Of the many diverse and constructive soft skills, active listening surely one of the most helpful in the design thinking process. More than just listening to collect information, active listening is a mindset that fosters empathy for our customer. Active listening seeks to understand not only the other person’s words, but also their attitudes and motivations.
For many people, even the idea of “being a better listener” is ludicrous. Once you’re listening, how can you listen better? It’s like swallowing better or breathing better. But in fact, you can. Even the best listeners periodically fall into a handful of traps that obstruct their understanding of their employer’s, customer’s and loved one’s words.
The most common of impediment to good listening is distraction. Instead of devoting our attention to the person we’re speaking with, too often we glance at our phone or a nearby television, or simply drift mentally into a more appealing thought. Conceding to distraction, even for a moment, halts the communication process. Not only, does the listener stop engaging with what is being said, but even more subtly, the listener’s body language, eye movements and verbal feedback dramatically shift the direction of what is being said.
We’ve all experienced the feeling of talking with a distracted listener. Our most common reaction is to cut the story short, surrendering the possibility of truly being understood.
A second pitfall on the path to active listening is our flawed motivations for participating in the conversation. Ego is powerful influencer. Far too often, we’ve listening for the purpose of responding; to show off what we already know or steer the conversation into a direction that allows us to feel important, competent or needed. These motivations leave the other person feeling manhandled and depleted, usually without your notice. Afterall, that’s how egos are exclusively self-serving.
Christian pastor and Holocaust victim Dietrich Bonhoffer characterized this ego-based listening by saying, “There is a kind of listening with half an ear that presumes already to know what the other person has to say. It is an impatient, inattentive listening, that despises the brother and is only waiting for a chance to speak and thus get rid of the other person.”
A third snare, especially prevalent in design, on the path toward better listening, is defensiveness. After spending months developing a prototype only to have it shot down within the first minutes of a user forum, a posture of defensiveness often emerges. The strong temptation is to defend our product, point out that they’re not using it correctly, and show them how they’re wrong. But an attitude of defensiveness will cause you to miss the nuggets of truth in what is being said. By laying down your defenses, and opening your ears and mind to your customers, you will have a far better chance of hearing all of what they’re saying. Later you can sort the useful feedback from the noise.
For a deep dive into design thinking, sign up for my online course titled “An Introduction to Design Thinking”. In it you will learn the major tools and concepts of this human-centered design approach, and find that the design thinking methodology serves as an excellent complement to other, more analytical approaches to problem solving.
