Listening: Three Levels of Impact

by Don Brown

We all know that it is the human arena in which the battle for customer loyalty is won (or lost), and the skill of listening is probably the least understood, least practiced and most important competency within that arena!  Look it up in your dictionary – and “listen” comes up as “to apply oneself to hearing…to pay attention…to tune in…to try to hear”.  How effective are you at listening?  What does “listening” mean to you?

Probably the most memorable reading I’ve ever consumed on listening were the words of Tony Alessandra, Phil Wexler and Rick Barrera1 in which they break listening down into three levels; marginal, evaluative and active.  The terms mean just what you might think; the first descriptor – marginal – by simple definition is listed as “very small or unimportant” or even “barely within a lower standard or limit of quality” in my dictionary.  As you can imagine, marginal listening is when we’re only half there…we might be asking someone to repeat what they’ve said, or even not respond at all.  We’re distracted by our own thoughts or the events around us.

Evaluative listening again can be understood by simple definition; “to ascertain value or worth…to examine, judge and appraise” is the American Heritage definition of “evaluate”.  In this case, we’re listening to judge the merit of someone’s statement – and in most cases to prepare our own response or rebuttal. I might even be able to repeat word-for-word what you’ve said, but only for the purposes of debate…I doubt I’ve captured the sentiment of what you’ve tried to communicate.

The highest level of listening – active – is found in the dictionary as “contributing…participating…or engaged in activity”.  Now take your understanding a little further – contributing to the communication, participating in dialogue and engaged in the activity of sharing of information; three very simple words - three very distinct visions of interaction between two or more people.

Now ask yourself, how and at what level do you listen? To whom do you listen at these different levels? Do you find yourself listening marginally to loved-ones…to customers or patients?  Sometimes we listen least effectively to those that matter most.  Under what circumstances do you listen most effectively?  Alessandra, Wexler and Barrera felt that we fall into less effective listening habits because we can listen at such a higher rate than we can speak (6-8 times as fast), but my own take is that we become unconscious participants in the communication process. By considering and assessing our own listening habits on a regular basis, we can become far more effective with everyone we communicate with.