Speaking with Team Members

Given a choice, people would rather talk to each other than write to each other (see Figure 2–1). Talking takes less time and needs no composing, keyboarding, rewriting, duplicating, or distributing. Even more important, oral communication provides the opportunity for feedback. When people communicate orally, they can ask questions and test their understanding of the message; they can share ideas and work together to solve problems.

Figure 2–1	The Percentage of Communication Time Businesspeople Spend on Various Communication Channels

However, speaking is such an ingrained activity that we tend to do it without much thought, and that casual approach can be a problem in business. You have far less opportunity to revise your spoken words than to revise your written words. You can't cross out what you just said and start all over.

To improve your speaking skills, advises American Express's David House, be more aware of using speech as a tool for accomplishing your objectives in a business context. Break the habit of talking spontaneously, without planning what you're going to say or how you're going to say it. Before you speak, think about your purpose, your main idea, and your audience. Organize your thoughts, decide on a style that suits the occasion and your audience, and edit your remarks mentally.

Perhaps the most important thing you can do is to focus on your audience. Try to predict how your audience will react, and organize your message accordingly. As you speak, watch the other person and judge from verbal and nonverbal feedback whether your message is making the desired impression. If it isn't, revise it and try again.

Now look again at Figure 2–1. In addition to underscoring the importance of oral communication, it illustrates that people spend more time receiving information than transmitting it. Listening and reading are every bit as important as speaking and writing.

Because listening is such a routine, everyday activity, few people think of developing their listening skills. Unfortunately, most of us aren't very good listeners. We may hear the words, but that doesn't mean we're actually listening to the message.²⁸ Most of us face so many distractions that we often give speakers less than our full attention. In fact, businesses lose millions of dollars each year because of a failure to listen to and understand customers' needs.²⁹

Effective listeners welcome new information and new ideas. The payoff is that they stay informed, up to date, and out of trouble. Good listening gives you an edge and increases your impact when you speak. It strengthens organizational relationships, enhances product delivery, alerts the organization to innovation from both internal and external sources, and allows the organization to manage growing diversity both in the workforce and in the customers it serves.³⁰

Even so, most people listen poorly. In fact, people listen at or below a 25 percent efficiency rate, remember only about half of what's said during a 10-minute conversation, and forget half of that within 48 hours.³¹ Furthermore, when questioned about material they've just heard, people are likely to get the facts mixed up. That's because effective listening requires a conscious effort and a willing mind. Learning to listen effectively can be a difficult skill, but it's one of the best ways to improve your communication skills. It enhances your performance, which leads to raises, promotions, status, and power.³²

Whether interacting with customers or with fellow employees, people at Whole Foods must know how to listen. Developing good listening skills helps team members overcome distractions so that they can work together successfully and respond to customers' needs.

Three types of listening differ not only in purpose but also in the amount of feedback or interaction that occurs. You can improve relationships and productivity by matching your listening style to the speaker's purpose.³³ For example, the goal of content listening is to understand and retain the speaker's message. You may ask questions, but basically information flows from the speaker to you. It doesn't matter that you agree or disagree, approve or disapprove—only that you understand.³⁴ When you listen to a regional sales manager's monthly report on how many of your products sold that month, you are listening for content.

The goal of critical listening is to understand and evaluate the meaning of the speaker's message on several levels: the logic of the argument, the strength of the evidence, the validity of the conclusions, the implications of the message for you and your organization, the speaker's intentions and motives, and the omission of any important or relevant points. Critical listening generally involves interaction as you try to uncover the speaker's point of view and credibility.³⁵ When the regional sales manager presents sales projections for the next few months, you listen critically, evaluating whether the estimates are valid and what the implications are for your manufacturing department.

The goal of empathic listening is to understand the speaker's feelings, needs, and wants so that you can appreciate his or her point of view, regardless of whether you share that perspective. By listening in an empathic way, you help the individual vent the emotions that prevent a dispassionate approach to the subject. Avoid the temptation to give advice. Try not to judge the individual's feelings. Just let the other person talk.³⁶ You listen empathically when your regional sales manager tells you about the problems he had with his recreational vehicle while vacationing with his family.

Each type of listening is most effective in particular situations. To gain better control of your listening skill, examine what happens when you listen.

By understanding the process of listening, you begin to understand why oral messages are so often lost. Listening involves five related activities, which usually occur in sequence:³⁷

•	Receiving: Physically hearing the message and taking note of it. Physical reception can be blocked by noise, impaired hearing, or inattention.

•	Interpreting: Assigning meaning to sounds according to your own values, beliefs, ideas, expectations, roles, needs, and personal history. The speaker's frame of reference may be quite different from yours, so you may need to determine what the speaker really means.

•	Remembering: Storing a message for future reference. As you listen, you retain what you hear by taking notes or by making a mental outline of the speaker's key points.

•	Evaluating: Applying critical thinking skills to weigh the speaker's remarks. You separate fact from opinion and evaluate the quality of the evidence.

•

Responding: Reacting once you've evaluated the speaker's message. If you're communicating one-on-one or in a small group, the initial response generally takes the form of verbal feedback (see Table 2–2). If you're one of many in an audience, your initial response may take the form of applause, laughter, or silence. Later on, you may act on what you have heard.

Table 2–2

Giving Constructive Feedback

To Give Constructive Feedback Focus on particular behaviors. Feedback should be specific rather than general. Keep feedback impersonal. No matter how upset you are, keep feedback job related, and never criticize someone personally. Use "I" statements. Instead of saying, "You are absent from work too often," say, "I feel annoyed when you miss work so frequently." Keep feedback goal oriented. If you have to say something negative, make sure it's directed toward the recipient's goals. Ask yourself whom the feedback is supposed to help. If the answer is essentially you, bite your tongue. Make feedback well timed. Feedback is most meaningful when there is a short interval between the recipient's behavior and the receipt of feedback about that behavior. Ensure understanding. If feedback is to be effective, you need to make sure the recipient understands it. Direct negative feedback toward behavior that is controllable by the recipient. There's little value in reminding a person of some shortcoming over which he or she has no control.

Because listening requires a mix of physical and mental activities, it is subject to a variety of physical and mental barriers. A large part of becoming a good listener is the ability to recognize and overcome these barriers.

Prejudgment is one of the most common barriers to listening. It can be difficult to overcome because it is an automatic process. To operate in life, people must hold some assumptions. However, in new situations, these assumptions can often be incorrect. Moreover, some people listen defensively, viewing every comment as a personal attack. To protect their self-esteem, they distort messages by tuning out anything that doesn't confirm their view of themselves.

Self-centeredness causes people to take control of conversations, rather than listening to what's being said. For example, if a speaker mentions a problem (perhaps a manager is trying to deal with conflict between team members), self-centered listeners eagerly relate their own problems with team conflict. They trivialize the speaker's concerns by pointing out that their own difficulties are twice as great. And they can top positive experiences as well. No matter what subject is being discussed, they know more that the speaker does—and they're determined to prove it.

When you listen selectively (also known as out-listening), you let your mind wander to things such as whether you brought your dry-cleaning ticket to work. You stay tuned out until you hear a word or phrase that gets your attention once more. The result is that you don't remember what the speaker actually said; instead, you remember what you think the speaker probably said.³⁸

One reason our minds tend to wander is that we think faster than we speak. Most people speak at about 120 to 150 words per minute. However, studies indicate that, depending on the subject and the individual, people can process information at 500 to 800 words per minute.³⁹ This disparity between rate of speech and rate of thought can be used to pull your arguments together, but some listeners let their minds wander and just tune out.

The important thing is to recognize these counterproductive tendencies as barriers and to work on overcoming them. Becoming a good listener will help you in many business situations—especially those that are emotion laden and difficult (see Table 2–3). You can assess your listening skills by paying attention to how you listen. Are you really hearing what is said? Or are you mentally rehearsing how you will respond?

Table 2–3

Distinguishing Good Listeners from Bad Listeners

The Bad Listener The Good Listener To Listen Effectively Tunes out dry subjects Opportunizes; asks, “What’s in it for me?” 1. Find areas of interest Tunes out if delivery is poor Judges content; skips over delivery errors 2. Judge content, not delivery Tends to enter into argument Doesn’t judge until comprehension is complete; interrupts only to clarify 3. Hold your fire Listens for facts Listens for central themes 4. Listen for ideas Takes extensive notes Takes fewer notes 5. Take selective notes Fakes attention Works hard; exhibits active body state 6. Work at listening Is distracted easily Fights or avoids distractions; knows how to concentrate 7. Block out competing thoughts Resists difficult expository material Uses heavier material as exercise for the mind 8. Paraphrase the speaker’s ideas Reacts to emotional words Interprets emotional words; does not get hung up on them 9. Stay open-minded Tends to daydream with slow speakers Listens between the lines; weighs the evidence; mentally summarizes 10. Capitalize on the fact that thought is faster than speech

Checklist: Improving Your Listening Skills

LOOK BEYOND THE SPEAKER’S STYLE Don’t judge the message by the speaker but by the argument. Ask yourself what the speaker knows that you don’t. Depersonalize your listening. Decrease the emotional impact of what’s being said.   FIGHT DISTRACTIONS Close doors. Turn off radios or televisions. Move closer to the speaker. Stay ahead of the speaker by anticipating what will be said next and summarizing what’s already been said. Don’t interrupt—avoid sidetracking solutions and throwing the speaker off course. Hold your rebuttal until you’ve heard the entire message. PROVIDE FEEDBACK Let the speaker know you’re paying attention. Maintain eye contact. Offer appropriate facial expressions. Paraphrase what you’ve heard when the speaker reaches a stopping point. Keep all criticism and feedback positive.   LISTEN ACTIVELY Listen for concepts, key ideas, and facts. Be able to distinguish between evidence and argument, idea and example, fact and principle. Analyze the key points—whether they make sense and are supported by facts. Look for unspoken messages in the speaker’s tone of voice or expressions. Keep an open mind. Ask questions that clarify. Reserve judgment until the speaker has finished. Take meaningful notes that are brief and to the point.

Good listeners pay attention to more than just verbal communication: They look for unspoken messages, the most basic form of communication. Such nonverbal communication consists of all the cues, gestures, facial expressions, spatial relationships, and attitudes toward time that enable people to communicate without words. And it differs from verbal communication in terms of intent and spontaneity. When you say, "Please get back to me on that order by Friday," you have a conscious purpose; you think about the message, if only for a moment. However, you don't mean to raise an eyebrow or to blush. Those actions come naturally. Without a word, and without your consent, your face reveals your emotions. Good communicators recognize the value of nonverbal communication and use it to enhance the communication process.

The old maxim is true: People's actions often do speak louder than their words. In fact, most people can deceive others much more easily with words than they can with their bodies. Words are relatively easy to control; body language, facial expressions, and vocal characteristics are not. By paying attention to these nonverbal cues, you can detect deception or affirm a speaker's honesty.

Because nonverbal communication is so reliable, people generally have more faith in nonverbal cues than they do in verbal messages. If a person says one thing but transmits a conflicting message nonverbally, listeners almost invariably believe the nonverbal signal.⁴⁰ Chances are, if you can read other people's nonverbal messages correctly, you can interpret their underlying attitudes and intentions and respond appropriately.

Nonverbal communication is also important because it is efficient. You can transmit a nonverbal message without even thinking about it, and your audience can register the meaning unconsciously. At the same time, when you have a conscious purpose, you can often achieve it more economically with a gesture than you can with words. A wave of the hand, a pat on the back, a wink—all are streamlined expressions of thought. However, nonverbal communication usually blends with speech to carry part of the message—to augment, reinforce, and clarify that message.

According to one estimate, there are more than 700,000 forms of nonverbal communication.⁴¹ For discussion purposes, however, these forms can be grouped into the following general categories: facial expression, gesture and posture, vocal characteristics, personal appearance, touching behavior, and use of time and space.