while you are talking.
9. Tend to missing information – Be cognizant that your mind will want to simply fill in any gaps with its own version of the story. You should know by now that your minds version is NOT the same as their minds version. So when you come across areas of missing information or ambiguity, seek out their version… clarify what they mean.
10. Replace “yes, but” with “yes, and” – Just like it says… by using “yes, and…” you will be validating that you have processed their information AND segueing into your own without damaging the open-platform you are trying to create for them to communicate on.
11. Seek effectiveness rather than validation – You are here on this earth because your bloodline and genetics are competitive. Survival was not easy and it took good solid genes to come this far. As a result, you can expect yourself to be competitive in one way shape or form while you are communicating. Be cognizant of this and use it as energy and drive, not a governing and dictatorial instrument. Realize that it is OK to be wrong, we all are at one time or another. By seeking to learn and grow rather than win a pyrrhic victory at all cost you will exponentially improve your communication effectiveness and the quality of your life.
12. Constantly seek rapport – Rapport is the literal road on which your partner will be driving their communication-mobile. If that road is treacherous, bumpy, winding with sharp corners and slippery they will be driving very cautiously. But if you can give them a straight, dry, wide and safe road on which to drive you will get to see everything that their car can do. Without good rapport you will only receive inhibited information with a ton of gaps so constantly seek to establish and keep rapport.
13. Thinking, Feeling, Behaving – Communication will consist of verbiage and content that will represent one or more of these three categories. Keep a close eye out for which category they are talking in. This will allow you to keep aligned during the conversation and also see areas of missing information.
14. Judgment – Be prepared for instantaneous categorization, stereotyping and judgments to be made about the person BEFORE they even open their mouths. It is important to realize that this is a legacy from our reptilian brain and although it may have been phenomenal for our ancestors it can indeed get us into trouble in the present. Much like the habit of processing the communication as a whole, do not let the subconscious categorizations taint the validity or credibility of the information being conveyed. Use those categorizations as barometers, not definitive judgments.
15. Keep a clear channel – Breathe, focus and take breaks if necessary. Realize that your mind is going to be working very diligently and frantically during a prolonged discourse. Keeping a clear head can become increasingly difficult as time wears on. By understanding that this will occur and that it can have a negative effect on how you process the information you are receiving you will help yourself immensely in being more effective.

By bringing conscious awareness to the usage, or lack thereof you can begin to incorporate these into your daily discourse. The more you catch yourself NOT using them, the more you WILL use them… The more you use them, the more effective you will become and the more innate their activation will become.

• Strategy and usage at the Macro-level: When you have the luxury of being able to prepare for a communication effort ahead of time, it makes sense to employ some mental preparation. By doing so, you will effectively call into your working memory the fields and categories of information that will be important to you during a particular discourse.

1. Determine what type of communication this will likely be. Will it be a persuasion effort, a simple conveyance, a negotiation or argument, socialization or a planning or progression effort? Now it may turn into any or all of them all at once. But most times what you are expecting is what you will get. So make your best guess as to what type of interaction you think it will be.

2. Once you determine this, recall the categories of information you will be looking to acquire. In many cases I find it prudent to take a few minutes to brainstorm and jot down examples of each category in order to activate those particular thought processes. By doing so you will prime your working memory with the proper informational needs and ensure that you will have to appropriate antennae up while communicating.

• Strategy at the Micro-level: Developing an actual skill set with the above information is the ONLY way that you will be able to use this at the micro-level. Within any communication, there will be micro-structures of all of the above categories. In a negotiation at any point in time you may be simply conveying something, persuading, arguing or even socializing. The speed and pace with which this will happen requires this to be an innate skill set. As a result, only practice will make perfect.

My initial practice consisted of watching YouTube videos of interactions between people. This allowed me to evaluate what type of discourse was occurring and then make my decision on what information I would look for. You also have the luxury of timelessness where you can pause the video and think about it if you need. This is an amazingly efficient and effective way to develop your skill set.

Once you feel comfortable with this you can then begin to pay attention to your own conversations and make the proper mental adjustments when necessary. You will start out slowly at first and the skill will be sporadically applied. But with time and practice you will quickly be applying your listening skill set innately and at the micro-level.

You can now consider yourself a professional listener… To learn more about other forms of effective communication please visit my main site The Communication Expert or feel free to search my other blog posts.

David J. Parnell | The Communication Expert