Did You Hear What I Said? How to Listen Better
By Michael Blanding for Harvard Business School Working Knowledge
It’s a common experience in the workplace: You leave a meeting feeling good about the discussion and believe everyone is on the same page.
“Then you meet with someone two days later, and you realize they’re not on the same page at all,” says Hanne Collins, a doctoral candidate at Harvard Business School. “You feel like maybe they weren’t totally listening.”
In fact, people often aren’t tuned in when we think they are, and it’s tough to tell when someone is actually paying attention, according to a forthcoming article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology by Collins; Alison Wood Brooks, the O’Brien Associate Professor of Business Administration at HBS; Julia A. Minson, an associate professor at the Harvard Kennedy School; and Ariella S. Kristal, a postdoctoral scholar at Columbia Business School.
After all, people are good at faking when they are paying attention to others, consciously or not, smiling and nodding when they are really thinking about their favorite streaming show or the football game they watched the night before.
Psychological research shows that feeling heard by another person is essential in a happy relationship, whether that’s communication between romantic partners, a patient and a doctor, or colleagues in the office. And feeling heard at work could make the difference between employees who enjoy their jobs versus ones who don’t, something important for managers to remember at a time when many are struggling to retain workers.
“There’s so much work showing that when employees are heard at work, they are going to flourish and thrive,” Collins says. “They experience greater internal motivation, they are more creative, and they feel like they are more able to voice their concerns.”
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