By MeShonya Wren-Coleman, Ph.D.
Several years ago, there was a Facebook post that went viral about a little boy trying to get his mom to listen to him interject his reasons for his actions by telling his mom, “Listen, Linda, Listen!”
As funny as that video was to many, it’s not funny to those who are trying to make vital points to discuss issues that concern them. Especially when you have no one who is actively listening. Instead, you’re being over talked, ignored, or simply watching others keep the spotlight on themselves.
Active listening is the practice of preparing to listen, observing what verbal and non-verbal messages are being sent, and then providing appropriate feedback by showing attentiveness to the message being presented, according to Carl Rogers and Richard Farson. Below is the shared diagram for the five key elements for active listening:
If you are employed by Corporate America or Higher Education, you’re guaranteed to have meeting after meeting just to schedule another meeting. In my experience, over half of the meetings that I attended did not bring solutions to the table and only continued to discuss the same problems at hand.
After years of observing the same outcomes from meetings, it led me to further understand why there is a lack of solutions to the problems. It is because no one is actively listening. “Listen, Linda, Listen!”
Let’s be honest, how many times have you gone into meetings that have lasted between one and three hours to only walk out still scratching your head because the person that presided over the meeting centered the agenda around them talking and not actively listening? When you serve in leadership roles, you must practice talking coupled with active listening to those who serve under your leadership.
Why do I say this? When you actively listen, you can cue in on key components that may give you answers to a ten-year-old problem that can be resolved in a matter of weeks if not days. “Listen, Linda, Listen!”
Linkedin published an article by Henrik Kjaerulff that focused on the key characteristics of great problem solvers: patience, discipline, respect, and focus. The characteristic that I would like for those in leadership roles to always remember is respect.
Kjaerulff stated in his article that respect is about listening. It’s about asking for input from the people closest to the processes. From his personal experience, their words are highly valuable when it comes to understanding the problem. To do that, great problem solvers always go to gemba, a manufacturing term meaning the customer’s place of business or lifestyle.
Respect is also about listening to your customer to understand the purpose of conducting the problem-solving in the first place. With a clearly defined purpose, we’ll be more able to clearly define the goal and the problem.
I don’t like preaching or teaching something that I am not doing myself. So I intentionally practice active listening at home with my husband, the girls, family, friends, and co-workers. However, I remain a work in progress because I still have the urge to interrupt during a conversation to give my input. As time continues to progress, that too will get better.
It is important to sharpen our skills as leaders in the workforce and our homes as active listening plays a major component in recognizing important messages that may have been easily overlooked. Drawing our attention to key terms and phrases will allow us to recognize how to solve longing problems, issues, and concerns. Let’s stop prolonging the meetings and start wrapping them up with solutions. “Listen, Linda, Listen!”
MeShonya “Dr. MeMe” Wren-Coleman, Ph.D., is an entrepreneur and philanthropist.
Dr. Wren-Coleman is the author of the new title The Resume Of A Man.
Dr. Wren-Coleman is the Editor-At-Large for ReelUrbanNews.com.
