How we listen, and think about listening, can help us be better at what we do
I’ve had a few requests lately for more resources on listening. Now, you already know how to listen well, so what I’ll share today can help you use your listening to make more confident decisions in messy, unpredictable, real-world moments. I’ll tell you a few ways listening can help you be better at what you do, and give you some reminders to strengthen your listening.
Hi, everybody. This is 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners. Since 2017, we’ve been giving you inspiration and strategies to improve engagement experience and satisfaction. I’m Dr. Anne Marie Liebel, a researcher, consultant, and educator specializing in communication and education. This podcast makes space to dig into what it’s easy to take for granted about communication in our professional lives, especially in health care and public health, but increasingly across sectors because communication touches everything. We’re here to learn and get inspired. Most importantly, make the difference we got into our jobs to make.
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What if listening isn’t just a skill, but a way to get better at your job? That’s a bold statement, and I have, what, about eight and a half minutes to back it up? Yeah, about that. So today I get to return to Professor Kathy Schultz’s book, Listening, A Framework for Teaching Across Differences. I’ve got that book with me right now. When I was starting to get more requests for listening resources, it was
wonderful to have a reason to go back and reread Kathy’s book.
So as the title says, it is a framework for thinking and acting related to listening. It’s not a how-to book, though it is entirely practical. I’m hoping to give you a flavor, a small sense of what it’s like to approach listening the way that Schultz does. Give you some things to think about, get you maybe curious enough to try something. Maybe you’ll search a little bit more on your own, pick up Kathy’s book, or give me a call.
What I’m going to share is based directly on Schultz’s research. And these concepts, I hope will build on the techniques you already know, help you extend them, and hopefully strengthen your confidence in your ability to listen carefully, think clearly, trust your professional judgment as you navigate difficult and inevitable everyday dilemmas.
So, listening, making us better at our job. Here we go. Very early on, Schultz tells us that the knowledge and the wisdom we’ve collected and earned through our years of experience are essential. Our study is essential. These are parts of good practice. They give us a foundation. They give us skills. They give us judgment.
And she points out: listening gives us another essential component of our work. Listening gives us another knowledge source.
That is, Schultz is saying the knowledge that we get from listening is also necessary to our work. Yes, experience and study are important, but truly educating someone well depends on listening to them first. Our training tells us what is generally true; listening tells us what is true for this person, in this moment, in this context. Now, if we want to fully use the knowledge source that we can gain from listening, it takes some work, and that’s what Kathy’s whole book is about.
Our training tells us what is generally true; listening tells us what is true for this person, in this moment
To do this work, Schultz gives us a helpful starting point, and it’s this: We don’t presume to know how to educate someone without listening to them first.
We don’t presume to know how to educate someone without listening to them first and getting to know them. We listen to understand their experience, their priorities, their concerns, their strengths, their goals. We listen so we can get to know these things. And we listen so we can educate. Because when we listen, people tell us a great deal about themselves. They tell us what matters to them, what they’re ready for, what they’re afraid of, what they already understand, what they still need. That information is essential for educating. It’s also great for collaboration and shared decision making.
So thinking of listening this way gives us what we need so we can act on our knowledge. You have skills you already use in, let’s say, motivational interviewing or active listening. This approach helps you turn that listening into insights that then can guide your judgment, guide your action. Thinking about listening this way helps us mobilize what we know, apply it wisely. Put it to use in a way that actually fits the person in front of us. So we could think of it like our expertise gives us a base, and listening gives us the person’s specific insight to use that base well.
Now, that’s one way that listening helps us be better at our jobs. There are more ways. Schultz borrows from educator John Dewey and develops a concept he introduced over 100 years ago. Listening helps you understand people better. And over time, it improves your ability to teach other people. So Schultz develops that thought this way: she helps us think about every time we listen closely to one individual. We’re doing more than gathering information for that single interaction. Yes, we are developing a habit of thinking. We’re practicing curiosity, patience, attention.
We don’t presume to know how to educate someone without listening to them first.
Prof. Kathleen Schultz
When we listen closely, we learn, for instance, the different ways people express confusion, how people make sense of things, the variety of ways people signal readiness for something, how they respond to our guidance. This is what you need to teach well, right? At the same time, you’re gaining information that extends beyond that one person. You begin to notice patterns. You recognize common concerns, different ways of processing information, popular misunderstandings, shared hopes.
And when we think about it like this, every act of listening strengthens our future interactions, as well as makes us better in our current interaction. So the insight you gain from one individual becomes part of the knowledge you get to carry forward. Shapes how you approach others, how you teach others, how you relate to others.
“Well, what about time, Anne Marie?” Time is always scarce. Time to listen to individuals Schultz calls it a “scarce commodity.” Her approach does not assume that you’ve got long conversations or extra hours. It is about making the most of whatever time you have, because even short actions can give you information that you can notice and interpret and act on.
So if you’re interested in this kind of close listening, I’m going to give you a few reminders here that you can start noticing or remind yourself to notice to help your listening be a little bit more productive.
- Okay, first of all, not interrupting. We all know this, but it’s really hard. I think especially when you have a solution, or you want to respond to, let’s say, reduce the stress of a conversation or let someone off the hook. But even in those cases, try to resist the impulse to jump in and interrupt. Let them finish because it also lets you listen.
- The second one you might have heard before, too, because sometimes we’re not listening, we’re preparing. And we want to make sure that we’re not mentally rehearsing our reply while the other person is talking.
- Thirdly, this is straight from Schultz. It helps us to pay attention to when people hesitate, when an emotion comes into the conversation or when there’s an emotional shift in the conversation. And also, to listen for emphasis. What does someone repeat? What does someone put a lot of strength behind? And alternately, what are they de-emphasizing? What gets softened?
So not interrupting, not mentally rehearsing, and paying attention to hesitation, emotion, and emphasis. Before that, I was talking about how listening helps us use our knowledge, understand people, and build a knowledge base that carries across our practice.
Want more help with us? Contact me. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or visit healthcommunicationpartners .com and click on contact. This has been 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners. Audio engineering and music from Joe Liebel, additional music from Alexis Rounds. Thanks for listening to 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners LLC. Find us at healthcommunicationpartners .com.