The Listening Game

Rogers recommends that businesspeople play a listening game designed to stop personal chatter, so that authentic communication can be experienced on the job. As a former trainer and now an executive coach, I have taught, tried, and prescribed a version of Rogerss listening game with great success. The game is a wonderful way to show people how hard it is to listen. Its also an effective way to demonstrate the pervasiveness of chatter.

The game is simple. One person says something. Another person says it back to the first persons satisfaction. Well look at a couple of other rules, but thats basically it. The interesting thing is that people find the game difficult to play. I encourage you to try it with a colleague or a friend. You will probably be surprised by how helpful it will be.

For our purposes, well call one person the speaker and the other the listener. But when you play the game, and youve successfully listened once, switch roles so you get to be a speaker and your partner is challenged to listen. This will keep the game balanced.

The speaker must say something that he or she finds emotionally stimulating. For example: ˜˜On my way to work this morning I got stuck in a traffic jam, and I felt really stressed because I was going to be late for a critical meeting. What the speaker says must take about thirty seconds.

After the speaker has communicated the message, the listener starts with the words, ˜˜I hear you saying . . . Rogers likes this opening because it is a present-tense expression. It is not, ˜˜I heard you say . . ., which indicates that the statement is over and done with. And it is not, ˜˜Youre saying . . . because even though its a present-tense expression, it is not necessarily true and so neither particularly humble nor particularly accurate.

The speaker does not have to get his statement back verbatim, of course. Instead, the listener must make the speaker feel wholly heard. Accordingly, the listener must detect the points that the speaker seems to care about and give them back. The listener must also avoid importing things that the speaker did not say, which definitely would make the speaker feel unheard.

The listening game is even more difficult when a speaker communicates something disagreeable in some way to the listener. Lets look at an example of the game from a transcript of an actual, recorded listening-game dialogue. It took place in front of a very small group of people in a department that was having communication problems. I, Art, was the facilitator of the dialogue; Maureen was the speaker; and Bob was the listener.

MAUREEN: ˜˜Bob, I resent it when you dont return my voice mails or my e- mails . Sometimes you are slow at it and other times you dont respond at all. It makes me feel like you dont think what I do is important to the organization. Its like what you do every day is way more valuable than whatever I have to say. Like last week when I called you about that customer complaint and I told you how critical it was, you didnt reply. I sent you an e-mail and you still didnt reply. And I got in trouble for it.

BOB: ˜˜Oh my god. I have no idea what you just said.

ART: ˜˜Okay, Maureen, say it again for Bob. And Bob, try your best to hear what she has to say, so you can say it back. Maureen, go for it.

(Maureen gives the same message but with some very minor changes in wording.) BOB: ˜˜Maureen, I think you said . . .

ART: ˜˜Sorry, Bob. I need you to start with, ˜I hear you saying . . .

BOB: ˜˜I hear you saying that Im selfish with my time. But you know, Maureen, we all have more on our plates than we can handle. And Im sorry, but I cant get the rest of the details back to you.

ART: ˜˜Maureen, do you feel wholly heard?

MAUREEN: ˜˜No!

It took another twelve minutes of recorded dialogue for Bob finally to get Maureen to feel wholly heard. Many things went wrong. Let me share two of them with you.

First, in his response above, Bob went into defensive mode. He explained how busy people are. But the listening game is not meant to be an opportunity for defense. It is only to make people feel heard. Defense is a natural ego responsefrom the meta-level of consciousnessto a perceived attack. A certain amount of self-control is called for to allay that natural response.

Second, even when Bob got all the message details rightat about the halfway point of the twelve-minute exercisehe still did not make Maureen feel wholly heard. She said she couldnt put her finger on the problem, but it seemed that Bob just didnt ˜˜get it. Bob had failed to connect with Maureens feelings on the matter. We had to go back and start from the beginning.

This was a key moment in Bobs education about managing his chatter. He was about to learn that, for at least a moment, he had to actually let Maureens feelings about the matter into his consciousness. He had to shut off his meta-level-produced selfishness and allow himself to embrace the feelings of another person whom he, in fact, did not really respect. He did not have to agree with Maureen, but he had to connect with her feeling of being invalidated by him.

But an amazing thing happened when Bob mustered the strength. His eyes opened wide with surprise. ˜˜Oh, he said. ˜˜My selfish attitude kind of invalidates you and you resent it. Maureen, finally feeling wholly heard, said, ˜˜Yes, thats it. We all breathed a sigh of relief. Bob looked humbled and said, ˜˜Im so sorry. He later told the group that it may well have been the first time he had ever truly listened to someone. He suggested it was the first time he had ever consciously experienced empathy. ˜˜Its hard work! he said. Everyone laughed.

It is hard work to listen without judgment. As indicated earlier, it is particularly difficult when we are responding to what feels like a personal attack. It is challenging when we are about to hear something that we believe were going to find unattractive. Employees, for example, dont often hear criticism; they are afraid of it. Wannabe lovers dont hear rejection ; they are seeking its opposite . Rogers is right. Our tendency to evaluate does indeed intrude on communication.

But the game is easy for some people under certain conditions. For example, if the speaker is saying something they want to hear, they have little problem depicting it accurately. Similarly, when the speaker is someone we love dearly and someone we have great concern for, such as our own child, then we usually have little difficulty in setting aside our own motives and perspectives and shifting into an other-oriented mode of operating.