The Beauty of Slow Listening

We know effective communication is as much about listening as it is about talking. I had an insight recently about how people listen. I was talking on the phone to my brilliant and creative web site designer, Steve Levine of Splash Communications. As I continued to trip over his responses to my questions, I realized that Steve is what I call a slow listener. He was listening to every word I said, processing it, assessing it, and formulating his always cogent response. It was driving me crazy. And then it hit me. This is why he designed such a great web site: because he asked a whole bunch of difficult questions and then actually listened, slowly, to every bit of my answers. He remembered everything I said, and he applied what he learned from his slow listening to the web site design. As a result, he pretty much nailed the design on the first take.

Many people are fast listeners, meaning they anticipate (or think they can anticipate) what the speaker is going to say. Those of us who are fast listeners process information very quickly, but not always accurately. In the end, we figure everything out, but it often takes more words to get to the same point as a slow listener would. So the speed of the verbal transaction ends up being about the same.

It’s the quality of the transaction that's in question with fast and slow listening. Here's what I've learned: when I slow my listening pace to match Steve’s, the conversation is much easier. We exchange the information we need to exchange, it’s smooth and pleasant (no tripping or backtracking), and we cover each topic completely and accurately.

I find it’s also more respectful when I’m not interrupting him all the time. If I slow down my own listening speed, my life gets easier and better, because I actually get to hear and consider every word. What a concept.

If you’re a fast listener, try an experiment. Find a slow listener and have a conversation where you consciously choose to slow your listening pace. Don’t anticipate what he might say. Don’t have your answer ready. Listen to every word. Wait for the end of his sentence. Savor his words for a while. Tumble them around in your brain. Then, and only then, respond. I hope you will find, as I did, that the conversation takes about the same amount of time it would have with your fast listening, but is much richer -- and probably more productive -- as a result of the slower pace.