My Thoughts On Handling People Who Are Bad Listeners

I was mulling over this topic of how to handle people who are not good at listening. Listening is one of most easily preached topic, yet very difficult to practice. How many times have you started a conversation and ended it in a manner that made you feel murky on why in the first place you chose that particular person to talk? Remember, listening is one of the great Leadership strengths anyone gets to possess and is the most difficult as well. You really need to keep the other person, whom you are listening to, at a higher level than you are and keep your emotions to yourself, to be able to be a good listener. Great leaders and coaches including top CEOs in the boardrooms are all people who just keep quiet and listen with a nice smile of their face. A simple nod giving confidence to the person who is speaking and encouraging him/her to put forth his/her points goes a long way to gain the speaker’s trust and binding.

So what thoughts come to your mind about ways to handle a person who is a very bad listener and also short-tempered? In general, I feel there are various levels of this behavior that differs from person to person, but I can think of the following three levels:   

1. Highly Impatient And Aggressive: This is the most irritating level and the most hurting to anyone who is listening. The impatient person never gives a chance to his partner to speak, and doesn’t even bother about his/her interests. The person is just bothered about how much he/she can shout aloud and constantly tries to put forth his points to as many people he can see around him. Have you ever wondered how it feels to talk to such a person who keeps saying “Wait.. Wait. just a min,,, You are Wrong! What your are saying Won’t work ok?!!” and keeps interrupting and constantly keeps harping on the same thing repeating the same sentence?

I feel such people are very difficult to handle and severely lack leadership skills. I have found them to resist change and always reluctant to learn new things about life. They are severely arrogant and ego-drive, always bothered about themselves. Sadly, they pay a huge price by losing relationships. Such people need severe counseling and sometimes I feel even if a good coach can ever bring any difference to them! The only way to handle such people is to get out of the culture yourself. There is no point in conversing with such a person because he never shows improvement in his communication behavior and is just not bothered about the partner he/she is talking to.

2. Moderately Short-Tempered and Interruptive: Remember all those moments with that person, whom whenever you talk with, keeps interrupting in between by nodding his head saying No!, breathing heavily and trying to stop you? Such people do give a chance for you to talk, but are never listening to what you are saying and you tend to lose interest in communicating with that person as the time progresses. Most of such situations are encountered at work places during discussion inside meeting rooms and at other places. I feel that the most common cause for this kind of a behavior is anxiety and the fear to lose. If the speaker is anxious about winning and is just not bothered about giving credit of the conversation to the person he/she is talking to, the speaker tends to interrupt and tries to grab others attention.

While the good thing is that these people are easy to handle compared to the previous category, the main challenge is actually in deciding what would be the right way to communicate with them. Everytime you keep saying something they remain silent, but at the most important part of the conversation they just blow-up and you feel like the whole purpose of communicating has been defeated. I feel the only way to handle such people is keep asking them the reason as to why they differ with you. Understand what makes them say No! and reason it out. You really have to pull the trigger of convincing them so that they don’t have a chance to interrupt by saying No! The way you deliver your message has to be well manipulated.

3. Less Tolerant and Deceptive: Imagine a situation where you have a great idea to discuss with someone and you approach that person to convey your thoughts. Let’s say that person listens to you for the whole conversation, patiently and interestingly, and in the end says “I have no clue what you are saying. I don’t know what you spoke and I don’t think this will work”. Wouldn’t you feel that the person just pretended to be listening and that he/she never paid any concentration while you spoke to him? I would put such people in the third category and call them deceptive. They tend to give an impression that they understood everything while you were in the process of speaking with them, but at the end they turn the stone 180 degrees to the other side. What you see at the end is a big black hole full of confusions. You seem to question yourself as to why you took all the effort of saying what you said to the person and whether all the effort was worthwhile at all.

I feel these people are easy to handle and can be made to change by modifying the way of your conversation with them. May be you should ask them questions sometime while you are talking to them like “Are you with me? Did you get this point that I said? What do you think of this that I just explained?” and similar. Even though they might resist initially, I think such people will adapt themselves if they are compelled to listen proactively.

Listening is a skill. It takes time and patience to really learn how to communicate with a person who is a bad listener. We have bad listeners everywhere (not saying that I am a good listener though ), and the more you read about this topic and the more you speak to people who are bad listeners, you improvise upon this skill and get better and better as time progresses. It is important to tailor your speech according to the person who you are communicating with and learning more about that person ahead of time will always help a ton in ensuring that you remain confident while speaking to him/her. Remember, ‘Silent” and “Listen” are just words with letters re-arranged. So, remember to just Shut-Up and Listen! If you are great listener, you can always conquer anyone around you, a skill that I always read about in any Leadership book that I pick up. It is ironic – be a good listener, and you don’t even have to talk; your thoughts are automatically heard

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