“The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” – George Barnard Shaw
There’s a moment in every team where the room goes quiet with an uncomfortable sort of silence or where the room becomes extremely chaotic. This happens because people have stopped listening. Maybe someone’s repeating their point for a third time or it feels that the team meeting is going around in circles. Maybe two people are talking over each other or at each other. Or perhaps you’ve all gotten to the point of impatient nodding along while waiting for the meeting to end.
In moments like this, something is missing, and it affects the team more than anyone realizes.
The Missing Piece
When you reach that point and recognize that the meeting has somehow fallen flat or distracted from achieving goals, it can be challenging to identify what exactly went wrong. And based on decades of experience facilitating mediations, dialogue, and meetings, my team and I know exactly what it is: What’s missing is listening.
At Harmony Strategies Group, we know that typically people think of communication as about what to say or how to say it. But what’s missing in this conceptualization is awareness of what happens once the said-thing is said: what happens after that? The answer should be “…and then I’d listen” or “…and afterwards I await their reply.” Communication is not about saying something and then “dropping the mic.” It’s about being willing to listen deeply and foster understanding. When teams commit to that kind of listening, it becomes a bridge that takes the team from misalignment to clarity, from frustration to collaboration and from silos to synergy.
Why is Listening so Difficult?
With the best of intentions, our modern businesses focus on efficiency …to a fault. We seek to speed up communication, believing that it will help get things done quicker. As teams, this means that we fall into communication shortcuts that make it seem that communication has taken place while in reality it hasn’t.
We do several things that may actually bypass listening:
- We jump to conclusions and into solution mode for what we believe is the problem or issue.
- We quickly develop and express our most immediate response.
- We filter conversations with implicit biases based on past dynamics or faulty information.
Along with all of this, unclear roles, remote work culture, and busy schedules add complexity, such that lo and behold you have a mess – not one that is clearly visible but exists under the surface. The problem is only immediately detectable in awkward silences, grumbles and gossip, or overt aggressive comments and belittling. When left unaddressed, this problem will fester and breaks down team functioning, to the point where people will likely start to undermine each other or leave their jobs and seek employment elsewhere.
What Active Listening Looks Like
Active listening isn’t just about being silent while someone talks, nodding along or interjecting with the occasional ‘hmm’. Active listening is a holistic practice that involves the mind, body and heart. Some of the elements of active listening are presence, curiosity, gestures of validation, open questions and reflection on what you have heard.
In the Art of Active Listening | The Harvard Business Review Guide, Amy Gallo gives a few practical tips on how to actively listen. A few questions she proposes will help you practice the art of active listening:
- How do you usually listen?
- Why do you need to listen right now?
- Who is the focus of attention in the conversation?
- What are you missing?
- Are you getting in your own way?
- Are you in an information bubble?
The Magic of Active Listening
When you slow down and truly listen, something magical happens. People soften, ideas become clearer and connection deepens. Whether you’re leading a team, managing conflict or just trying to make your weekly meetings less draining, ask yourself this question. “Am I listening to respond or to understand?” A simple question, but when regularly asked becomes a part of you and the way you listen. It becomes part of the practice and then becomes part of the culture.
Two Tools for Deep Listening
A good way to look at listening is in a two-fold manner. One is internal listening where you listen to yourself and the other is listening to the other.
Listening to yourself is actively noticing how you are in a particular moment, it is about noticing how you react or respond in situations. For example, you get mad or defensive when you are hungry. Listening to yourself would mean acknowledging that your body needs sustenance and getting that before you get into a feedback meeting. This way, you can be fully present with the conversation and avoid the distraction of hunger or fatigue.
Listening to the other is about giving people the space to have an open conversation, to be vulnerable if required, withholding judgement, and listening for the sake of understanding and not for the sake of responding. For example, if someone tells you that they are nervous about a presentation that they are supposed to do, the ideal response may not be something on the lines of, “everybody feels that in the beginning and that it’ll get better with time.” Rather, maybe that person just needs you to listen and not validate or problem solve. Maybe that person needs you to simply relate to what they are feeling and then possibly help them calm their nerves.
Silence is another underrated skill that helps. Instead of rushing to fill every pause, practice being comfortable in silence: let people finish speaking and intentionally invite a pause to process what they’ve said. Notice your own thoughts during that pause: do you feel some judgement about what you’ve heard? Do you feel a need to defend something or someone – including yourself and your choices? Are you quick to define what they’ve said as “wrong” or “right”?
The New Commitment
Listening in communication is a commitment. It’s easy to have one meeting or experience where listening happens well but then fall back into old habits due to the atmosphere we’re in. We can get swept up in the speed culture where everything is rushed, the hierarchies where instead of ideas it is titles that are heard, or your own emotional noise where emotions come to the fore. In the face of all of this, listening is a practice that needs to be followed repeatedly.
This commitment creates a ripple effect on team culture: when teams prioritize active listening and communicate better, they function better. They begin to experience fewer misunderstandings, inclusive dialogue, and a culture of safety and trust. Listening unlocks alignment and synergy, and when teams are aligned momentum is built.
Helpful Resources
There are ways to train these listening muscles through facilitation, coaching and feedback loops. Harmony Strategies has spent decades helping executives, leaders, and HR professionals hone their own listening skills as well as those of their teams and staff. We have dedicated workshops to build skills and can also help identify barriers to good listening – like time constraints or power plays in meetings. We have seen radical transformation when listening skills are adopted and internalized into the team culture.
Great teams don’t just talk. They build bridges by active listening.
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