If you’re a graduate of L.E.T., you know that when the other person owns a problem, when his/her behavior is in the top part of the Window, the skills you use are the Listening Skills—Basic Listening and Active Listening. For most people the listening skills in the Gordon Model are the toughest ones to learn and apply—and they’re the most powerful skills in my opinion.
As a reminder, empathy is the capacity to put oneself in the shoes of others and understand their “personal world of meaning”—how they view their reality, how they feel about things. Active Listening performs this very function.
A climate in which a person can frequently feel empathically understood is conducive to that person’s overall psychological health and personal growth. This happens primarily because such a climate facilitates problem-solving, which results in greater need satisfaction. When people solve problems and get their needs satisfied, they are freed to move farther up Maslow’s pyramid toward the higher level needs, discovering new ways of finding self-achievement and self-development.
Some people embrace the idea of Active Listening, while others resist it. For the resistors (pardon the GLOP), I present some concepts that might influence how you think and feel about taking the time to use these skills:
1. These listening skills help the other person talk about his/her problem and leave the responsibility for solving it with him/her.
2. If others can be helped to deal with their own problems successfully, they learn to be better problem-solvers, more autonomous and less dependent on their leader or manager.
3. People usually have more data than any outsider and they are also the ones who must carry out the decision.
4. If you solve a problem for the Other and the solution turns out to be a bad one, you will be seen as responsible for bad results. This predicament is avoided when the Other is simply supported by you in his/her own problem-solving.
5. If you solve a problem successfully for the Other you’ll be seen as the successful problem solver. This does not build self-esteem and healthy independence. Guess what else it does? When you’re the “solver”, it takes you away from your projects and meeting deadlines. That costs time, energy, money.
What is the cost if you don’t listen? In the words of Dr. Thomas Gordon:
When your group members encounter problems trying to get their various needs met, the overall effectiveness of your group must necessarily suffer. It goes almost without saying that when people are bothered or dissatisfied with something, it affects their work. Some may be distracted from concentrating; some spend excessive time ventilating their feelings or griping to other group members; others make mistakes and lose their motivation for high productivity; or they may drastically reduce communication with leaders or other members.
You need your relationships at work to be effective so that you can all be successful. So bottom line: why wouldn’t you invest the time to Active Listen…?