Are You Really Listening to What People are Saying?

It’s shock­ing how hard it is to lis­ten to peo­ple, some­times. I’ve often noticed that I fall into a trap that great foot­ball coach and men­tor Lou Tice called ​“lock on, lock out”.

Ear­ly in my career, my man­ag­er gave me some Tice tapes to lis­ten to (yes, cas­sette tapes because it was in the 90s) about ​“lock on, lock out”. They describe what hap­pens when a thought is trig­gered in your brain by some­thing some­one says in a con­ver­sa­tion. In the moment you get obsessed with that thought, you stop lis­ten­ing and try to inject your thought into the conversation.

Hear­ing: the process, func­tion or pow­er of per­ceiv­ing a sound.

Lis­ten­ing: to hear some­thing with thought­ful attention.

I’ve worked on this a lot was over the years. You’ll often see me, in meet­ings, write things down on a piece of paper or type a note on a screen. This helps me quick­ly hold that thought and stay engaged in the impor­tance of the conversation.

The Pit­falls of Lock­ing Out

By the look in your eyes, and the words shap­ing on your lips, the oth­er per­son knows you’re not real­ly lis­ten­ing. They feel locked out as we lock on to our trig­gered thought, and demor­al­ized because they are not being heard.

Things gets worse when we then start an argu­ment to defend our thought and dis­pute what they are saying.

I recent­ly had a con­ver­sa­tion with an amaz­ing group of inspir­ing, pas­sion­ate, dri­ven, smart and car­ing lead­ers. The issue was they had become four-year olds in a trig­ger fes­ti­val – each defend­ing their cor­ner of the sand­box. Instead of look­ing for com­mon ground and high­er pur­pose, they all locked on and locked out. This turned into a set of defen­sive argu­ments that real­ly dam­aged their rela­tion­ships. It took indi­vid­ual con­ver­sa­tions and group facil­i­ta­tion to help them real­ize that they were, once they start­ed lis­ten­ing to each oth­er, actu­al­ly, in agreement.

It’s a com­mon prob­lem, no mat­ter your emo­tion­al age.

In my expe­ri­ence, most peo­ple don’t lis­ten – they are just wait­ing for their turn to talk.

We all want to be heard and respected.

The Chal­lenge

• In what sit­u­a­tions do you find your­self most like­ly to ​“lock on and lock out? Think of these in all facets — Work, Self and Life.
• When you have a dif­fer­ent thought, what mech­a­nisms can you use to stay present and ful­ly lis­ten? Con­sid­er writ­ing it down, or let­ting it go.

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