Skills for effective listeners
September 29, 2008
Listeners, as we learned last week, can be grouped in three broad categories. These are marginal, evaluative, and active listeners. The most effective are active listeners. Most leaders have moved beyond marginal listening but fluctuate back and forth between evaluative and active listeners. Here are some steps to take to become more of an active listener.
The first step is to focus our energy on listening. Listening well is hard work. Too many leaders are passive listeners, casually paying attention to messages rather than bringing focused attention to the task. While multi-tasking one day when an employee was in my office, he said, “Can you look at me when we talk? It helps me know you’re listening.” Ouch! Good listening means focusing your attention on the communicator.
The next step, which often goes along with the previous one is to fight off distractions. Three common distractions come to mind. The first is emotionally laden words. When someone uses profanity or curses God’s name, it may be hard to keep your focus. Likewise, when someone is negative, critical, or harsh about people we care about, it can be difficult to stay dialed in to what is being said. A second distraction can be a speaker’s idiosyncrasies. The funniest one I’ve ever encountered was when I was painting houses to pay my way through seminary. We painted a man’s house who ended every sentence with the word, “hello.” It was difficult to keep from laughing, hello! Another set of distractions is external distractions. These can include everything from a ringing cell phone to a room too warm for a meaningful meeting. All of these distractions limit communication. Good listeners limit or remove distractions.
The third step is learning to control your emotions. There are certain subjects, for example, that make me angry. Hearing about child abuse, marital infidelity, conflict between believers, and leaders who abuse their followers connects with my angry side. Reacting angrily, however, to people who talk with me about these issues is counterproductive. One of the best strategies for becoming a better listener is learning to control your emotions – particularly your anger.
Another step is learning to read non-verbal communication. Non-verbal communication includes all aspects of communication except the words spoken. This includes vocal tone and vocal rate. It also includes sounds like deep sighs. Facial expressions and body language are also included. Learning to sense the full meaning of a person’s communication requires reading non-verbal clues. Estimates on the amount of total communication that is non-verbal range as high as 90%. This underscores how essential it is to develop these skills.
Finally, good listeners know how to ask good questions. Rather than asking questions that can be answered “yes” or “no,” good listeners ask open-ended questions requiring more expansive answers. Good listeners ask good questions to facilitate conversation.
This outline will help you become a more active listener. It is only an outline. Go to work on these skills and discover the difference as you amplify them.
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Learning to Listen
September 22, 2008
For me, improving my people skills (see last week) started with an intentional effort to learn how to listen more effectively. The process for learning to do this involved extensive research (hundreds of sources) on the art of listening and listening skill development as it has been applied in various settings like counseling, family relationships, corporate management, etc. The presenting reason for this research was my Doctor of Ministry project entitled, “Developing Effective Listening Skills for Personal Evangelism.” While the project was the presenting reason, the real reason was my personal quest to significantly improve my interpersonal skills.
My first insight about listening was discovering there were various levels of listening. These include marginal, evaluative, and active listening. Marginal listeners are the least effective listeners. They hear the sounds but not the words or the meaning. Husbands who listen like this are the “yes dear” responders. They know their wife is talking but they are buried in the newspaper (or their own world) and have no idea (and little interest in) what people are saying to them. Thankfully, most leaders are not stuck in this mode. But if you are, you have to move forward quickly!
Evaluative listeners are people who hear words but don’t discern their full meaning. They can parrot back what was said to them but they are obtuse about non-verbal and tonal indicators of true meaning. These listeners are great on facts, figures, semantics, and statistics but poor on empathy, sensibility, and true understanding. Evaluative listeners can tell you what another person said to them, but not what the person really meant. They lack discernment and appreciation for the full spectrum of meaning in the messages they receive.
Most leaders are evaluative listeners some of the time. That is normal. No one is fully dialed in to every nuance of every message they receive. Sometimes, even when we try to fully understand others, we miss some of their meaning. There are even some situations where evaluative listening may be appropriate when the focus is on “just the facts.” This kind of listening isn’t bad, just inadequate if it is all you know how to do.
The best listeners are active listeners. These listeners hear both the content and the intent of the messages being sent. They are aware of verbal and visual signals that accompany the words being spoken. They also send verbal and visual signals to indicate understanding and facilitate further dialogue and communication. Active listeners probe for feelings, nuances, and deeper issues. No, active listeners don’t turn every conversation into a counseling session! But they do work hard at hearing the total message – words, verbal, and non-verbal signals.
These listeners practice sensing (recognizing and appreciating nonverbal signals), attending (sending signals to indicate attentiveness and receptiveness), and responding (keeping the sender engaged until full communication has been achieved). These are skills you can learn! Through seminars and books on listening, as well as practicing with family members and friends, you can learn the skills of an active listener. It was a revelation (and a good day for me), when I discovered these were skills that could be learned. Good listeners are made, not born!
Improving my listening skills was my foundation for improving interpersonal skills. Maybe, just maybe, it could also help you in this area!
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People Skills
September 15, 2008
One of our trustees, a layman from the east coast, recently told me, “I have watched pastors for years and the reason most of them are ineffective is they don’t know how to work with people. It’s not usually doctrinal problems or poor preaching skills that cost them their jobs. It’s the inability to work with people.”
My years as a state executive director, working with hundreds of pastors, confirm his observation. While about one pastor per year would be dismissed for moral failure, almost no one was ever dismissed for doctrinal reasons. But relational breakdowns between pastors and church members were frequent reasons for dismissal. National surveys by LifeWay Research and other organizations have consistently confirmed this pattern. Pastors and other leaders with limited people skills are not very effective.
My heart goes out to pastors and other leaders who struggle with relationships because my early pastoral ministry was characterized by poor performance in this area. My first pastorate was sometimes rocky, and the bumps were often caused by my poor people skills. My mother, who was not an active church attender at the time, once visited our church. After hearing me preach on Sunday morning, she said over lunch, “Son, you are a good preacher, but if you don’t learn how to work with people you will never make it as a pastor.”
It incensed me she would make such a comment after only being in our church one day. It also made me angry because she said the same thing others were also telling me. Finally, it made me angry because it was so obvious! Fortunately, many good people in that church saw something in me that made them want to help me, rather than attack me. And, frankly, God gave me the grace to acknowledge these shortcomings (and their cause, which was painful) and work on them. Now, while all my people skills are learned skills (almost none come naturally!), significant growth has enabled me to lead more effectively.
My quest to learn to relate to people in more healthy ways started in an unusual place – a doctor of ministry colloquium and an all night drive home with my wife, debriefing that experience and what God was trying to accomplish through it. The colloquium was a frank peer group discussion about each person’s family history and its impact on our present behavior. For the first time, my insecurities and lack of people skills made sense to me as results of my dysfunctional upbringing. And, for the first time, my inability to work with people (lack of empathy, understanding, compassion, patience, and value of other's opinions) was explained.
Bottom line, I learned through that experience and debriefing with my wife why I was acting the way I was acting and, more importantly, I could change. The next few years were an intentional quest to break old patterns of devaluing others because of my warped view of relationships and learn new ways of relating to people. It was painful but the progress was rewarding and continues to be as my leadership effectiveness improves because my relational skills continue to improve.
Next week, tune it to discover the key skill I learned that helped turn the corner on improving my relationships!
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When Conflict Comes to Church-4
September 8, 2008
Over the past three weeks, we have been considering the issue of conflict in church. My perspective on this subject has changed over the years and these short essays summarize some of what I have learned. We have previously considered some myths about church conflict and two passages from the Bible about church conflicts. Today, let’s take a fresh look at a familiar story of conflict in the early church. This one is about
conflict over personnel.
Barnabas was a significant leader in the church at Antioch. When the gospel was first planted there, a church emerged. The Jerusalem church sent Barnabas to investigate the movement of the gospel among the Gentiles and he became the first pastor in Antioch. Soon thereafter, he sent for Paul and added him to the teaching team (Acts 11). They had a prolonged and profitable ministry. Ultimately, the church commissioned Paul and Barnabas as the first missionary team (Acts 13). After a successful trip, the team found themselves defending the gospel at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15). Without a doubt, Paul and Barnabas were the dynamic duo of the early church!
So, it comes as quite a surprise they ended their ministerial partnership and parted company over a personnel matter. Paul proposed a second missionary journey and Barnabas agreed. He wanted to take his nephew, John Mark, with them (Acts 15:36-41). Paul, however, “did not think it appropriate to take along this man who had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not gone on with them to the work.” Mark had accompanied the team on the first trip, but for unknown reasons, had come home early. Paul considered him disqualified from further service.
Barnabas and Paul had such a “sharp disagreement that they parted company.” The confrontation was apparently bitter and divisive. Think about how intense this conflict must have been. Two partners who had served together for years, had grown a strong church, had shared life on the road, and had battled for doctrinal purity separated over a personnel dispute. There are few conflicts in church more divisive than personnel matters. Still today, people choose sides to support certain leaders and withdraw their support from others. Personnel matters can be a problem!
When church leaders struggle over personnel issues, other leaders are often drawn into the struggle. Paul “chose Silas and departed….” I have often wondered if when Paul said, “I’ll just take Silas and leave” if Silas might have said, “Wait a minute. How did I get drawn into this mess?” Personnel problems often force other leaders to take sides, even against their friends or former associates.
Personnel conflicts also require church members to choose sides and sometimes to endorse or terminate an employee. When Paul and Silas formed a new team, they were “commended to the grace of the Lord by the brothers.” In other words, the church endorsed them, blessed them, and sent them on their way. No such blessing is recorded for Barnabas and Mark!
While it is risky to interpret from silence, to guess what might have happened, the omission of any endorsement of the church at Antioch of Barnabas and Mark is striking. Barnabas had a long and meaningful relationship with the church at Antioch. He had been the first pastor, the first missionary, and the first Jewish leader to vouch for the genuineness of their faith to the Jewish church in Jerusalem. Yet, despite that heritage, Barnabas apparently left with Mark but without the church’s blessing. That, to me, is a striking omission.
So, what can we learn from this story? First, good leaders can disagree over personnel – about fitness for service, suitability for a position, or about loyalty to their vision. Second, when leaders disagree about personnel issues, difficult decisions may lead to separation. This might involve assignment to a new position or termination. Third, when a personnel decision is made it will probably lead to some, perhaps much, dissatisfaction or frustration. Nonetheless, a church has to make personnel decisions and move forward, managing the consequences as they come. Finally, don’t forget to take the long view. Later, at the end of his life while writing his final words, Paul asked for Mark to visit him because he was “useful to me in the ministry (2 Timothy 4:11).
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When Conflict Comes to Church-3
September 2, 2008
For the past two weeks, we have considered the issue of conflict in church. My perspective on this problem has changed significantly over the past 30 years in ministry. Some of my former perspective was summarized in five myths about church conflict (see part 1). Then, last week, we started considering biblical examples of church conflict. The first one was conflict between church members. Now, let’s consider a second example of conflict in the Bible:
Conflict between church leaders.
Peter and Paul are two titans of the New Testament. They stand above everyone else as preachers, writers, and leaders. They are the pre-eminent leaders of the early church, more responsible than any other leaders for the advance of the church in the first generation after Jesus’ ascension.
It may surprise you to learn they had an intense, open, public conflict. Paul told the story in Galatians 2:11-14. In summary, Paul heard Peter was contradicting the gospel by his behavior among the Gentiles. Peter had stopped eating with Gentiles, thus withdrawing Christian fellowship from them. Peter, at least in Paul’s mind, had become a Judaizer – insisting Gentiles become Jews as part of their conversion to Jesus. Peter’s actions were also troubling because he had influenced Barnabas to join him.
Paul uses strong language to describe his conclusion about Peter’s actions. Peter acted “because he feared those from the circumcision party.” Those Peter influenced had “joined his hypocrisy.” Paul felt Peter was “deviating from the truth of the gospel.” Being controlled by fear, being a hypocrite, and compromising the gospel are strong accusations! Paul minced no words in describing his conclusions about Peter’s actions.
Paul felt so strongly about this situation he “opposed (Peter) to his face” and confronted Peter “in front of everyone.” Wow! What a church meeting that must have been! Paul confronted Peter to his face in front of the church, accused him of being controlled by the fear of men, of being a hypocrite, and of compromising the gospel. This makes conflicts between church leaders today seem quite tame! Paul and Peter had a major confrontation, a public showdown recorded for posterity in the Bible.
What can we learn from this story? First, church leaders have conflict. Conflict is not reserved for immature, carnal believers or only for the casually involved. Sometimes, the most spiritually mature, committed, dynamic leaders will have conflict. Second, conflict is necessary when it relates to important doctrinal matters like the nature of the gospel. Don’t be misled by the issue of Peter not eating with Gentiles. The underlying issue in this conflict is the nature of the gospel. The gospel can’t be compromised and leaders are responsible to stand for the gospel, no matter the conflict that results. Third, some conflict can be public and intense. Christians don’t like to fight, much less fight in public. We want to present ourselves as a unified, gentle, loving people. While this should usually be our goal, when the stakes are high (like the nature of the gospel) our quest for truth trumps other goals.
What does this mean for you? If you are a church leader, it means you may have some conflict with other church leaders. Just make sure the conflict matters! Make sure the conflict is over something as important as the nature of the gospel. We lessen the respect our followers and unbelievers have for us when we diminish our leadership offices with trivial conflict.
If you are a church leader, you may also be involved in public conflict. That is the proverbial heat you have to stand if you stay in the kitchen! Assuming a Christian leadership role almost guarantees you will have some conflict – particularly if you stand for the gospel.
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