I’d like to start this week’s BLArticle™ with a small confession. I’m about to try and teach you a thing or two about being a better listener. If I told you that I was a wonderful listener, my wife Ronni’s eyes would be rolling and my nose would be growing.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt found the polite small talk of social functions at the White House somewhat tedious. He maintained that those present on such occasions rarely paid much attention to what was said to them. To illustrate the point, he would sometimes amuse himself by greeting guests with the words, “I murdered my grandmother this morning.” The response was invariably one of polite approval. On one occasion, however, the president happened upon an attentive listener. On hearing Roosevelt’s outrageous remark, the guest replied diplomatically, “I’m sure she had it coming to her.”

Like so many people, I struggle with being a good listener. I try very hard. I’ve read about being a better listener. I’ve attended seminars about being a better listener. I’ve written about being a better listener. I have even put a module or two in my training programs and have taught people how to be a better listener. So, at the risk of being a hypocrite let me take an unconventional approach and try to explain this from a different angle.

Rather than join the masses and tell you what you need to do to improve, I’d like to take a contrarian view of this issue; I’d like to discuss what NOT to do, so you can improve. Some years ago, I attended a listening seminar, and I was intrigued by a list that was presented to us of listening habits to avoid. This list was compiled from a survey that was sent out asking people to list the listening habits that most annoyed them. I’m sure you’ll see a few you can identify with. Here are the top ten things people said they didn’t like:

1) Interrupt me when I am talking.
2) Never look at me.
3) Make me feel that I wasting their time. They doodle or draw pictures.
4) Continually fidget with a pencil, paper clip, etc., looking at it rather than listening to me.
5) Constantly ignore me to take incoming phone calls.
6) Always try to get ahead of me, presenting my point or finishing my sentence.
7) Rephrase what I say in such a way that they put words in my mouth.
8) Never smile at me.
9) Everything I say reminds them of an experience they had or something they heard recently, interrupting me with, “That reminds me…”
10) Twitch and turn constantly, just waiting for me to stop so they can take over the conversation.

We’ll save a few proactive moves for the future, but the bottom line is there aren’t a whole lot of shortcuts here; listening takes hard work and practice. By learning what annoys others, it provides a blueprint of good listening habits we should look to incorporate. Now, did we solve the world’s listening woes in this week’s tidy BLArticle™? Probably not, but hopefully, by finding a habit or two we can avoid, we took a step in the right direction.