The Inbox of communicating is listening, and the Outbox is speaking. The Inbox is mainly to learn, the Outbox is to instruct, convince, suggest, and occasionally, to command. Since most of us have far more to learn than to teach, it follows we should be spending more time in the listening mode than in the instructing mode. Only by self-reflection can managers tell whether this is borne out in their practice.
It would seem listening is easy since it does not involve active articulation of thought or even thinking. However, it is genuinely more difficult to listen than to speak for most people because the ego prompts speech; only by temporarily suppressing the ego will we allow ourselves as managers to assume the mode of receptiveness to the active communication of other people.
Moreover, listening involves the formation of an attitude of giving importance to what one is hearing. It requires patience and calmness to hear out a person without interrupting the flow. And one truly gives importance only by helping the other person elaborate their view, without reacting with objections immediately, or contradicting. If we are patient and receptive, we learn. If not, we rebuff the other person and vitiate the very ability to absorb and appreciate what is being said, and turn off the tap of knowledge by indicating a stubborn unwillingness to listen.
The best listeners lean back, relax, and focus with eye and ear on the other person, and thus encourage the outpouring of knowledge from the speaker. By the focus, managers make known their interest in hearing the view being expressed, and by asking an occasional brief question or giving a nod of appreciation, the listening manager can derive the greatest benefit from the transaction.
The natural follow-on question is what to do with the knowledge derived in such a conversation, in which the major effort has been to listen? The truth is the manager may not know immediately how to deal with the input. More thought is necessary.
The best course is for the listener to to return to the subject after sufficient reflection, and pose additional questions that can aid in developing a response, and point the other person to how the knowledge provided may be used with the additional clarifications. These questions should not appear as deliberate brakes on accepting the communication, or a way of delaying or postponing the response. If, upon reflection, what the speaker has imparted is of value, then it must needs find a place in the agenda and affect the working in some way. It is the job of the manager to ensure this, and thus prove to the person who has opened up to speak that what is of value is considered, and has the effect intended.
And if what is received as a communication, is understood and pondered, but leads to the conclusion that the input is invalided by other considerations bearing on the matter, that has to be explained. It could also be the case that the input is valid and should influence the future working, but it needs to be delayed for other conditions to be propitious. That too bears explication.
Spend a little time composing yourself as a manager and assuming a calm mood of receptiveness, next time somebody has a point to make or something on their chest to get off.
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