Author: Listening skills will soon be at a premium
Being a good listener will be a fundamental skill for every worker in coming years, said Ed Hess, for one simple reason: It’s a skill that technology can’t easily replace.
Those who listen will learn, he said. They also will increase their value as employees by being willing to collaborate and be open to the ideas and suggestions of others.
“If you’re not a good listener, you’re not going to do well with customers. You won’t be able to collaborate and you‘re not going to emotionally engage with people,” said Mr. Hess, a business administration professor at the University of Virginia.
Listening may not seem like a high commodity at a time when everyone’s hunched over their smartphone all day, checking their calendar and oblivious to those around them.
But Mr. Hess sees a major workplace change coming in 10 years or so. That receptionist who won’t make eye contact? The sales representative who sails by three times without asking if you need help? “They’ll be replaced by robots,” he said.
“If what you do can be transformed into a software algorithm, technology will be able to do it faster and better than you. What technology won’t be able to do in the near future is think critically and innovatively and emotionally relate to other humans. These abilities all require open-minded, non-judgmental and non-defensive listening.”
Mr. Hess has laid out what he has identified as key barriers to listening in his new book, “Learn or Die: Using Science to Build a Leading-Edge Learning Organization.”
They include bringing preconceived ideas to a conversation, interrupting a speaker, devising a clever response before they’ve finished their thought, or letting your mind wander to that appointment later this afternoon.
These are understandable vices for working in a warp-speed environment, Mr. Hess said. “We’re basically emotionally defective listeners.”
But what he refers to as “highperforming organizations” combat those tendencies by, for example, limiting the number of participants at any meeting so everyone has a chance to contribute.
Research is overwhelming, he said, that diversity of experience, diversity of backgrounds, diversity of training and gender diversity leads to better decision making.
“It’s not an efficient process. It takes time,” he said, “but what people find is that the end results are better.”