Seven

Heel, Sit, and Stay: The Art of Patient Attention

They [dogs] never talk about themselves
but listen to you while you talk about yourself,

and keep up an appearance of being
interested in the conversation.

­—Jerome K. Jerome

One of the most extraordinary talents of our beloved four-leggeds often goes unnoticed. Perhaps that’s because it lacks the wow factor of other dog tricks, like catching Frisbees in midair, running like the wind, or tracking down a criminal from one whiff of his sock drawer. But it’s no less awesome. I’m talking about the ability of dogs to stay put and do nothing but pay attention. Once a dog is trained to heel, sit, and stay, it is able to withdraw its attention from the world of distractions and place it fully on its “master,” watching intently for the next cue. The dog won’t do this for just a few seconds until it is captivated by the next shiny object that comes along—like a human would—but for as long as it takes.

A trained dog’s attention is a marvel to behold. Have you ever watched canine obedience trials, for example? Between commands, the dog will remain perfectly still, its eyes riveted on its master’s eyes and hands with a focus that’s almost tangible, like a power cord connecting the dog to its owner.

A dog that has not been trained will run off after the first squirrel that grabs its attention. But a dog trained to heel will stay glued to its human partner, never getting a step ahead of him, ignoring the hundreds of sights, scents, and sounds that are trying to pull its attention in every direction. The trained dog knows its job is to follow its human’s lead, and it dedicates itself to this job with a
single-minded seriousness of purpose. It makes its human the center of its world, shutting out any and all distractions.

We humans admire this type of discipline in our dogs and even give out prizes for it. But most of us don’t hold ourselves to the same standards, especially when it comes to listening. We don’t realize that listening is a job that requires 100 percent of our focus. We are forever getting ahead of the person speaking, and running off after the first verbal and mental squirrels that catch our attention. Most of us, to put it bluntly, have the attention span of an untrained puppy.

But imagine if we could train ourselves to see listening as our job and devote ourselves to mastering it with the same motivation a dog has.

Heel, Human, Heel

We humans desperately need to learn the art of heeling. By heeling, I mean to:

Good luck with those, by the way. Heeling is very difficult for most humans. We have restless, itchy minds. We are easily triggered by distractions—both internal and external.

One of the reasons we have trouble “heeling” as listeners is that our brains can think much faster than our mouths can talk. Humans can speak about 125 words or so per minute, while our brains can think at about 400 to 500 words per minute.1 This means that whenever you’re processing a fellow human’s 125-word-per-minute verbal output, your brain has a lot of bandwidth available to do other stuff. And that’s exactly what it does. Not only does it think about what kind of salsa you’re going to buy to go with tonight’s fish tacos and how nicely the speaker’s lipstick matches her scarf, but it also thinks of clever ways you can top the speaker, speed up the speaker, or work your own agenda onto the table.

1 http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/he748; and http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/kline-listen/b10ch5.htm

The trick to being a great listener is to focus your brain’s “spare” processing power on things like: trying to better understand what the speaker is saying; making full use of your eyes, ears, and heart; and signaling your attention to the speaker. To do all these things well actually requires the full power of your brain. You just need to consciously harness that power.

The human mind is like an untrained dog. To get it under control requires training. Dogs allow themselves to be trained to heel because it earns them Liv-a-Snaps; you need to recognize that you, too, earn rewards through heeling.

The Payoff

What’s to be gained by training yourself to heel and pay focused attention? Well, we’ve already identified the many long-term benefits of better listening—such as building lasting relationships, becoming a more likeable person, and triggering the rule of reciprocity—but here I’d like to focus on a few immediate rewards you gain:

You create a bond with the person talking. The surest way to create an instant connection with another person is to give the person your undivided attention. It’s almost like magic. Attention from another person is felt energy. Earlier I talked about some ways our eyes and hearts beam measurable energy to others. Though this may sound New-Agey to some, it is consistent with quantum physics. Did you know, for example, that a photon of light behaves differently if a human is watching it? There have also been experiments that have shown the power of focused attention to affect the growth of plants,2 the shape of water crystals,3 and the behavior of random number generators.4

2 http://www.spindriftresearch.org/examples.php

3 http://www.masaru-emoto.net/english/hado.html

4 The PEAR (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) lab experiments have been described in numerous books, such as Dean Radin’s Entangled Minds and The Conscious Universe.

You don’t need a physics lab to prove it to yourself, though. Try this simple experiment: the next time you are in a group or audience, give your undivided, laser-like attention to the person on stage. This can be a teacher, a public speaker, an actor, or even a musician or dancer. Just beam your attention at that person. What you may discover is that the performer begins to single you out and direct his or her performance (speech, lecture, etc.) at you. This isn’t your imagination. Attention is like a magnet. When you give someone attention, you form a connection like that between a dog and its trainer.

You make the speaker feel honored and respected. Few things, if any, are more inherently rewarding to a human being than to be given attention. Receiving attention makes us feel validated, confident, and worthy—as if our ideas, and our selves, have value. Countless times in my career, I have been invited to follow-up meetings or out to lunch—I have even launched business relationships—as a direct result of being the one person in the room who paid silent attention. Attention is noticed. It’s appreciated.

You acquire the content. Another huge benefit from heeling—staying with the person speaking—is that you not only hear the information being shared, but you acquire it. There’s a big difference between hearing and acquiring. When you only hear something, it passes in and out of your short-term memory. When you acquire something, it goes into your long-term mental toolbox.

A gentleman I know went through college on a full scholarship and graduated magna cum laude, and yet he rarely took notes or studied. Many of his peers assumed he was an off-the-charts genius, but he explained it in much more mundane terms. “I hate studying, so I put all of my attention on getting what’s being said. That way it becomes part of me and I don’t need to study it.” Almost without exception, his teachers assumed he was the brightest student in the class, simply because he was so tuned in. They would often read an extra layer of wisdom into his test answers and give him the highest grades in the class, even if he didn’t have the facts perfectly memorized. Something positive almost always comes of heeling. There are a couple of habits you can develop that help greatly with this.

Stop and Acknowledge

If there was one piece of advice I could give you to quadruple your effectiveness as a listener overnight, it would be this: stop and acknowledge. That is, after a person makes a comment, pause and acknowledge that you’ve heard it. This one step—stop and acknowledge—could probably cut the national divorce rate in half. The main reason conflicts escalate is that one or both parties do not feel heard and acknowledged by the other. Party A, not feeling heard, ratchets up the intensity of the rhetoric, which, in turn, makes Party B more defensive. Party B then amps up the rhetoric, and the whole debate just escalates, because no one is hearing anyone else. Leash-law violations are occurring at an alarming rate. True connection has not taken place and resentment rears its ugly head.

Acknowledgment is a critical step in communication. The idea is so powerful and yet so simple: after someone speaks, acknowledge what has been said before defending yourself, coming up with a better idea, jumping to the next topic, or asking for a third party’s input. What could be simpler? Acknowledgment allows people to feel respected and valued, creates an atmosphere of two-way communication, and defuses tensions before they have a chance to mount.

And yet acknowledgment is a step that is almost universally skipped in politics, business, and personal relationships. We jump straight into reaction mode.

Why do we miss this essential heeling (healing) step? Part of the problem, I think, is that our culture teaches an adversarial, I win-you lose form of communication. We’re trained to think of every conversation as a debate that we need to win.

Turn on any television talk show and what do you see and hear? Talking heads trying to get the last and loudest word. Even in a format as innocuous as sports talk radio, all you hear are hardened opinions vying to score points. I do a lot of driving, and in all of the radio talk shows I’ve ever listened to over the years, I have rarely, if ever, heard one party stop, take in what the other party was saying, and respond, “Wow, I never thought of it that way; I’ll have to rethink my opinion. Thanks for helping me see things differently.” In fact, as audience members, we hate it when people do that. We see it as wishy-washy. When a politician changes her stance on an issue, we view it as flip-flopping, instead of as evidence that she is capable of listening to other points of view.

Again, acknowledgment is a step that is almost universally skipped in politics, business, and personal relationships. Perhaps it is because we actually see listening as a weakness. After a political debate, we praise the candidate who spoke the most firmly and loudly and who commanded the microphone the longest, not the one who showed indications of listening. Culturally, we admire strong opinions that remain undimmed by facts, better ideas, or the input of others. On Facebook and other social media sites, it is common to see solo rants masquerading as conversations. Strange, isn’t it?

Conflict is entertaining. No one wants to watch a TV show in which everyone listens to and acknowledges each other—boring! We want to see drama. If sparks don’t fly, we change the channel.

A fascinating example of this is the Dr. Drew show. When it first aired, it was one of the few models of good listening on TV. Dr. Drew would sit one-on-one with guests and really try to hear things from their point of view. Dr. Drew is in fact a very good listener—I have had the pleasure of meeting him in person. But his show’s format was later changed to one in which Drew is shown on a divided screen with four or five guests, all vying to out-talk one another.

Makes for better TV, evidently.

Here’s the issue: what’s entertaining on a talk show or effective in a courtroom is not necessarily what’s productive in business and relationships. And yet we use this adversarial model in all situations. It works something like this:

1. Form a strong, unchangeable position.

2. Enter a “conversation” with the intention of proving yourself right and the other party either wrong or ignorant.

3. Do not listen to or acknowledge the other person, except to find springboards for your next point.

4. Use every tactic available to out-talk the other party until your opinion achieves victory.

It’s not surprising then that in so many meetings, conversations, and encounters no one feels heard. “Hearing,” after all, is not the goal; winning is.

Imagine if a dog tried to out-bark you every time you gave it a command. How long would you put up with that? But a dog doesn’t do that. It acknowledges your words and patiently awaits your cue as to what to do next. Even if the dog is bursting with eagerness to play a game or go for a ride, it will eventually force itself to put its own agenda on hold and wait for you. If a “lowly” beast can exercise this kind of self-control, can’t we humans learn to do the same? Yeah I get it; humans are the master and dogs are . . . blah, blah, blah.

Ever wonder why man isn’t man’s best friend, but dog is?

Toward a Better Model

For many of us, the concept of acknowledging another person’s point of view is so foreign that we need special training. Consider a couples therapist in action. A big part of the job is to teach couples to stop and acknowledge what the other party is saying/feeling before stating their own point of view. Often this is like pulling teeth. The parties are so busy reacting that they literally have no idea what the other party is feeling or saying. Sadly, they often don’t care. They are there for their own agenda.

How do you know when the speaker has been acknowledged? When the speaker feels acknowledged—not when you say he or she should.

In many professions, one of the most common complaints from customers and clients is that the service professional—doctor, lawyer, car mechanic, salesperson, hair stylist—didn’t really listen to them and acknowledge their concerns and wishes.

What I find fascinating is that in professions where clear communications can be a matter of life or death, there is some form of acknowledgment built into the communications protocols. Take, for example, this model for communications between a pilot and an air traffic controller, posted on the SKYbrary website (www.skybrary.aero):

Starting with the “Transmit” step, the ATC (Air Traffic Controller) transmits an instruction to the pilot. The pilot listens, then acknowledges receipt of the message by carefully repeating back what he heard from the ATC. The ATC then listens and confirms or corrects what the pilot said. Finally, the ATC acknowledges the whole communication as understood, and the loop is closed by granting clearance for landing. These steps are completed every single time, as part of protocol. Imagine if they weren’t!

Other emergency responders such as fire, police, military, and rescue teams have similar communication protocols. They include acknowledgment as a vital part of the communication process. That’s because communication cannot be said to have occurred unless both parties have acknowledged that the communication has been heard and understood.

Strange, isn’t it, that we recognize the importance of acknowledgment when lives are at stake, but we disregard it the rest of the time? Lives may not literally be at stake in most conversations, but the quality of your relationships, both business and personal, certainly is. It is definitely safe to say that we often downplay the importance of what is being said by failing to acknowledge it. We also invalidate the other person, leaving them feeling unheard, and perhaps sending other negative messages we’re unaware of. One major consequence of lack of acknowledgement is that you trigger resentment. You may walk away from the exchange not realizing this has occurred, but the other party has made a mental record of it.

What if, instead of using the adversarial model for conversations and meetings, we employed a model that demonstrates constraint while acknowledging your speaker.

The Heel, Sit & Stay Model (HSS)

1. Listen to the other party without interrupting. And here’s a twist: actually consider what is being said.

2. Pause.

3. Acknowledge what the party has said and demonstrate an understanding of the other party’s position (or ask to clarify if necessary).

4. Weigh the new input against your tentative position. Adjust your position if needed.

5. Communicate your position (revised, if appropriate) to the other party.

6. Return to Step 1, rinse, and repeat until the communication loop is complete and you are cleared for landing.

I urge you to read through these steps a couple of times in order to appreciate their importance and to let them become a part of you. They most likely appear foreign so repetition and practice may be in order. Acknowledgement may not necessarily be a “one time” event in a conversation, however. Sometimes multiple points are made, each worthy of acknowledgement. Other times the speaker may not feel acknowledged, so your repeat performance may be in order. Yeah, yeah, I know, once was enough . . . so you think. Don’t worry, you’ll get through it—and thank me later.

Let’s Stay Here for a Moment (Stay, Staaaay, Staaaaaaay—Good!)

Acknowledgment is not only important in one-on-one communications, it’s also vital in group settings. Again, it’s amazing how often this step is skipped. Very often, in groups, things like the following happen:

These habits, and many more like them, are the norm in groups. That’s why, when I’m conducting a meeting, a class, or a workshop, I often stop and say, “Wait; let’s stay here for a moment.” By this I mean, “Let’s stop and take in this idea before moving on to the next one.” Not, “live in the moment,” which is a great quote with tons of merit. Staying here means to accept and absorb what was said. (Yes?) I try to do this whenever a group member provides input or an idea (or person) is getting glossed over too quickly.

It often seems to me that 80 to 90 percent of the valuable ideas contributed in meetings are lost or forgotten because we just use them as transitions to the next idea. We nibble on an idea for a second, and then toss it aside like a drumstick with most of the meat still on the bone (something a dog would never do!). “Let’s stay here for a moment” tells the audience to heel, to slow down, to pull some tasty meat from this bone before charging ahead to the next one. Impatience is something many of us suffer from nowadays, partly because technology has trained us to want everything now, now, now. As a society, we are losing our ability to focus on any one thing for more than a few seconds, let alone minutes.

What would happen if we could learn how to sit back, take a deep breath, and give our full attention to one another? Sometimes it’s not your turn to drive the car, but just to be the passenger. And when that’s the case, do what a dog would do—stick your head out the window, feel the breeze, and enjoy the ride.

Drastically Lower Your Interruption Rate

Another step you can take toward becoming a better heeler is to consciously reduce your interruption rate. This pays big-time dividends. As you know, interrupting is a major leash-law violation, and can more accurately be described as an epidemic in our society.

We humans have a nearly physical urge to interrupt one another. Dogs don’t. Oh sure, they interrupt us now and then, but only when they have a pressing need—to go outside, to tell us something is wrong, to inform us that (horror of horrors) the mailman is coming. We humans interrupt because we have an inner psychological itch to do so. We need to become aware of this itch and learn how not to scratch it.

Where does the itch to interrupt come from? I think the immediate cause is often a feeling of anxiety. When we’re listening to someone talk, we begin to feel anxious that we’re not going to get “our turn” to speak. So, we begin strategizing about how we’re going to insert a crowbar into the conversation. The longer the other party speaks, the greater our anxiety grows until the itch to interrupt becomes unbearable and our mouths spring into action.

A big key to getting this habit under control is to become aware of the anxiety before acting upon it. Very often, the simple step of noticing an anxiety is enough to manage it. It seems to be the nature of anxiety to build and build until it erupts into a compulsive action. But often if you simply notice, acknowledge, and feel an anxiety, it loses its intensity, and the compulsive behavior (e.g., interrupting) is averted.

By becoming conscious of your anxiety, you can work on lowering your interruptions-per-minute rate (IPM).

Gauging Your IPM Rate

What’s your IPM rate? You probably don’t know. But I guarantee that if you make an effort to become aware of it, it will begin to decrease just as a result of that awareness.

If we were able to measure the factors contributing to our IPM rate we could probably create a quasi-scientific formula (accent on the “quasi”). The variables, as I see them, are: 1) our reason for interrupting (R); 2) our available ways to interrupt (W); 3) the mitigating factors for or against our interrupting (MF); and 4) our anxiety level (A). So our formula for calculating IPM might look something like this (no need to take notes, class):

(R + W + MF)2

__________________

= IPM

A

Silly? Yes, a bit. Practically useful? Not really. But before we disregard it completely, “Let’s stay here for a moment.” Perhaps by becoming just a little more aware of the factors that affect our decision to interrupt versus keeping our mouths shut, we can gain a little more mastery over our IPM.

Okay, so let’s look at these factors a little more closely.

Reasons for Interrupting (R)

The urge to interrupt can be like a physical itch that we scratch without even knowing why. Simply asking yourself the question, “Why am I interrupting?” can be a giant step toward getting your IPM under control. There are some good reasons for interrupting, which we’ll soon talk about, but there are also a lot of reflexive, thoughtless reasons that may not be so great. Here are some common ones:

You can probably think of many more. Rule of thumb: a good reason for interrupting is one that serves the speaker, the group, or the conversation itself (e.g., “You’re going to miss your flight if you don’t wrap up”). A bad reason for interrupting is one that serves only you, your ego, or your neurotic need to make noise (e.g., “My aunt in Duluth had an even funnier experience . . .”).

Ways of Interrupting (W)

Just as there are many reasons for interrupting, there are many ways of interrupting. Some of these are meant to cut the other party off instantly; others are meant to cause the speaker to interrupt himself/herself. Examples of both include:

And, of course, in today’s tech-heavy world, there are also numerous ways we interrupt one another in chat rooms and text conversations, such as sending emoticons, changing the subject, or abruptly logging off. (“Listening” is just as important in a text conversation—though much easier to fake!) It’s a good idea to become self-aware regarding your own interrupting behaviors.

Mitigating Factors (MF)

There are also many mitigating factors that make us more or less likely to interrupt others. These often operate in our subconscious. By becoming more conscious about these factors, you can make better decisions about whether to let them influence your behavior.

Of course, you’re not going to memorize my IPM formula (nor should you)— it’s complicated, which illustrates how much “stuff” we bring to the table with our communication. However, the more awareness you have about your own interruption tendencies, the easier it will be to refrain from scratching the interruption itch.

Training Rules

I once watched a dog trainer working with another person’s dog, using hand signals. At one point the dog just started barking, nonstop. The trainer became annoyed, but from my point of view it was clear: the dog just didn’t understand the signals it was receiving. Perhaps the dog’s own trainer does the signal differently. The dog didn’t know what to do so it just started barking.

This is what often happens in conversations. Sometimes we just don’t understand the conversational signals and rules. The problem is that the rules are not universal; each of us has a different understanding of them and respect for them, and each culture has its own rules and expectations.

Consequently, we often don’t know who should be grabbing the conversational lead and running with it. The result? Chaos. Just turn on a topical talk show if you want to see what I mean.

It would be handy if we taught our kids universal rules for listening, but we don’t. (We expect them to be expert listeners even though we model poor listening to them!) That’s why structures like parliamentary procedure and Robert’s Rules of Order get invented. I’m not suggesting you should adopt formal and rigid rules like those, but it does help to have some mechanisms in place to handle interruptions and speaking privileges.

If you’re running a meeting, for example, it might be a good idea to appoint a moderator. It becomes the job of the moderator—and only the moderator—to keep the meeting running in a smooth, focused, and timely manner, and to make sure everyone has a turn to speak, and allowing participants to be heard. The moderator, and only the moderator, has interruption privileges. If someone needs to weigh in, he or she can raise a hand but may speak only when recognized by the moderator. Though this might seem restrictive, it frees up the rest of the group to listen fully and attentively without worrying that someone is going to commandeer the conversation.

It’s also a good idea to have your own personal set of guidelines that you follow in conversation. These can help you manage yourself and make sure you spend plenty of time heeling. A few of my own guidelines, for example, are:

1. If it’s my role to start the conversation, I will briefly introduce myself and the issue at hand. I will then give the floor to the other person immediately, asking for his/her point of view.

2. I will not interrupt the other person unless there is a major misunderstanding (e.g., the person thinks I’m there to sell him a second-hand cemetery plot).

3. When the other person finishes speaking for the first time, I will pause, acknowledge what he/she said, and offer some kind of positive feedback, even if I disagree with the substance of what was said (e.g., “I’m glad you feel you can be honest and direct; that’s what I was hoping for”).

I have many other “rules” I try to follow. These are not to restrict me or to inhibit spontaneity, but just to help ensure that I spend as much time as possible heeling and don’t go running off into the woods, chasing squirrels and dragging others behind me on a leash.

Unlike dogs, no one is going to train you to heel; you need to train yourself. With a little thoughtful training, you will be rewarded with more positive encounters, the Liv-a-Snaps of listening.

Something to
Chew On . . .

Lassie

Everyone knows Lassie, either through images, movies, or TV reruns. Lassie was a gorgeous collie who never wasted her “words.” When she whined or scratched at a door or barked out of a window, you knew she had something important to say. Everyone dropped what they were doing to listen to her. Often Timmy, her human companion, was almost comically sensitive to her communications—“What’s that, girl, you say the barn’s on fire and the piglets are trapped? Let’s go!” But the point is, people listened to Lassie. Why? Perhaps because she was silent most of the time, so when she did “speak,” she had everyone’s attention. It was usually a life-or-death situation. She certainly never cried wolf. It’s no wonder that Lassie was the first animal ever to be inducted into the Animal Actors Hall of Fame.

As is often the case, the most entertaining fictional accounts are based on amazing real events. According to British writer Nigel Clarke in the Shipwreck Guide to Dorset and South Devon, the real Lassie that inspired so many films and television episodes saved the life of a sailor during World War I. Half-collie Lassie was owned by the landlord of the Pilot Boat, a pub in the port of Lyme Regis. On January 1, 1915, the British battleship HMS Formidable was off the coast of South Devon when it took a hit from a German submarine’s torpedo, tragically losing more than 500 men. Winds from a storm that came through following the incident blew a life raft containing bodies along the coast to Lyme Regis. The Pilot Boat pub offered its cellar as a mortuary.

Lassie found her way downstairs and began to lick the face of one of the victims, Able Seaman John Cowan. She stayed beside him for more than half an hour, nuzzling him and keeping him warm with her fur. To everyone’s astonishment, Cowan was alive and eventually stirred. He was taken to the hospital and went on to make a full recovery. If not for Lassie, her astute powers of perception and quiet insistence, Cowan surely would have been one of the victims of this tragedy.