3.3 Spotlight on Human Resources Skills

In Chapter 3, we will highlight the skill of active listening. Let’s start by understanding it. Active listening is a skill for hearing what the other person is “actually” saying. It involves listening to what is said and observing the other person’s nonverbal messages.

Active Listening Can Help Overcome Barriers To Effective Listening

Being an active listener starts before you receive a message. Active listeners make strategic choices and take action to set up ideal listening conditions. Physical and environmental noises can often be managed by moving locations or manipulating lighting, temperature, or furniture. Avoid being distracted by psychological or physiological noise when possible. For example, we often know when we will be hungry, full, more awake, less awake, more anxious, or less anxious, and advance planning can alleviate these barriers.

In terms of cognitive barriers to effective listening, we can prime ourselves to listen by analyzing a listening situation before it begins. For example, you could ask yourself the following questions:

1. “What are my goals for listening to this message?”
2. “How does this message relate to me / affect my life?”
3. “What listening type and style are most appropriate for this message?”

Effective listeners must work to maintain focus as much as possible and refocus when attention shifts or fades (Wolvin & Coakley, 1993). One way to do this is to find the motivation to listen. If you can identify intrinsic and or extrinsic motivations for listening to a particular message, you will be more likely to remember the information presented. Ask yourself how a message could impact your life, career, intellect, or relationships. This can help overcome our tendency toward selective attention. As senders of messages, we can help listeners by clarifying what we’re saying and offering well-organized messages tailored for our listeners.

Active Listening Behaviours

We can prepare for active listening and use specific cognitive strategies to help us listen better. We also engage in active listening behaviours as we receive and process messages.

Paying attention is a crucial sign of active listening. Speakers usually interpret a listener’s eye contact and body language as a signal of attentiveness. While a lack of eye contact may indicate inattentiveness, it can also signal cognitive processing.

We usually do it unconsciously when we look away to process new information. Be aware, however, that your conversational partner may interpret this as not listening. If you do need to take a moment to think about something, you could indicate that to the other person by saying, “That’s new information to me. Give me just a second to think through it.”  An occasional head nod and “uh-huh” signal you are paying attention. However, when we give these cues as a form of “autopilot” listening, others can usually tell that we are pseudo-listening, and whether they call us on it or not, that impression could lead to negative judgments.

Asking probing questions is another way to directly indicate listening and to keep a conversation going since they encourage and invite a person to speak more. You can also ask questions that seek clarification and not just elaboration. Speakers should present complex information at a slower speaking rate than familiar information, but many will not. Remember that your nonverbal feedback can be helpful for a speaker, as it signals that you are listening and whether or not you understand. If a speaker fails to read your nonverbal feedback, you may need to follow up with verbal communication through paraphrased messages and clarifying questions.

As active listeners, we want to be excited and engaged but don’t let excitement manifest in interruptions. Being an active listener means knowing when to maintain our role as listeners and resist the urge to take a conversational turn. Research shows that people with higher social status are more likely to interrupt others, so keep this in mind and be prepared for it if you are speaking to a high-status person or try to resist it if you are the high-status person in an interaction (Hargie, 2001).

Note-taking can also indicate active listening. Translating information through writing into our cognitive structures and schemata allows us to interpret information better and assimilate it. Of course, note-taking isn’t always a viable option. It would be fairly awkward to take notes during a first date or a casual exchange between new coworkers. But in some situations where we wouldn’t normally consider taking notes, a little awkwardness might be worth it to understand and recall the information.

In summary, active listening is exhibited through verbal and nonverbal cues, including steady eye contact with the speaker; smiling; slightly raised eyebrows; upright posture; body position that is leaned in toward the speaker; nonverbal back-channel cues such as head nod; verbal back-channel cues such as “OK,” “mmhm,” or “oh”; and a lack of distracting mannerisms like doodling or fidgeting(Hargie, 2011).

Active Listening and Conflict

When your brain is under the stress of conflict, it is extremely challenging to actively listen to what someone else is saying because, in a conflict situation, you likely disagree with everything coming out of their mouth. Have you ever thought back to a high-conflict situation and realized that you missed a key piece of shared information? Likely because, in the heat of the moment, you were too focused on either getting your point across, making your case, or figuring out how to make this conflict end. Inattentional blindness in conflict means that we are likely to miss key information, verbal or nonverbal. The more effort a cognitive task requires, the more likely you’ll miss noticing something significant. This in and of itself can lead to more conflict.

Or what about the difference between the speech and thought rate? You can process information at a significantly higher rate than someone can share with you. In a conflict situation, you can process every previous conversation or conflict you have had with this person and still “hear” what they said. But you aren’t really listening when that is happening.

So, what can you do about these challenges in a conflict situation? First, recognize that we are all wired to be distracted AND that you will likely miss something. Second, maximize the attention you do have available by avoiding distractions. The ring of a new call or the ding of a new text is hard to resist, so make it impossible to succumb to the temptation by turning your phone off or putting it somewhere out of reach when you are involved in a conversation if you know that you will be tempted and you know that using your phone will increase inattentional blindness, you must be proactive. Third, don’t be afraid to slow down and pause a conversation because you are actively listening to someone. You build stronger relationships by showing people that you are truly listening to them and will give the hard conversations the time they deserve.

Paraphrasing

An essential part of active listening is the art of paraphrasing. According to the Cambridge Dictionary (n.d.), paraphrasing is “to repeat something written or spoken using different words, often in a humorous form or in a simpler and shorter form that makes the original meaning clearer.”

You will note that the definition above emphasizes that you will use “different words” to describe what you heard. You are not trying to repeat the exact words, known as parroting. It shows a true understanding of the original message when you can summarize the content using different phrasing. It is also a chance to check for understanding.

Scenario

Let’s look at an example of paraphrasing.

You are the Human Resources Coordinator at an accounting firm. An employee comes to see you with concerns about a co-worker.

This is an opportunity for the employee to agree with your paraphrased statement or to correct you. For example, your paraphrased statement suggests that the individual “observed” Maurice taking home office supplies. The employee might agree with this or clarify they did not see Maurice take home the office supplies. This clarification is essential to a Human Resources professional who is investigating a possible theft, as you need to know if there is a witness or if this theft is based on speculation.

Paraphrasing has two essential benefits. First, it allows you to ensure you have received the message correctly. Second, it signals to the other person that you are listening to them, and you are interested in hearing their message. As you can see, paraphrasing is another way to check for understanding.

Chapter 3 Exercises

Video: “The Art of Active Listening | The Harvard Business Review Guide” by Harvard Business Review [7:39] is licensed under the Standard YouTube License.Transcript and closed captions available on YouTube.

Exercise 3: Discussion 

In the video “The Art of Active Listening,” parroting is mentioned.

• What is parroting?
• What is the difference between parroting and paraphrasing?
• What is the benefit of paraphrasing?

Video: “The power of listening | William Ury | TEDxSanDiego” by TEDx Talks [15:41] is licensed under the Standard YouTube License.Transcript and closed captions available on YouTube.

Exercise 4: Discussion 

William Ury explains the value of active listening. How can a Human Resources professional demonstrate active listening when there is a heated conflict between two employees?

“Active Listening” from Making Conflict Suck Less: The Basics by Ashley Orme Nichols is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.