The Hindu Business Line : Dangers of atrophied listening

To prevent listening-atrophy eternal vigilance is mandatory. Listening can open the door to undreamt-of wealth in personal and professional relationships.

V. K. Madhav Mohan

Years of power, success and getting their way have extracted a heavy price from many CEOs! Effects of stress on health and relationships are by now well known. But below the surface lurks another grave danger: the completely unnoticed loss of the faculty of listening. For any human being engaged with others this is a very potent threat. In fact I’ll even go so far as to label it the silent killer in relationships. But first let me detail how listening unravels!

Poor listener

Let’s call it the Madhav Mohan Law of Listening: the more you succeed, the less you tend to listen. Like everything else, the less you use this faculty, the more you lose it. Just like a knife is blunted with disuse, so does the ability to listen atrophy. Most of the time, you’re not even aware that you are becoming a poor listener. How does this happen?

On the road to success, you’ve focused like a laser on results. You don’t have the time to stop and observe the meanings, feelings and impact that your words and behaviour have on others. Since you are on the fast track nobody wants or even dares to stop you. They don’t convey their innermost needs, problems and aspirations to you. They just respond to you at the surface level and more often than not, say they agree.

When they say “I agree” you accept because that’s what you want to hear. You don’t realise that there are vast gaps in what people think, say and do. You only go by what they say and because you are big and powerful they say “yes”. In other words, you generally get your own way.

‘Yes’ for an answer

Soon you get used to “yes” and stop encouraging any other answer. Without realising it you begin to feel like you have a monopoly on good ideas and solutions. You’ve built yourself up as a role model in your own eyes and so you can do no wrong! In any case, others will have to follow your instructions so why spend your precious time on explaining your thought processes and understanding the ideas and suggestions anyone else proffers?

Your interactions are peppered with staccato commands and monosyllables from you and a pregnant silence from everybody else! The average duration per interaction dwindles into single digits; in fact, interaction evaporates and is replaced with one-way talking-down.

By now your own self-image is so strong that even a hint of disagreement or feedback sparks a swift and brutal response from you. Subconscious filters and defence mechanisms (like rationalisation, for example) are deployed in the blink of an eye. That scares off people and alienates them even further. They give you a wide berth not just when they spot you but also emotionally and intellectually. They lock you out! And that marks the end of your relationships.

The sad and scary part is that you don’t know that your relationships are dead. In place of a vibrant, caring, positive, energetic, supportive and mutually motivating relationship you now have a one-way, uncaring sham of “togetherness”.

People have stopped sharing their thoughts because they are sure you don’t listen and therefore will not understand. That further diminishes opportunities for you to listen. You are now well and truly on the way to being disconnected from reality.

Your success is about to end because you have no access to feedback, ideas and support. That leaves you to wallow in your own ideas and solutions both of which will not be owned by anyone else. And if they don’t own it they won’t achieve it (as I wrote in my previous piece in this column).

Some mantras

To prevent listening-atrophy eternal vigilance is mandatory. Listening can open the door to undreamt-of wealth in personal and professional relationships. All you need to do is remember the following mantras:

Listening does not mean agreement, acceptance or weakness.

Listening strengthens the other person and lightens his burden; when people come to you they are not necessarily seeking solutions; most of the time they just want to share a burden or idea.

Listening makes others trust you.

Listening is an invaluable source of feedback.

Listening is a precondition for relationships.

Relationships create the environment in which success is perpetuated. And listening is the key ingredient in relationships. So we must always remember that the sage advice of Karl Rogers and Fritz Roethlisberger (in their seminal article Barriers & Gateways To Communication) is as relevant today as it was several decades ago: listen without the evaluation tendency and listen with empathy. Just as Jesus forbade us to pass judgment on others “for who are ye to judge? Let him cast the first stone who has not sinned!”

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