Climb the listening LADDER!

Ask any one what's the most important aspect of communication… you would get a plethora of responses, but a lot of them would be ‘listening’. 

In my numerous interactions with varied levels of corporate executives over the years, I've asked this question and everyone would respond that it is very important to listen. I would even get responses like - we must listen more than we talk, we have two ears and one mouth, we must listen attentively, etc.

Yet, they all agree that despite knowing all this, we end up being poor listeners on several occasions. Why is it that listening is so difficult to practice? 

One of the things that hinders listening is the pre-occupancy of the mind. We all have our lenses with which we see the world and the people we interact with, and most of us do not remind ourselves that we have to take the lens off while listening. 

The other one is the need to respond. While someone is speaking we tend to formulate our next response in our mind and are so eager to open our mouth to begin a response before the other person has even completed speaking.

One simple yet awesome technique that you can practice is called the ‘LADDER’ technique.

It starts with an L - looking at the person while talking. We are so preoccupied sometimes with ourselves or other tasks when someone is speaking that we actually end up disrespecting the person speaking to us. Whether it is your spouse or kids at home when you are watching your favourite TV program, or it is your laptop screen at office, many a times, we are all guilty of not shifting attention to the person speaking. And especially now, with WhatsApp consistently grabbing your attention and pulling your eyeballs to the phone screen like a powerful magnet, it's becoming all the more difficult.

The A in LADDER is for asking questions, we all suffer from the disease called ‘assuming’, some of us are more infected than others, but the disease is quiet well spread! It is said that 'questions are the answers' and a skilled communicator would get the things he has to say from the other persons mouth with this one art of asking the right questions. Questions, my friends, are the differentiators. In fact it is one of the differentiating competencies of a great sales person. And we all are selling, aren't we?

The two D's are the two don’ts... Don't assume and don't interrupt. Interrupting by using a 'but' or a 'no' or a 'however'. This could be lethal - we end up killing the conversation and making other people wrong by using one of these weapons.

The E in LADDER is for emotion check. We are so busy with what we have to say next, that we are not present to the emotional changes that may be happening in ourselves or the other person. It's better to change course than go to the dead-end of any road to discover a pit and fall into it, isn't it? A lot of cues are always available on the other person’s brows, eyes, jaw line, or just their body posture. But we are so caught up in the content of the conversation that we tent to miss out on these things. 

The last one, R, is for repeating or rephrasing. This is one of the good habits of active listeners. They will ensure that they pick up key elements of the statements made by the other person and play/feed it back, this leads to the unconscious mind of the other person picking up the idea that we are aligned.

Now don’t you agree that following this technique is so simple?

LADDER... I have been getting more and more present to active listening and you can do it too!