Why Aren't You Listening To Me?

[Cartoon courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

Granted, I may not be the most charming or interesting person in the world, but you really prefer the ramblings of avatars, your dog, and imaginary friends to my reflections?  How insulting!

That's the likely response of your employees were they to read the thoughts of the average manager at your company on the topic of listening to staffers. It's not that they don't value these workers' ingenuity and flashes of insight; it's just that many of these managers doubt the meaning behind their employees' words contain anything as positive as that. Too often, probably, the first thing that comes to mind when a staffer opens his mouth is the dread of fielding new complaints and crises.

Do you have any way to gauge how well managers listen to the employees working under them (not counting said employees reading back the bosses' lunch order)?  Maybe you could circulate a workplace communication/mis-communication survey. Make it more fun than your usual surveys by putting aside multiple choice options in favor of free-form responses encouraged via incentives. Ask work groups to come up with together (to avoid strife) the funniest/at-the-time-saddest problem they ever experienced due to failure to listen to one another. The group with the most entertaining (and true) story gets three lunches at a favorite local restaurant, or whatever other prize you think might motivate, and which you can afford.

Until you take the discomfort away from admitting that failures in listening occur, and sometimes lead to big blunders, your employees won't be honest with you about it, and, therefore, presumably, won't improve.

Managers are fun to tag as villains, but we all know listening failures also are rampant among co-workers at the same level. Actually, it might even be worse with co-workers because these employees know ignoring Fred in the next door cubicle (who seems some days to be unaware of anything other than the Little League feats of his son) is not nearly as bad as ignoring Sally The Manager who has carefully mapped out a business strategy for the next two years, the progress of which she diligently tracks on a map filled with multicolored tacks.

As an experiment, suggest that managers at their next staff meeting perform an experiment with their work group. Have managers ask staffers, including themselves, to remember the last work-related conversation they had with each peer seated around the table, and then ask the staffers to share these memories with one another. It'll be like a workplace version of the telephone game. Employees (and their manager) may be shocked at how much they missed or misunderstood. It could be due to semantic mix-ups, but I'd wager most of these mis-communications are the result of not bothering to listen attentively.

At the same time, you have to wonder if the missed and misunderstood are entirely without blame. Could it be that some of your employees and managers are tuned out more than others because they're hard to understand, or so verbose they put the listener to sleep?  Hand-in-hand with the need for tuned-up listening, is the importance of clear communication that doesn't burden the listener. In the recession, do you still offer communication training?  If you do, what kind of exercises do you ask learners to participate in? What about asking them to take turns explaining the same situation or a variety of situations to each other to see how understandable and engaging they are?  It's not enough to be understandable; a good manager and efficient team member needs to hold the attention of other employees. The experience of talking to them shouldn't resemble everyone's least favorite lecture class in college.

Can you teach employees to be charming and engaging in their communications?  The charm part is tough since it seems to be one of those qualities you either have or you don't. The engaging part is a skill that can be acquired. As a person given to long rambling monologues about the health and well being of my cat to uninterested people (innocent bystanders), I know you can learn to self-edit before speaking. "Oh, maybe my collaborators on this project don't need to know about Miss Minnie's victory over a bladder infection three years ago. Maybe what they'd really like to hear about are my ideas for getting our work done faster." 

To aid your company's spacey ramblers, make communication competency an important part of performance reviews. Self-editing starts with self-awareness, so ask managers to be aware of their own communication weaknesses, and those of their staff, and to point out in non-hurtful ways (may need some role-play exercises here) how staff can communicate with greater clarity and interest.

It does no professional good, after all, learning to listen to managers and co-workers if learning to listen means knowing what they ate for lunch for the past 10 days, and why they now hate pastrami.

How do you hone the listening and communication skills of managers and employees?  Any tips for companies with employees who listen to but don't understand one another, and those with employees who would understand each other perfectly if only they would learn to listen?