"What We Have Here Is
A Failure To Communicate..."
(Exploring The 6 Levels of Listening Used By Elite Communicators)
Tom O'Connor
(In case you missed the reason for this video, check out yesterday's email, Aug 25th where I set the frame that will make sense of this video.)
Watch this short video, then answer me this:
When people talk, do you really listen?
Or are you waiting for your turn to speak? To jump in, to get your point across!
If we’re honest, most of are not good listeners. And many, perhaps most of us think that good communication begins with speaking, not listening.
Yet, when you think about it, it’s in our INTEREST to listen and listen well. That is if we want to be effective, influential and able to LEAD others.
Yet, almost every one of us have been unconsciously taught the wrong way to listen.
Just like the Warden displays in the above scene, when our WORDS fail to have the effect we want, when others don't get our point, many folks lash out and assume THEY are wrong. They are stupid. They just horrible people.
We see this every day in public discourse, on social media, on news and opinion shows.
Thankfully most of us don't lash out publically. But if you have ever found yourself getting frustrated, annoyed or angry by someone else's inability to comprehend you, then there's a high probability YOU are overvaluing the output part of communication and undervaluing the input side - aka listening.
Great communicators are frequently great listeners too.
They listen at multiple levels. Here are the six levels elite communicators learn to listen for. See how many you already do...
Here we’re listening for the literal and concrete meanings of the words someone says. When someone says “Pick up some milk”… there is a whole world of activity condensed into that little phrase. When someone says “I find it really hard to connect with my sister’s husband. He’s so distant when we talk.” We are literally hearing about how the person has coded their experience. If you have had NLP training and know about submodalities, this kind of information can be tremendously valuable.
Of course, hearing the literal presuppositions someone uses can add even more value, but that’s a whole other article for another day.
Next up we have Inferential Listening.
This is where we are listening for what can be inferred from what someone says. In NLP, many of the most interesting bits in what someone says are within the structure of how someone communicates. When we get good at listening for inferences, we can quickly zoom in on what is actually going on and what can’t be going on and begin to ask much better and more powerful questions…
You’ve heard that a fish doesn’t know that it exists in water?
Well human beings don’t realise how they create stories and operate within game rules that make up the map and model of the world they operate within.
Listening out for the narrative structures people use can be a GOLD MINE of information.
Very quickly you’ll notice there are themes and connections in what they are saying to earlier parts of a conversation, which amplify (i.e. make stronger) or attenuate (make weaker) certain thoughts, beliefs, feelings and actions.
Knowing how a person is binding their reality together and placing those insights inside your questions can be a very, very powerful way to help someone change.
Our brains evolved the feeling brain aka “the limbic system” first and then later in our evolution we developed the rational brain (aka the Frontal Cortex). So from a very stage in human development how we feel about things became really important and signified the relative importance of an object or subject to us.
As listeners being able to hear the emotions someone expresses gives us really valuable information as to how a person’s system is operating and gives us insight into what would need to change in order for a person to think, feel and act differently.
Which leads into…
As someone is communicating, we are always observing the IMPACT a person’s communication has on themselves. Being able to track through how a person’s state is affected by what they are saying and what surrounds those state changes… opens the doorway to letting us know how a person’s strategies function.
What triggers what? How do decision gates on their strategy (most likely) function and what is happening sequentially vs simultaneously.
For those with more advanced NLP skills this makes doing change work, changing beliefs and creating a transformation much, much easier. But it all starts with listening really well.
Above Level 5 we have…
People comment all the time about their experience and events that happened to them while they are telling you about their situation. This meta commentary can be very insightful when it comes to asking questions and creating interventions that work.
While there is much, much more that can be said about each of the above levels, I hope you can see how shifting your thinking from listening ‘types’ to listening for the levels that are ubiquitous can reveal so much more.
And allow you to not just listen really well, but gives you the tools to transform a person’s life.
Listening well is a hugely underappreciated and underdelveoped skill for many NLPers and people helpers. When you learn to do the six levels of listening shared here, never again will you have to think or say again:
"We have a failure to communicate." With anyone.
Imagine how powerful that would be - to be able to reach and influence just about anyone.
It's possible.
To help you up your ability to communitate more powerfully and impactfully, without stepping on people's shoes, start practicing listening literally to what people say.
Listen to what others say, pay attention to the literal words they use and what they infer. Begin to notice the kinds of images they use, the referents their words point to and what that reveals.
When you learn to listen literally and then inferentially and with increasing levels of listening skills, you will be generate far more great questions, so called 'killer questions', produce deeper insights and solve problems far quicker.
It all begins by upping your listening skills. Have fun listening literally to people today. You'll find yourself laughing and smiling for no apparent reason.
And the more you practice the sharper your ability to ask 'killer questions' becomes. Along with your ability to become indispensable.
If you're ready to take your skills to the next level, you are going to need to know WHEN great questions are occuring, right?
That's what I cover next, over here.
Check it out.
To your success,
Tom