As managers, professors, speakers, and instructors you’re committed to getting your big ideas across, facilitating decision making, collaborating with students, inspiring creativity and sparking original ideas. But is your audience hearing what you intend to convey?

When I heard two highly intelligent people having a conversation in which neither were directly responding to each other (”Which door at the meeting hall should my friends pick me up?” “There’s parking near the bottom of the hill.”) I became curious. Were they hearing different things that caused disparate responses?

I spent the next 3 years studying how brains listen and writing a book on it (WHAT? Did you really say what I think I heard?). I ended up learning far more than I ever wanted to: like most people, I had assumed that when I carefully listened I could accurately hear someone’s intended message. I was wrong.

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HOW BRAINS LISTEN

Turns out there’s no absolute correlation between what a Speaker says and what a Listener hears – a very unsatisfactory reality when our professions may be based on offering content that is meant to be understood and retained.

Sadly there’s a probability that your Listeners are not taking away what you’re saying. Recent studies have proven that Listeners only accurately hear no more than 35% of what’s been said. And it’s their brain’s fault.

Here’s my definition of listening:

Listening is an automatic, electrochemical, biological, mechanical, and physiological process during which spoken words, as meaningless puffs of air, eventually get translated into meaning by our existing neural circuitry, leaving us to understand some unknown fraction of what’s been said – and even this is biased by our existing knowledge.

In other words, listening is an automatic and mechanical process devoid of meaning – merely a transactional process. We can have no idea how a Listener’s brain has translated our content.

ELEMENTS OF HOW BRAINS ‘HEAR’

In case you want to understand the process, here are the steps brains perform when hearing spoken words.

1. A message (words, as puffs of air, initially without meaning) gets spoken and received as sound vibrations.
2. Dopamine, where our beliefs and values are stored, immediately processes incoming sound vibrations, deleting and filtering out some of them according to relevance to the Listener’s mental models.
3. What’s left gets sent to a CUE which turns the remaining vibrations into electrochemical signals.
4. The signals then get sent to the Central Executive Network (CEN) where they are dispatched to a ‘similar-enough’ neural circuit (among 100+ billion) for translation into meaning. Note: The preferred neural circuits that receive the signals are those most often used by the Listener, regardless of their precise relevance to what was said.
5. Upon arrival at these ‘similar-enough’ circuits, the brain discards any overage between the existing circuit and the incoming signals and fills in any perceived holes with ‘other’ signals from neighboring circuits.

What our brain tell us was said, i.e. what we ‘hear’, is a translation of whatever remains. So: several deletions, a few additions, and translation into meaning by circuits that already exist.

In other words, what we think we hear, what our brain tells us was said, is some rendition of what a Speaker intends to convey that gets biased by our own history – what we already know and believe – obviously restricting incoming content to what’s familiar.

The problem shows up in all our conversations but becomes even more challenging when imparting knowledge: neither the Speaker nor the Listener knows the distance between what was said and what was heard. Certainly both assume they’ve heard and been heard accurately.

I lost a business partner who believed I said something I would never have said. He not only didn’t believe me when I told him what I’d actually said, but he didn’t believe his wife who was standing with us at the time (“John. Sharon-Drew’s right! She never said that! I was right next to you!”). “You’re both lying to me! I heard it with my own ears!” and he stomped out of the room, never to speak to me again.

HOW TO CONFIRM OUR AUDIENCE HEARS US

What does that mean for those of us paid to provide information? It means we have no idea if some/all/few of the Listeners hear precisely what we are trying to convey. They might hear something similar or something vastly different. They may hear something quite comfortable or something that offends them. They may misinterpret a homework assignment or a project initiative. It means they may not retain what we’re offering.

To make sure your audience understands what you intend to share, you must take an extra step. Instead of merely assuming your good content or asking inspirational questions are heard as intended, you must assume you don’t know what they’ve heard, regardless of how carefully you’ve worded our message.

To realize what’s been heard and counter any errors I suggest you ask:

    Can you each tell me what you heard me say?

You’ll be amazed at what the audience hears! Of course then you’ll be able to correct the errors.

LEARNING FACILITATION™

For those times you seek to impart permanent learning – say, in a training environment – and it’s important that your audience accurately understands and/or learns what you’re saying, I’ve developed a wholly new type of training model.

Learning Facilitation™ works with the brain first to bypass the historic circuits and generate new ones to accurately retrieve and maintain the new data.

It’s great for classroom training and can be amended for management groups and lecture halls.

Call me if you’re interested in learning how to design Learning Facilitation™ programs. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.