Studies of time spent communicating (Adams, Baker, Daufin, Ellington, Fitts, et al., 2008) suggest that people listen for as much as 55% of their day. How do you listen to someone else? Here are four ways:
First, Competitive Listening, where we are waiting our turn for a gap in the talk so we can make a point, top a story, and come in with a joke. You see this in social gatherings where people are jostling for status or position.
Second, Combative Listening, where we are ready to make a point or rebut an argument; we are listening more attentively and precisely, but we are still more concerned with what we are about to say than with what we have just heard.
Third, Passive Listening, where we might ask sufficient questions or make enough speech noises (“um, yeh, right”) to establish a social relationship with the speaker – language used in aimless social intercourse, or phatic communication (the idea derives from Bronislaw Malinowski’s often-cited work in the 1920s with the Tribriand Islanders): it’s language as social communion.
Fourth, Active Listening, where we engage fully with others, enter a linguistic relationship with them, and create new ideas and discover new emotional aspects of each other or a situation.
In 1948, Ralph G. Nichols, a pioneer in the study of listening set out some dimensions of what constitutes listening; it is a distinct intellectual activity; we make inferences, select and focus on main ideas, identify the structure of the dialogue, and exercise concentration. More complex accounts are available, many deriving from the work of Wolvin & Coakley in the 1990s. They present listening as a foundational skill (we listen before we talk as babies), and germane to all personal, academic, and professional activities. Then there are conversation theorists (Paul Grice in the 1970s, EAW St George in the 1990s) who have added to our thinking on how we talk and listen.
Otto Scharmer, a management specialist at MIT, has a more subtle take on listening in his excellent World of Work Project; he outlines Downloading (when we are preoccupied, not really present), Factual Listening (when we learn new things), Empathetic Listening (when we connect with the speaker emotionally), and Generative Listening (when we explore futures and create new ideas).
There are online versions of all these. It might be worth thinking about how you engage with others and where your listening moves between all these four categories. So, how is it that you choose to listen?
In Heartstyles terms, the first two kinds of listening – competitive and combative – are symptomatic of behaviors from “Below-the-Line,” originating from fear or pride; not listening openly or constructively blocks our own growth and that of others, holding all of us back from our potential. However, active listening comes from a place of confidence, openness, humility and respect, all “Above-the-Line” behaviors.