The Art of Listening

No matter which job sector you work in, it pays to develop a knack for listening.

If you deal with other humans, you will need to be able to build relationships with them — and relationships are built upon good communication.

In fact, the same goes if you’re working in a saw mill or you’re out in the wilderness fighting fires. It’s important to have good listening skills to keep things moving forward (and stay out of danger.)

In fact, scientists believe we developed pretty good short-range hearing precisely so we could communicate with one another, evolutionarily-speaking.

Listening well is what helps us to read between the lines, because not everyone is a star communicator. So, learning to be better listeners can only help build our intelligence and relational common sense. The more you listen, the more you learn, and the more this adds to that bank of knowledge you can pull from to make more intuitive decisions in the future.

Also, the more you listen, the more your relationships strengthen. Trust is built more easily between people when they are heard and feel as though information can flow more freely.

In short, listening makes you smarter and more likeable.

As an agency, we come up against the “listening struggle” constantly. The majority of our job is about listening.

We listen to what our clients want. We listen to the things they don’t say. We listen to what their competitors are saying. We listen to what they say their customers need. The list goes on. We’re detectives in the art of listening, searching for the clues to build out the best brand campaign they’ve ever seen. But listening is hard. It’s a practice, like meditation, that continues to evolve over time as new relationships form.

It’s also a practice that pulls on the threads of our ego.

In a TEDxTalk, Kathleen Macferran once said, “listening is seeing the world from someone else’s perspective but not necessarily agreeing with it.” As an Assessor and Certified Trainer at the Center for Nonviolent Communication, Macferran knows this well. She also says:

“Listening is fundamental to dialogue and dialogue is a prerequisite to change.”

It’s true. To have a healthy debate and get another person to think differently about something, one must be able to approach the situation with an open mind, as well as an open ear. It’s critical we continue to find ways to get better at this skill.

Recently, it seems that many of us are being conditioned to go in the opposite direction. Technology has complicated things a bit, by keeping us behind screens and away from those frequent social situations where healthy communication can flourish.

The failure to listen finds its way into all kinds of sectors of our lives. Communities, in general, tend to feel unheard by their leaders. An overwhelming majority of individuals also feel unheard by the friends and family in their immediate circles.

One writer, Kate Murphy, conducted man-on-the-street interviews to research this phenomenon for her novel, You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters.

In a recent article on Lit Hub, “Has Listening Become a Lost Art,” Murphy dives into some of the things she discovered throughout the process. Many people, she notes, are just waiting for the next chance to speak:

“In a culture infused with existential angst and aggressive personal marketing, to be silent is to fall behind. To listen is to miss an opportunity to advance your brand and make your mark.”

But the wiser among us will be content to learn that listening actually makes us better, not worse, at achieving success.The more you listen, the more you build capital, because the brain is opening up to new possibilities. This all might sound like 5th grade science, but we tend to forget even the simplest of things as life goes on.

It’s easy to get caught up in work, the 8,000 emails you have nagging your subconscious, or the fact you’ve had dishes sitting in the sink for days on end. Time is a commodity these days.

However, having relationships in our lives are non-negotiable. We only have to slow down and listen to make life feel a little less chaotic. It will pay off in the end.

There’s a reason we named our agency School of Thought — we try to be full of them. Our intention to always be listening. Nobody is perfect. It’s natural to “space out” sometimes (that’s actually one of the ways we formulate creative ideas!). We can’t always be amazing listeners all the time, but we can make it our goal to try.

One thing to keep in mind that can be encouraging throughout your journey is that the more you listen, the better you become at it.

Did you hear that? The more you listen, the better you become at it.