Practice Makes Perfect: Techniques for Better Listening in Healthcare

The benefits of good listening extend from one end of your personal life all the way to the other end of your professional life and touch every part in between. The more effective your listening, the stronger the relationships you build. The stronger your relationships, the greater personal fulfillment and professional success you have.

Successful leaders know and follow this formula for maximum performance. They invest in developing and applying their listening skills to form personal connections with the people around them, knowing the trust established in those relationship will foster productive communication. Employees who feel heard, really listened to, by their leaders are more loyal and productive than those who don’t.

At the risk of sounding dramatic, good listening by healthcare providers and caregivers can make a life or death difference. Administrators who listen to their employees and caregivers who listen to their patients are less likely to make mistakes and more likely to improve patient outcomes. Patients will often share information key to their care when they feel encouraged.

BENEFITS OF GOOD LISTENING

Some benefits of good listening are obvious, some less so. We find these to be good reminders of why we want to continue striving for better listening.

• Listening is an essential element in patient satisfaction. In a survey of 2000 consumers, 95% rated “listen to you” as very and extremely important to them.
• Mastering the art of listening paves the way to effective people leadership. Your team will solve problems faster when they feel what they say is important. When you apply your good listening skills, you develop their confidence and willingness to collaborate.
• People will like you more. Listening to your family and friends, coworkers and patients conveys the care and concern that will nurture their affection for you. Being a good leader takes more than being liked, but it definitely doesn’t hurt.
• Patients who feel heard are more invested in their care and willing to cooperate with instructions.
• You will have briefer conversations leaving more time for patient care. Good listening gets to the important information faster and leads to understanding and accuracy.

TYPES OF LISTENING

There are many types of listening, and not all of them are good. Know which to avoid, which to practice, and when to use each.

• ACTIVE This is the kind of listening you pretty much want to do always and can be part of other kinds of listening. It involves making eye contact, responding with encouraging non-verbals like head-nodding and leaning forward, allowing the speaker to finish his thought, and asking clarifying questions.
• EMPATHETIC or EMPATHIC Empathy is the ability to understand and share someone else’s feelings. Using this kind of listening when establishing an emotional connection is important. This goes beyond feeling sorry for someone and is free of judgment and suggestions.
• CRITICAL Contrary to empathic listening, critical listening actually requires judgment and suggestions. The listener is taking in the information from the speaker, asking questions to further understanding, and applying existing knowledge to make a decision.
• SELECTIVE This type of listening can also blend into biased listening where the content is colored by the listeners opinions, both of which should be avoided. Selective listening is when the listener is filtering out the information that doesn’t align with their beliefs or isn’t what they want to hear. This can often happen when receiving feedback.
• PSEUDO Pretending to listen to someone, while it has happened to all of us at one time or another, is not listening at all. The speaker will inevitably notice this is happening and it will damage your relationship. If you find your mind drifting and you can’t get into active listening, it’s best to be honest and postpone the discussion.

IMPROVE YOUR LISTENING SKILLS

What do you do if listening doesn’t come naturally to you? Like with any other skill, you can learn and practice to improve your performance. Even good listeners should practice techniques to get better.

• Remove your bad listening habits to make room for practicing good habits. If you tend to interrupt when you have a thought or question, focus on waiting for the speaker to pause to ask questions. If you find yourself regularly allowing interruptions, establish boundaries for your conversations.
• Be aware of and remove potential distractions. The surest way to make someone feel unimportant is to read a message on your watch or phone while they are talking to you. For some reason, many of us have come to think that we can do this without the other person noticing or that it’s acceptable to multitask when someone is talking with us. It is not. If you can’t resist the urge to look at your smart watch when it vibrates, take it off. Turn off any audible alerts on your computer and put the monitor to sleep. Put your phones, desk and mobile, on do not disturb.
• Recognize the needs of the speaker and adjust your listening style to them. Are they looking for guidance, affirmation, or just a sounding board? Pay attention to non-verbals and between-the-lines information so you can be what they need.
• Pay attention to your body language. Be attentive and relaxed. Sit back in your seat and keep your hands still to convey that you are unhurried and eager to listen. Use natural eye contact and movement to avoid looking zoned out or making the speaker self-conscious about their appearance.
• Take time to reflect. Whether it’s during pauses or at the end of the conversation, it’s important in some conversations to take time for information to sink in and develop a thoughtful response.
• Ask questions that clarify rather than derail. Sometimes during a conversation, an unimportant tidbit will jump out and spark a question about something tangential to the topic. Resist the urge to ask a question that will lead the speaker down an unintended path. For example, if a practitioner is updating you on the course of treatment for a patient who just transferred from another facility, don’t interrupt to ask the practitioner to confirm the rumor you heard about a previous coworker going to work there.
• Don’t blab. As a good listener, people will seek you out to share private information. Violating the confidence of those who trust you by sharing juicy tidbits will quickly vacate your status of good listener and remove the title of friend or respected coworker as well.

Relationships are borne from the trust you build through purposeful listening. Now that you understand the important role of listening and have some tools to advance your skills through practice, you are well-prepared to become the revered leader and caregiver in your workplace.