The Personal Listening Profile Helps Develop Effective Communication Skills

Poor communication doesn’t always result in open conflict or passive aggressive behavior.  Sometimes, people honestly want to understand one another and work together, but they flounder and just wind up feeling defeated.

A social agency that provided mental health service had been in business for 20 years, and they had recently expanded very rapidly.  Despite their years of experience and impressive growth, the agency was riddled with problems.

They had a mission and a vision, but they had no values and employees felt that they were never listened to or involved in dialogue.

Again, there weren’t loud arguments or seething hostility on display, so they needed to identify less-dramatic signs of communication problems. It was discovered that productivity was down and turnover was up.  The employees also, were dissatisfied with their jobs and were unclear about their responsibilities.

This lack of clarity also extended to management.  The agency’s leaders had no idea how to manage people.  The poor leadership translated into unclear expectations and an inarticulate set of organizational values.

The managers were asked, “When a person is doing a given job well, what does that look like?”  They couldn’t answer that.  They really didn’t know how to lead. 

The managers’ lack of planning and poor communication skills were chief reasons for the employees’ lackluster performance. Although they generally got along, the workers rarely collaborated and didn’t trust one other.  The employees didn’t feel accountable, and the leaders had not set up a solid infrastructure for their subordinates.

For example, the managers didn’t know anything about leadership practices and competences.  They needed to learn those things, and they also needed to value communication and listening.

To convince the managers and employees of the importance of such values, the Personal Listening Profile was introduced.  The Personal Listening Profile helps individuals understand how they are wired and how others may be wired differently.  The Personal Listening Profile is particularly effective at teaching people that communication skills can be developed. 

The goal of the training was to get the managers and workers to relate to one another and to help the agency develop a shared-leadership environment and feedback culture.  If they could accomplish this, they could produce a higher level of dialogue - not just defensiveness, anger, and frustration.

Before the organization could achieve that level of change, the managers and employees had to learn how their different listening methods complemented, or clashed with those of others.  The large group was divided into smaller sections, so that people could talk and listen to one another better. 

During the discussion of the Personal Listening Profile’s insights, participants learned about their own listening preferences and those of their colleagues.  To emphasize the differences, the listening approaches were printed on tent cards and distributed to the participants.

Everybody knew everybody else’s listening preferences.  No guessing was required.

What quickly became clear was that there was little variety in the group’s listening approaches.  This was because most of the managers were Evaluative Listeners, while most of the staff had the Empathic approach. 

The lack of diversity among listening approaches did not hinder the participants’ conversation, however.  One worker took the opportunity to speak to her manager about how undervalued she felt during her last performance review.  The manager had no idea she felt that way, and the two of them talked about ways to avoid such issues in the future. 

They now know that they had differences in perception.  They see how their differences in listening styles may have led to frustration.

A similar insight for the participants was the identification of tension areas in their relationships.  The participants were asked to talk about their biggest communication breakdowns and the reasons for them.  The workers linked past conflicts to their listening styles and discussed how to avoid similar problems in the future. 

This made the participants think about their least effective interactions.  After they found out where the tension was coming from, they were asked what they were going to do about it. 

The participants learned that adapting their listening approaches would be most effective with specific people, rather than in certain circumstances.  This concept was an essential part of the workers’ action plans.

They now realize that the objective of communication is to understand and to be understood.  

With the Personal Listening Profile as a guide, the participants’ changed their perspectives on some of their interactions. This helped the employees and managers smooth out what had often been rocky relationship. As a result, the staff members improved the quality of their working lives, leading to lower turnover and higher productivity. The participants are happier and more energetic, and their knowledge of what good communication entails is a priceless benefit.

Inscape Publishing Case Study