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The Sales Shrink: Behavior Therapy #13 – Listening Filters

by Tina Cherpes, Featured Contributor

“If you wanted something to eat, why didn’t you just say so?”  Mark and Jenny’s holiday road-trip had erupted in conflict. For over an hour, Mark was unaware he had been getting the silent treatment and his lack of awareness only fueled Jenny’s agitation that seemed to intensify with every passing exit’s food-fuel-lodging road sign.

One of the barriers to effective listening is called indirection of speech and generally refers to the underlying message carried within a direct statement/question.  When our listening filters aren’t attuned to it, the underlying message can often be overlooked.

salesWe’ll use Jenny and Mark as an illustration. One hour into their road-trip, Jenny realized she had been so busy getting things together for their trip, she’d forgotten to eat. Knowing Mark’s preference to stop on road-trips only when the fuel light came on, Jenny decided (consciously or otherwise) that a direct request to stop for food was loaded with the potential for conflict. If Mark obliged her direct request, it was likely he could get angry.  If he refused her direct request, Jenny would likely get angry.

Jenny wanted to avoid conflict; it was after all, just the beginning of their trip.  She elected to pursue a less risky route, to phrase the request as a question, “Are you getting hungry?”.  Although subtle, the distinction is powerful because while Mark’s response “No, I ate right before we left” was in fact a refusal to stop for food, it was a refusal in terms of the face value of Jenny’s question.  While the conflict had been temporarily avoided, it wouldn’t be long before it would reappear because Mark had missed/overlooked the underlying message; Jenny was hungry-now.

Some view indirection of speech as a manipulation and/or deceitful, some as a viable means to reduce conflict and/or avoid confrontation, some as a lack of confidence, still others as a prerogative of power; all of which can be true.

Yet in our lifelong efforts to influence and move others toward specific outcomes, it can be helpful to understand that our  listening filters can create barriers that can cause us to overlook the underlying message of what is actually being communicated/asked.  If we accept that most messages have the potential to simultaneously communicate multiple messages, we can fine tune our listening filters and improve our listening skills.


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