How do maintenance folks listen? How does anyone listen? Are there different kinds of listening?
I submit there are vastly different kinds of listening. The kind of listening applied to a situation will determine the amount and quality of information you receive.
Visualize human listening as a sensitive microphone that vibrates to all the sounds within its operating specifications. Those vibrations are transmitted to the brain and interpreted. You, as the brain’s boss, have a lot of information coming in, so you set up “filters” to suit the situation.
By way of example, your listening filters will be different if:
- You’re in a high-rise building, you smell smoke and you hear noise outside your door.
- It is night and you are in a strange city in an iffy neighborhood.
- You are at a party with friends.
- You are diagnosing a problem on a unit that rolled into the shop.
The Brain’s Focus
The instrument doing the work – your ear – will continue to hear everything. The input to the brain will not appreciably change.
The interpreter – your brain – will focus on certain sounds and give them priority. If you change the circumstances in a common situation, you’re listening will change.
You listen one way to the safety speech given on an airplane before take-off. You listen entirely differently to the same safety speech after the plane starts to dive, twist, turn and shudder.
People don’t seem to listen unless there is a very good reason. This is almost a stereotype.
This is a capability designed to improve survival in the many situations where attention to some sonic detail will make a difference. What is not so clear is that the filters are activated by the opinions, emotions and history you have with the situation.
Filter Activation
If you have a driver or equipment operator who always complains about everything, it is extremely difficult to give him or her your full listening attention. This filter is often more insidious even then that. The filter is colored by your history with the person, whether you “like” the person and, perhaps, even whether you share the same politics, religion or other beliefs.
Your beliefs drive some of the listening. Psychologists call elements of this tendency confirmation bias. This is the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories.
For example, how hard is it to listen when you are arguing with someone who violently disagrees with you, and you them?
It’s An Art
Listening is an art that the best professionals – including maintenance personnel – practice.
The person coming to you often does not know what information they have that could be critical to your diagnosis of an equipment problem. You might have to probe and listen carefully, plus listen without some of the filters that are usually present.
When you think, “I’ve heard this a hundred times before,” you are not listening. You are actively filtering.
Your spouse nags you to fix something for the 10th time. What are they saying under the surface? Is there a message you are missing? Is there something serious going on?
Practice being a better listener.
- Learn to identify your filters.
- Can you “see” the filters active in the people around you?
- Practice listening with your filters turned off.
