The Skill that Drives All Effective Communication

The following is from the script of the film, “Thirteen Days,” written by David Self about the Cuban Missile Crisis. The interchange is between Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (played by Dylan Baker) and Admiral George Whelan Anderson, Jr., the Chief of Naval Operations (played by Madison Mason).

McNamara

I believe the President made it clear that there would be no firing on ships without his expressed permission.

Anderson

With all due respect, Mr. Secretary, we were not firing on the ship. Firing on a ship means attacking the ship. We were not attacking the ship. We were firing over it.

McNamara

This was not the President's intention when he gave that order. What if the Soviets don't see the distinction? What if they make the same mistake I just did? There will be no firing anything near ANY Soviet ships without my expressed permission. Is that understood, Admiral?

Anderson

Yes, sir.

McNamara

And I will only issue such instructions when ordered to by the President.

You don't understand a thing, do you, Admiral? This isn't a blockade. This, all this, is language—a new vocabulary the likes of which the world has never seen. This is President Kennedy communicating with Secretary Khrushchev.


I use this interchange to represent my point that there is one skill that drives all effective communication, and that skill is Listening. I’m not talking about some easy-to-understand model for active listening that purports that the key is repeating back what you hear. I’m talking about truly forcing yourself to listen to what the other person is saying, showing, and feeling.

In the above example, Admiral Anderson had listened to and obeyed the President’s order to avoid firing on ships, but he had missed the message. Likewise, President Kennedy was hoping that Soviet Secretary Khrushchev would listen to his message that by not firing on the ship, Kennedy was looking for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Fortunately, Khrushchev got the message.

This drives home the point that effective listening is not about just the words—it’s about understanding everything the speaker is conveying through his or her words, body language, tone of voice, and overall demeanor. In order to do this effectively, you need to shut yourself off and focus only on the other person. This sounds easy, but it is the hardest thing for any of us to do, and it runs completely counterintuitive to everything we generally know and/or have been taught.

To test out this idea, find a young child and ask him or her to explain something in which he or she is interested. As the child is talking, you can actually hear your brain processing the information and trying to make sense of it, rather than just listening to what the child is saying.

In our desire to put things into compartments, we process information as we hear it, inadvertently throwing away those elements we believe to be nonsensical. However, by doing so, we are forming the message to fit into our way of thinking and what we expect the speaker to say. Once we start doing that, we are no longer truly listening.

So, how do you listen effectively? It involves training yourself to:

• Shut off the “processing” aspect of your brain.
• Block out all distractions, internal or external.
• Suspend disbelief—don’t evaluate.
• Use all of your senses to absorb the entire message.
• Take notes.

Taking notes is essential, because it allows you to keep your brain clear for more content. Trying to hold the message in your head can block further information from getting in. Write it down, clear your brain, and refer to your notes later.

So why is Listening the skill that drives all effective communication? Let’s examine the other basic communication skills—Building Rapport, Questioning, and Providing Information:

• Listening enables Building Rapport by providing you with information about the speaker’s experiences, views, values, and personal situation around which that rapport can be built.
• With regard to Questioning, the best questions involve asking the speaker to expand on basic information he or she has already provided to find out what’s really on his or her mind. You can only ask these types of questions if you have truly listened to the speaker’s message.
• Providing Information to another person is only effective if that information is perceived as relevant by that person. The only way to ascertain that relevance is by listening.

It’s pretty straightforward. The more effectively you can listen, the more successful your overall communication will be.