Tuning in to hear others

In a chaotic world, companies emphasize listening skills

Tara Healey (center) leads employees at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care in Wellesley through a program designed to help them improve their listening skills. (Photos by Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff)

Is listening under siege?

Deborah Hicks, chief human resources officer at Harvard Medical School, thinks so. Listening is an overlooked skill in an era of hurried schedules, high-tech overload, and now economic anxieties, says Hicks, whose 8- and 13-year-old sons keep her honest by demanding that she repeat back what they say, if they suspect she's not hearing them fully.

"I can see a real need for people in these challenging times to think about their capacity for listening," says Hicks. "People are nervous, they're running fast. We often run on data points, rather than understanding the message."

But today, some companies are hearing a call - to boost listening skills in the workplace. Teaching listening isn't altogether new. But with increased high-tech disconnection, rushed living, and economic uncertainties, there's a renewed sense of urgency on the part of many corporate leaders concerned about a dearth of good listening. Some companies are placing even more emphasis on its importance.

"People do feel frustrated," says Tara Healey, an organizational development consultant at Wellesley-based insurer Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Inc. "People oftentimes feel disconnected from each other."

In 2006, Healey and Hicks - who was then working for Harvard Pilgrim - introduced a seven-week, mindfulness-based meditation course at the company that includes a two-hour class on listening. About 100 of the employer's 1,100 workers have taken the course, which helps people develop moment-to-moment, unbiased awareness.

In addition, since the mid-1990s, nearly 2,000 employees have taken a separate four-hour company class on listening, based on techniques pioneered by two well-known experts on interpersonal workplace communications, former minister Robert Bolton and his wife, Dorothy, a former school psychol ogist. The Boltons created listening skills techniques now taught through their St. Paul-based firm, Ridge Associates Inc.

Learning how to listen in the mindful awareness course has helped Harvard Pilgrim quality analyst Stephanie Oddleifson communicate better with co-workers and her teenage daughters. Foremost, Oddleifson now tries to withhold her judgments so she can better understand what others are saying.

"This is all about not having preconceived notions, and listening for what people are saying, and trying to understand it from their point of view," Oddleifson says.

In her informal role as a liaison with another department, she now tries to listen without "having it be tainted by what we're willing to do and what we're willing to give them."

At home, her daughters open up more to her, since they sense she is not as quick to judge them.

Essentially, good listening depends on our ability to focus fully on another, instead of placing our needs and opinions front and center. That's hard in a culture of instant gratification and lightning-fast communications. "Listening is really the skill of being in the conversation, rather than being in your own conversation," says Jim Bolton, chief executive of Ridge Associates, which was founded by his father, Robert.

Listening demands critical thinking. Often, people don't speak clearly, so listeners must sift patterns of language and intention - on the fly. This is why experts often suggest that listeners practice "reflecting," or paraphrasing what a speaker says, so that both sides know they are understanding one another.

During a conversation, good listeners also offer brief verbal and physical signals - such as nodding or saying "I see" or "tell me more" - to show that they are paying attention.

"I pride myself on being able to multitask. Does it cause me to be a good listener? Maybe not," says Beverly Edgehill, president and chief executive of the Boston-based diversity consulting and training firm Partnership Inc. The teaching of listening skills is crucial to her organization's mission, says Edgehill.

Real connections can't happen without effective listening, Edgehill says. "I do think good listening is more complex than we perceive it to be," she says. "Listening is more than hearing."

At the Wellesley-based US division of Sun Life Financial, meanwhile, "listening is one of the first skills that managers are taught," says Jeanine Delay, director of enterprise learning and development. At the company, new managers must undergo a day of listening training as part of a weeks-long development program. The training also is mandatory for customer service employees who work largely by phone, and it is available to other employees.

Especially for time-crunched, overloaded managers, good listening is more important than ever, says Delay.

"They have more work to do with a leaner organization, so they have to be much more skilled in listening well in a shorter time frame, and helping the person speaking, so they get to the point," says Delay.

In perhaps the most time-crunched workplace of all, the White House staff got a taste recently of what it means to slow down and really connect. When a daylong e-mail blackout hit the White House late last month, the new, tech-adoring administration slowed down, turned to faxes and copiers, and began meeting face to face for the first time. "It was very old-fashioned," White House assistant press secretary Josh Earnest told a Washington Post reporter.

Intriguingly, few in the White House seemed to complain about the brief absence of e-mail. Perhaps the blackout gave those at the epicenter of US politics a chance to begin rekindling an art form crucial to effective administration: good listening.

Maggie Jackson is the author of "Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age." She can be reached at www.maggie-jackson.com.