Is Anybody Listening? by Alexander Hiam .........................................................................................................

The thing I remember best about the last "real" job I had—the kind you wear a dark suit to every day—is my exit inteview with the senior president. He opened the proccedings by saying he was surprised that I would chuck a promising career with a big company to f out on my own. He worried that my decision intimated some serious problems with the company itself. Was it too stofling for creative thinkers? Was carrer progress too slow for the new generation of managers? Not enough entrepreneurial opportunities?

Thus, he rounded up all the usual suspects, making it clear in no uncertain terms that he wanted to find out which was responsible, block it up, and throw away the key. I was impressed by his interest in my views, but as the interview wore on I realized it was going to be awfully tough to share them. Each time he posed a question he leaned forward, expectantly, pausing for my reply. But just as I got out my first words or two, he leaned back again, his eyes wandering to the ceiling, and began to answet the question himself.

So it went for 20 minutes—an impressively energetic monologue, punctuated with halfhearted mutterings from my side of the big mohagany desk—until finally the VP looked at his big gold watch, stood up, offered me a large, hard hand to shake, and ushered me out. I had failed to complete even one sentence, but my interrogator did not seem perturbed. In fact, he was all smiles as I left, wishing me the best and thanking me for my helpful views and suggestions.

In the decade-plus since, I have often thought back to that interview. It reminds me of an odd truth: Something about the mangement experience tends to hobble the listening skills of even the best-intentioned managers. Most managers are sincere in their desire to share ideas and information. Yet, in the end, their attempts at dialogues often turn into monologues.

To counter this tendency of management to listen to itself, many trainers and consultants find themselves shouting over the din. This effort tends to alter our messages, forcing us to prune back to one or a few simple essentials. Today's most successful consultants to senior management hardly consult at all. They have evolved into entertainers, crisscrossing the globe by jet to put on fabulous presentations—monologues in the other direction.

Yes, I confess, I sometimes find myself oversimplifying my own messages—and seeking the bully pulpits of convention podiums and training-room stages instead of rolling up my sleeves and engaging in meaningful but painful dialogues. I don't really believe managers only need to learn, say, three simple strategies in order to become great leaders. But I fear if I share even half the complexities of such subject, I'll loose my audience. And so I get caught up in the dynamics of the communications bottleneck—a bottleneck caused by unconscious selective deafness.

Admittedly, the monologue syndrome is far more commoon at executive levels than elsewhere. But the same organizations that turn up top managers into one-sided conversationalists can turn rank-and-file employees into one-sided thinkers. You may be able to get a word in edgewise when talking to a middle manager or the front-line staff, but your chances of getting a new idea in edgewise are slim indeed. When the top brass doesn't listen, why should anybody else?

The best role trainers and consultants can play in such circumstances, I've come to believe, is to model alternative behaviors. We need to listen better and differently, to reach for and consider alternative ideas, to make sure we don't create our own idea bottlenecks. We need to emphasize the importance of listening and open-minded thinking as prerequisite to progress in all our training and development programs.

Most companies aren't as bad at listening as the one I fled so many years ago, but all can benefit from improved listening skills nonetheless. And I'm certain that... Oh, excuse me! Did you have something you wanted to say?