Chapter 2

Listening to Understand

Thinking is hard. There are so many obstacles that we put in our own way when it comes to thinking; we don't have enough time or talent or creativity. We are constantly distracted by social media or children or pets. Life, man.

Thinking under pressure is even more difficult. With a time constraint put on the process, thinking can feel downright impossible. We can experience tunnel vision, a real experience brought on by not breathing, which limits oxygen and blood to the brain, which in turn limits that same blood and oxygen going to the eyes. (Yes, yes, smarter people will explain this more scientifically but basically this is what's happening.)

Self‐judgment, criticism, lack of confidence and self‐esteem all contribute to the ability or lack thereof to think quickly or creatively. Overthinking can lead to paralysis and indecision. Information overload can give us too many options, so much that we can't pick one idea and move on it. I call this the Cheesecake Factory effect. There are so many damned options on that menu that I always end up getting the same thing (jambalaya, in case you are wondering). Thinking, at its worst, is often focused on the negative aspects of what is going on or what might go wrong.

Thinking is also a deeply internal activity. By its nature it is introspective, focusing on what is on the inside and cutting out the external noise. For so many of us shutting off those outside distractions is a huge challenge. Focusing inward is not something most of us get to do on a regular basis, be it because of our jobs, families, lifestyles, or the culture that we are brought up in.

The modern world is basically designed to make thinking and focusing incredibly hard. So much so that we even now have drugs specifically designed to help us focus and pay attention. If that isn't a sign that artificial intelligence will soon be taking over running our lives, then I don't know what is.

Listening, on the other hand, is something that we are forced to do every day. Listening is the main way most of us receive information, both simple and complex. It is a function and a skill that we begin developing at birth. From the first soothing sounds a parent makes to comfort a newborn baby, we hear things and begin to process that information and try to make some kind of sense of it.

Listening is done passively all the time. In the car listening to radio, watching TV, in class or in a meeting, or listening to your boring‐ass friend tell another one of their pointless stories about what they did last weekend. Passive listening takes no real effort. Much like breathing, it just happens. We don't sit down on the couch and consciously say to ourselves “Okay, I now have to listen to Game of Thrones as I also watch it.”

How much information we retain is a different matter, but the act of passive listening is mostly subconscious and does not require much thinking or effort to do so. Anybody can listen, and in fact almost everybody in the entire world already does.

People ask me all the time what is the most critical skill for a successful improv comedian to develop. Most think that it is the ability to be funny or to come up with ideas out of nowhere. Some people think it is a gift that comes naturally, the ol' “you either got it or you don't” syndrome. Many assume that you need to be extroverted and have incredible charisma or a larger‐than‐life personality. None of this is correct.

The single most important thing that makes an improv actor successful on stage is his or her ability to listen. To the other actors. To the audience. The concentration point is always on the other person, hearing what they are saying and reacting to that.

We are trained in improv to focus our attention on the other person. To listen to what they are saying and respond to what we have heard, not what we think. This is a very different style of listening from passive listening. Improv actors and comedians are trained to actively listen. The improv actor focuses on what is being said and tries to truly understand what they are hearing. Actor A then responds to the dialogue that was just spoken by actor B. Instead of thinking of something to say or trying to invent some kind of funny response, all actor A has to do is respond to what actor B just said. Actor A's concentration is solely on the sentence just spoken by actor B. In that sentence there will be plenty of details to respond to. Let's look at an example. We will set the scene in a train station:

Let's take a look at this scene. Aside from it being a fairly poorly written improv scene (it played a lot better live on stage), this is a good example of how listening to your scene partner will give you as an actor all the information you need to respond. With the first line of dialogue Bob states, “Looks like the train is running late again.” Helen only has to process this information and respond, “Unbelievable!” That is all. Helen did not have to invent any crazy scenario or pull some amazing concept out of the ether. She simply listened to Bob and responded to what she heard.

Helen's next line of dialogue “This is going to make me late for my job interview” adds context as to why she is waiting for the train and how that train being late will affect her. Bob only needs to respond to what Helen just said. All he has to do is find one thing to reference in Helen's response.

In this example Bob focuses on the fact that Helen is late for a “job interview.” This allows Bob to respond in a very simple and natural way with the question “What company are you interviewing with?” No wild invention or clever responses needed. Helen in turn now only needs to answer Bob's question. In this instance my answer (I'm playing both the role of Bob and Helen) is somewhat more elaborate for comedic effect. It would work just as well if Helen had said:

· A bank

· A library

· Dunkin' Donuts

· Anything the hell she wanted to say

Bob then reacts to what he hears and defines a relationship to what Helen has just said, in this case by being the CEO of the company she is going to interview with.

By listening to each other and responding to what is being said, Bob and Helen have removed “overthinking” from the communication process. This was not passive listening, though. With each sentence Bob and Helen picked out one detail to understand and drive their response.

I know, you're probably saying to yourself “That's it? Obviously this is what has to happen. It is what people do all the time.” I beg to differ. Let me show you how that scene or scenes like it have often played out. We will get the exact same scenario of a train station:

Beyond the astoundingly bad dialogue, we see two people who have heard the initial idea of “train station” but are not listening to each other at all. Each person is working on and sticking to their own agenda. With each separate line of dialogue, both Bob and Helen have to keep inventing ideas.

Eventually a couple of things will happen. First, Bob and Helen will most likely run out of new ideas. Second, it is pretty obvious that they are not on the same page and the conversation will end up being confusing and frustrating for both of them.

I have witnessed conversations like this both on stage and off thousands of times. People talking around a subject but not actually to each other. When we talk “at” each other, as opposed to “with” to each other, it puts us in our own head and forces us to have to think. Instead of responding and creating a give‐and‐take of ideas, we often get caught up in a loop where the individual keeps restating the same idea or versions of that idea. Nothing original is being created, or if it is, it is either one‐sided or competing against another idea.

This kind of conversation often leads the feelings of frustration. That sense of “You aren't listening to me” or “You are not hearing what I'm saying.” This creates a disconnect between the two people trying to communicate with each other, which can lead people to shut down communication altogether. The “screw it, why bother” attitude takes over, and the exchange of ideas comes to a screeching halt.

Another version of the “Not Listening” trap is “Predictive Listening” or “Thinking Ahead.” We have all been in conversations in which we have thought to ourselves “I've heard that one thousand times before.” We hear something familiar, maybe even something that we have heard a thousand times before, and instinctually we tune out, because we know what we are about to hear. This leads us as the listener to come up with a response well before the person speaking to us has finished their entire thought. Typically we begin to tune out and adopt the attitude of “Wrap it up, dude, I know what you're going to say and here is my brilliant response.”

The problem here is that what may have started out as something we have heard one thousand times before has a very different ending. By not actively listening all the way through, we miss critical information and in fact respond to our own preconceived thoughts and ideas.

Here is an actual situation that happened to one of our clients at Improv Asylum, discussed during a corporate training session:

One of our salespeople was trying to close a large sale to a new client. When presented with the total cost of the service we were providing (a software product), the client responded “That is more expensive then what we were hoping for. What we are really concerned about is if you can deliver what we need on time, within the short time frame that we need it.”

Well, the salesperson stopped listening when they heard “…more expensive than we were hoping for…” They assumed the price was the main factor in determining if the sale was going to be made. The salesperson started thinking about their response without ever hearing the end of the client's concern.

The salesperson replied: “You know what, as a new client we can offer you a discount of 15 percent off the price.”

The client responded: “That's great, we are still worried about you being able to deliver the product on time we need.”

The salesperson responded: “Oh, we can definitely get this expedited for you so you can meet your deadline.”

Had the salesperson listened all the way through, they would have understood that the client's concern or pain point wasn't necessarily price but rather time of delivery. The salesperson may have unnecessarily given away 15 percent of the sales price. And if you think about it, the salesperson could have used the fact that the company could get the client what they needed within the time requirements, thereby justifying the cost.

That is a perfect example of not listening all the way through and assuming what is going to be said. We all do it all the time and it often leads to missing new or critical information. Missing that kind of information is death in an improv scene. The actors won't be on the same page and the audience will be confused. The actors will have to work that much harder to come to an agreement and be able to move the scene forward.

While it is all just make‐believe for us on the stage, missing this kind of information in a business environment has all kinds of potential consequences, from affecting sales to enabling a culture of colleagues that don't listen to each other, which leads to low morale and a lack of innovation. In personal relationships, it often leads to that feeling of “You're not listening to me!” That is never a great place to be in our relationships.

So what can we do to get better at active listening? While there are all kinds of high‐level theories around listening and how you can be better at it, I like to keep it simple because I am a simple man. Like anything, the more you practice, the better you will get. A technique I use is the “immediate playback” technique.

Here is how it works: When you are listening to someone speak, play the game of repeating in your head what the other person is saying as they are saying it, word for word (you can do this out loud, but you might come across as slightly insane).

This is a great exercise to do when you're forced to sit in excruciatingly boring meetings. Before I became the person who was boring everybody in meetings, I would try to stay engaged by repeating sentence by sentence or word by word what the speaker was saying. Doing this forced me to stay focused on what exactly was being said and would stop my mind, at least for a little while, from wandering to other topics.

Another technique is to make and hold eye contact with the speaker. Eye contact is probably one of the most, if not the most, powerful ways that humans can communicate with each other. (With animals as well. Have you ever noticed how disconcerting it is when an animal locks eyes and stares at you? There is something primordial about looking into another being's eyes.) When two people have eye contact, it's nearly impossible to think about anything other than what the person is communicating to you in that moment.

Obviously, as the listener, you do not have full control of whether eye contact is being maintained if you are in a setting where you are just receiving information. But if you are in a conversation you can initiate the eye contact that will allow you to focus on what is being said.

One thing that makes eye contact so powerful is that if you initiate the contact, it is very difficult for the other person to break it. Therefore you are not only increasing your own attentiveness but you are forcing the attentiveness of the other person.

Eye contact is a common trick in public speaking and live performance. If you keep making and holding eye contact with the various members of the audience, they have to listen to you in the moment, and also are cognizant that you may be coming back to them. That is why you will often hear the advice, “Don't just talk to the crowd, talk to individuals in the crowd.”

The benefits of concentrated and active listening are the same for groups and organizations as they are for individuals. When a team employs Active Listening, the benefits are exponentially increased. The individuals in the group feel like they are being heard and therefore have a higher level of engagement and “buy‐in” to the culture or organization.

We are all big boys and girls and understand that not every decision is going to be exactly what we want it to be. For most people, as long as they feel like they have truly been heard and have had a voice in the discussion, they can accept the decision more easily when it does not go their way.

By focusing on other people when they speak and actively listening to what it is they're saying, our minds are freed from thinking, which allows us the ability to respond. “Thinking fast” is more a function of being able to respond to what you hear than of thinking of something to say. This in turn allows us to understand and process more information, which invariably leads us to make often‐unexpected connections. And making unexpected connections is just another way of saying “making shit up.”