Hello? Is anyone listening?
In 1968, in his “The Other America” speech, Martin Luther King Jr. said, “A riot is the language of the unheard.”[1] His words echo as relevant today as they did then.
Are we really listening to each other? As social creatures, we naturally gravitate to people with similar viewpoints. We tend to watch news channels we relate to, follow social media accounts we agree with, and may even bury our heads in the sand if the issue doesn’t concern us.
We can create echo chambers and block out anyone who has a different viewpoint, and our isolation is only exacerbating this problem. The less we’re confronted with people who have different views, the more entrenched in our own thinking we become.
There’s a massive problem with this. The less we listen as a society, the more collectively unheard we all feel. The more unseen, ignored, and invalidated we feel, the more likely we are to escalate:
● From conversation to debate
● From debate to protest
● From protest to riot
What could have started and ended as a meaningful conversation, where both parties found some middle ground, can escalate into tension, anger, or even violence because we aren’t listening anymore.
This failure to listen trickles into every aspect of our lives. When we stop listening, we aren’t just hurting the other party; we’re hurting ourselves and limiting our ability to learn, change, and see the full picture. We’re limiting possibilities.
While our polarized political environment definitely plays a part in our struggles with listening, there’s another component at play here: our brains.
Blame your brain: It’s not totally your fault that active listening is so hard.
Here’s the “Brains in Business” breakdown: The brain has several built-in mechanisms to process information faster and keep us safe. These same mechanisms, though, can also make us subpar listeners if we aren’t aware of them.
Our brains:
● Filter information automatically: Our brains filter information and favor things that are familiar and safe.[1] These filters are also called biases, and there are at least 175 different cognitive biases that we use to make impulse decisions.[2]
We tend to filter in evidence that supports our viewpoint and tune out evidence that refutes it. Our brains love familiarity. In fact, according to the mere exposure effect, aka the familiarity principle, people prefer things they’re familiar with so much that even just seeing something once before will make you like it more than something you’ve never seen.[3]
We have such a strong preference for familiarity and sameness that if we aren’t actively listening, our brains will filter out anything different from us.
● Choose which details to ignore: We’re presented with an extraordinary amount of details every single second. The brain would be overwhelmed if it had to process all of it all the time. So, instead, it categorizes data, relying on something called heuristics or cognitive shortcuts to do it.[1]
These shortcuts help us be more efficient and tell us what to pay attention to and what to ignore, allowing us to conserve energy and focus. But these shortcuts often involve some degree of bias, and sometimes our brains incorrectly categorize or ignore useful data — especially in times of high stress.[2]
● Focus on our personal agenda: We all have our own agendas, aka intrinsic motivations, and the brain activates its reward center any time we work toward our goals.[3] This is a normal process, and it’s designed to keep us energized and focused.
Sometimes, we can get so laser-focused on our own goals that we aren’t tuning in and listening to people whose agenda doesn’t align with our own.
● Know your triggers! Based on our personal history, we have a set of things that can trigger us and put our brains on alert. When we’re triggered, our amygdala is hijacked, and we enter into a fight or flight state.[4] Rational or not, these triggers tell our brains that something could be off.
When we get triggered by something, we enter into an emotional and non-thinking state. These are defense mechanisms set up to keep us safe. Sometimes we just check out and stop engaging. Other times, we can have more volatile reactions to triggers.
Either way, once we’re triggered by something, we are no longer able to listen or absorb anything that’s happening, which can shut us off to possibilities. Sometimes you may have to do some mental prep before going into a conversation if it is a known trigger for you.
Everyone’s brain operates this way. When these mechanisms activate, how they show up, and their intensity varies. For instance, when someone is rioting, all four mechanisms are firing at maximum intensity at the same time. Their brain is filtering information, dropping important details, focusing on individual goals, and avoiding triggers at the highest possible level — and they definitely aren’t listening.
We see these same functions inhibit us at work too… not just riots! We can get so triggered by a boss or coworker that we no longer show up to meetings, or we avoid common areas. Eventually, we may even quit because we didn’t feel heard, and we leave labeled as being not collaborative.
How to overcome your wiring to become a better listener
By not listening to others, you end up isolated, disconnected, and closing yourself off to potential possibilities. Here are some ways we can overcome our wiring to become better listeners.
Tip 1: Raise your awareness.
Pay attention to your thought processes while you’re listening. Are you really focusing on what they’re saying, or are you thinking about what you’re going to say next? How are you feeling? Are you getting emotional, frustrated, bored?
Raising our awareness can help us make sure we aren’t disregarding or filtering important information or letting our emotional brains take the wheel.
Tip 2: Choose to listen with curiosity.
Be intentional about creating a space of curiosity. When your own data, feelings, and agendas prevent you from hearing new ideas, try instead to ask curious questions — either to yourself or the other person. Focusing on curiosity-based questions keeps triggers at bay and allows you to truly hear. No matter what’s being said or going on in the moment, choose to be present and leave your own biases at the door.
Tip 3: Ask, “What could be true?”
When you’re engaged with someone with whom you disagree, it’s essential to check in with yourself and make sure you’re actually listening and trying to hear them. Ask yourself questions like, “What could be true or possible right now as a result of this conversation?”
Asking these questions gets you out of your head and forces you to try on another point of view while your biases are checked.
To change the workplace and the world, we have to start being better listeners.
We’re all social creatures, hardwired to want to belong and connect. We don’t want to be an outcast, which is why we stop listening, start escalating, and begin gravitating toward people with similar views if we feel like we don’t belong.
But when we stop listening, we also limit possibility and limit change. Talking louder doesn’t mean you’re making more sense. If you’re speaking English to someone who speaks only Spanish, yelling in English will not make them understand more. Yet this same pattern is repeated when we don’t listen.
We have to start listening more if we ever want to be heard. If you want to open up new conversations through listening and elevate your results, check out our 3 Cs in Conversation Series now.
[1] The-Other-America https://the-other-america.com/speech
2 “Frontiers in Psychology” accessed via PubMed https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6129743/
3 City University of New York https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316486755_Cognitive_Biases_that_Interfere_with_Critical_Thinking_and_Scientific_Reasoning_A_Course_Module
4 University of Michigan https://www.psy.lmu.de/allg2/download/audriemmo/ws1011/mere_exposure_effect.pdf
5 PubMed https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49653132_Heuristic_Decision_Making
6 Neurobiology of Stress https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5146206/
7 Princeton https://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/RES2003.pdf
8 Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2015/12/calming-your-brain-during-conflict
