August 2000

How Good a Listener Are You?

When I lead seminars on listening, I often ask people to assess their own listening behavior.  With 10 being high and one being low, they are to rate themselves as listeners compared to the other members of the group. The average score through the years has been about 7.5.

Next they rate the other group members as listeners. That rating has been 4.1 on average. In other words, people believe that listening is a problem, but that the problem belongs to someone else. Remember that each group member is being rated as part of the group by the others; that is, each member is part of the group receiving the 4.1 rating.

The point is simply this. The people around us believe that we have more of a problem listening effectively than they do. This should tell us something.  Listening is not just someone else's problem--it is ours.