Case study

: Lyman steil:

Dr.Lyman K. Steil is CEO and President of communication Development, Inc.; founding partner of The Masters Alliance; Director of The Amara Institute; former Director of Debate, Macalester College, and former chairman of the speech communication Division, Department of Rhetoric, university of Minnesota. Steil is the founder of the International Listening Association (ILA) and author of several books on the subject.

In 1979, Steil was working as a speech communications professor at Macalester college in St.Paul, when he and his colleagues were hired by Sperry Corp., one of the original mainframe manufacturers that later became Unisys. Sperry was trying to incorporate the theme of listening into its advertising campaign, and was hoping that Steil & his peers could provide some insight on the subject. Instead, Steil suggested that, if listening was a corporate quality they wanted to convey to the public, the company’s staffers should first learn about listening themselves. Over the next five years, Steil helped train thousands of managers at the company, who then trained their employees. In the end, 44000 Sperry workers learned the tenets of listening, which eventually became one of the reasons that they became such a business success..

Honing up on Listening

When Steil works with clients, typically in a group setting over one or two days, he starts with a personal assessment tool to help participants understand their strengths & weaknesses as listeners. Next, Steil teaches the fundamentals of listening concepts & discusses attitudes that get in the way of listening. Much of the workshop involves learning skills in four areas:

Sensing: do you hear the words? Interpretation: do you understand the words? Evaluation/judging: do you accept or reject the words? Responding: do you take a final action that results from the conversation?

He also asks each participant to put together a chart of the 25 most significant people in their life, and categorize that list into a top-five list. Often, when examining this list , participants find that the most significant people in their lives are not the ones they listen to well. Making these connections is the first step on the road to becoming a good listener, he explained.

How to be an active listener:Anyone can learn how to be an effective listener if he or she is willing to commit the time and energy. In the first place, listening breaks down due to lack of attention – most people do not realize that there is a process to listening breaks down due to lack of attention-most people do not realize that there is a process to listening ,and that process revolves around a purpose ,says Steil. It is the listener’s responsibility to make sure that he or she understands the other party’s

purpose and that their mutual purposes are aligned. In other words, you may have to listen to someone else’s small talk or venting –no matter how much you want to walk away –before you can get the information you want or need. IT managers often do not feel like they have the time for small talk, which can be a big mistake. There is also the problem of selective listening: some people listen well on subjects close to their heart, but on other topics, they do not hear a thing. ‘In the tech world, a lot of people have attitudes that work against them’, Steil said. It is crucial that IT managers pay attention to emotions & distractions. According to Steil, emotional triggers include people, topics, & language. If a politician you loathe is on CNN discussing the war in Iraq, your feelings for the politician may override his or her message, which could be a valuable one. Conversely, you may respect a politician or have netural feelings for him or her, but the topic of war is a negative one for you. As a result, your first reaction is to tune out. Listeners must be able to filter those emotions & understand how they impact their ability to listen. Distractions include noise in the room , people walking in & out of the office, e-mails popping up on the screen, or a person’s own physical or emotional discomfort unrelated to the conversation. ‘Good listeners identify & deal with [distractions] as best they can’, Steil said. If anything might be unclear, he added, good listeners will take the time to ask or clarify..

Questions:1) Do you believe that a skill like listening can be developed by hiring a professional

who through training and other activities will help people become better listeners? Give your suggestions…

2) ‘Steil suggested that, if listening was a corporate quality they wanted to convey to the public, the company’s staffers should first learn about listening themselves.’ Justify the above point in the light of actural business situations...

3) In the case, steil says that we listen most carelessly to the people who are most important in our priorities list. Do you really buy this argument? Give illustrations from your daily life to substantiate your point.

4) ‘Good listeners identify & deal with [distractions] as best they can’, Steil says. How would you interpret the above statement, in the light of the fact that distractions are bound to be present in any kind of communication……

5) How can organizations at large try to be better listeners? List some examples/situations where corporations have gained by being good listeners & some examples where companies that have failed to be good listeners have suffered enormously.