There’s a clear difference between listening and hearing. We often use these terms indifferently, and in my opinion, that’s a huge mistake. And it’s a mistake that I am also culpable of from time to time. Active listening is defined by six main skills, paying attention, withholding judgement, clarification, sharing, summarizing, and reflecting. These six additional skills also require development individually and represent a continuous challenge and learning process. When we factor in the inevitable noise that exists around us, the process of developing our active listening skills becomes even more difficult. Over time listening behaviors like nodding or repeating what has been said word-per-word, are antiquated forms of making the other communicator understand that we are in fact listening to them. The reality is that those learned habits may actually be mechanisms of deflection and dismissal, the exact opposite of active listening.
Our industry has a large number of diverse actors, all of which have inputs, thoughts, ideas, and opinions that matter. It’s up to us to decide how much importance or weight we give to each of these actors, and how we allow their ideas to shape our decision-making process on a day-to-day basis. Being a shop owner requires listening to many voices, often at the same time, and being able to decipher the depth of meaning of those voices, how their circumstances influence those opinions and thoughts, and after all that, applying a critical thinking process to make the best decision possible. Critical thinking is maybe the most difficult part of the process. It requires that we question our belief system, or time-tested pragmatic approach to doing business, and most importantly, it mandates an evolutionary mindset. However, applying the principles of active listening will almost always simplify the steps that are required after. Simon Sinek, a renowned English-born author, in one of his many public appearances stated, “listening is not the act of hearing the words spoken, it is the art of understanding the meaning behind those words.”
Listening is a trust-building exercise. When the people we interact with feel heard comprehended, as humans, it brings us closer to each other. Understanding different points of view enriches our own, it helps us learn about new ideas of how we can approach our businesses, our personal relationships, and how we see and interact with the world. But we may just be missing out on all of this if we don’t listen, actively.
