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Conquer Listening Barriers: Do You Get Stuck on Keywords?

Most everyone can list out common listening barriers. Surrounding noise, anger, and fatigue always make the list. You can conquer listening barriers like these with rest, settling the anger, and quieting the noise. There is one listening barrier that often operates without your awareness.

Conquer Listening Barriers: Unstick from Keywords. Image by Cliff via Flickr.

Image by Cliff via Flickr Creative Commons License.

Conquer Listening Barriers: Unstick from Keywords

Think of words that immediately capture your attention. Do they also trap your listening because you’ve heard them so often?

Example:

As I teach technical support teams how to conquer listening barriers with customers, I give them this frequent customer request to assess:

The customer says, “I had trouble logging in all morning. Now I’m logged in and this isn’t working.” A few listen to whole description and aren’t blocked by the keywords ‘trouble logging in’. They work to understand what isn’t working.

Several get stuck on those keywords and mistakenly work on getting the customer logged in. Not surprisingly, the customer gets frustrated and upset.

Conquer Listening Barriers of Keywords

• List the keywords that most often trap your listening.
• Question yourself when you hear those keywords to stop your assumptions.
• Restate what you think you’ve heard. Other’s feedback helps conquer your listening barriers.

Related Posts:

Listening Beyond Our Boundaries
Listening Responsibility: 5 Reasons People Interrupt Us

©2016 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, if you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com for permission and guidelines. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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~Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™

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