Listening vs. hearing: Effectively listening to users’ feedback
I just got home after travelling all over the globe (well, not really all over, but my trip was far and multinational) to meet users and collect feedback. During the trip, I was accompanied by a few of my colleagues of different roles and disciplines. That day, we were having a discussion following a specific feedback given to us. “This is not exactly what he said,” one colleague said to another. I agreed.
It is not the first time I’ve observed people getting different impressions once exposed to the same content. Same input, different interpretations, various output. This phenomenon is common to any type of communication: business conversation, social involvement, romantic relationship, family matters, mentorship etc. — no matter the relationship type — gaps in communication end up in inconvenience at least and serious trouble at most.
Getting users’ feedback is essential for designing and building great products that better meet their needs. However, the ‘getting’ part is not that straightforward. Hearing the words and understand the language are basic yet not enough to have an effective conversation. We can hear and understand what is being said, and at the same time, we can completely miss the point. We lose many parts of the input while our brain is in the act of processing it. Additionally, we translate some parts of the input into something completely different. Consequently, there’s a huge gap between the things said and what we take out of it.
“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”
― Ernest Hemingway
During the practice to become a personal life coach, I’ve been working quite hard to develop my effective listening skills. Being a personal coach means comprehending the story the coaching customer is telling; it means grasping the basic idea, the root cause of the issues about which people are talking in order to guide them through the process of overcoming their barriers and achieving growth. Getting the wrong picture of these situations is unacceptable and may break trust. Same goes with users’ feedback. After all, we’re here to supply solutions for people’s needs and solve some problems.
That said, people often aren’t very good at articulating their needs, saying what bothers them or what they’re missing. It’s up to us to get the accurate information of their authentic intention.
Through the process of improving my communication skills, I’ve realized it’s a matter of constant training. One key element of communication skills is effective listening (aka mindful listening). Listening is an active action. It requires some effort. We’re neither educated nor trained to be effective listeners; however, we can develop this skill. And it means the world when it comes to communicating with people.
What effective listening is not
Before specifying what effective listening is, I’d like to describe what it’s not. I’m going to do it by illustrating some situations — you may find yourself familiar with some of them:
● Thinking about a response, things to say, or questions to ask while someone’s talking to you
● Daydreaming or thinking about other stuff while someone’s talking to you
● Stop listening once you agree or disagree with what is said, while the other person hadn’t finished making their point
● Filtering what you hear according your own biases, especially when taking the parts that fit your perspective, while ignoring other parts that don’t
Well, ring a bell?
We all do that, more or less. Most of us haven’t been educated on how to communicate well, especially regarding the listening part. Consequently, we may find ourselves involved in unfortunate misunderstandings and difficulties in relationships.
When it comes to our professional lives, we may be much slower in becoming more professional and developing our career. Yes, as a result of not listening effectively.
What is effective listening
Once we understand what effective listening is not, let’s see what effective listening is:
● Being fully present in the conversation without doing anything else or thinking about other things. Fact is, we’re not listening when we are busy with our phone.
● Letting the other person talk without interrupting or cutting their flood of speech. That means taming the urge to respond to what is being said and talking in turns — one person at the time.
● Listening without judging the other person or taking a stand
● Aiming to understand the other person, with sincere intention to grasp the message as they mean it. Asking for clarifications when something isn’t clear, while avoiding making assumptions about what they mean (I’ll dedicate a separate post to assumptions)
● Being honest in the conversation, without speaking for the sake of speaking or to display knowledge
Having conversations with people who use our products, while asking them to share their feelings and thoughts, and at the same time not being able to understand fully the meaning of their message and the intention behind their words means doing lousy work.
Our skill of listening to understand is an essential element of our professional quality and crucial when it comes to designing and building great products. And no, my dear, data won’t save us.
Apparently, understanding what people are telling us — sometimes in an implicit fashion — is not that straightforward. The solution starts with being aware of the fact we’re not very good listeners. Once we acknowledge that, then we can move forward to improving the skill of effective listening.
Like any other behavioral changes we wish to apply in our lives, developing our personal skills requires our attention, and it requires some practice.
And it is worth it!
Not only will it increase our professional value and the quality of our work, but it will also improve our relationships and have a massive effect on our lives.
Ready to become more professional?
I’ve created a tool for evolving the skill of effective listening. By practicing this repeatedly, you will change your life!
