By Glenn Withiam
Most managers consider themselves to be people who know how to listen. Unfortunately, your employees don't always agree with that assertion. There is more at stake here than a simple difference of opinion, the fact that managers listen effectively is the key to great excellent service. When your employees have the confidence that their ideas and concerns will be truly heard, they will create a great service environment for their customers.
Instead of relying on random impressions or comments, it's possible for managers to determine how effective their listening skills actually are, using the tools contained in a new report from the Cornell University Center for Hospitality Research.
The report "Building Managers' Abilities to Create Listening Environments," which is part of this Center's series of tools for the hospitality industry, can be downloaded, at no cost, on the page: chr.cornell.edu.
The assessment tools were created by Judi Brownell, a professor of management organization at the Cornell School of Hotel Management, based on her research and experience as a consultant and administrator.
As Brownell explains in her report, the case for effective listening begins with the importance of knowing what's happening within your organization. This involves more than proportions and reports, although they are also important. Excellent service depends, in part, on developing a culture in your organization that supports service. Because service is a team effort, it is essential that all employees know that their communications will be heard and understood.
A "listening environment" starts at the top, with a manager who clearly listens to his employees and responds appropriately. What Brownell has learned in her studies is that this is easier said than done, but it is not wise to say that it is heard effectively (only tooth and nail).
The report highlights three activities for managers that can contribute to a strong listening environment. These are: promoting a smooth flow of information through the organization, modeling behavior that reflects concerns for the individual employee, and using symbols to promote listening and communication. In all three activities, the essential point is that employees will follow and respond to the behavior set by the manager.
After having studied the aspects of listening and communication for several years, Brownell is convinced that it is not easy to become a person with excellent listening skills. Part of the problem is that the concept of listening is still not well understood and people do not even agree on a concrete definition of what constitutes an excellent ability to listen. For example, people with listening skills might not have execution skills and people will think they are not paying attention to them. People may also think that you don't listen to them simply because you disagree with their views. Both situations require the manager to show excellent listening skills, even if the outcome is not what employees expected.
Demonstrating good listening skills is particularly difficult under the pressure of day-to-day operations. Maybe a manager nods his head to show that he knows the employee is talking, but the timing is not appropriate for actual communication. When the employee realizes that the manager didn't really listen to him (or forgot about it), that employee thinks that the manager has no ability to listen, but what really happened is that he didn't find him at the appropriate time. Regardless of the cause of communication failures, Brownell cautions that managers should never underestimate the importance of knowing how to listen effectively about an organization's quality of service.
Six steps to listening
To help people learn to listen, Brownell developed a model that expresses the six elements for acquiring listening skills. Those elements are: hearing (or concentration), comprehension, memory, interpretation (or empathy), evaluation and response.
The assessment tools found in the report are based on these six points. The first questionnaire is a self-assessment that allows the manager to determine which of the six elements of listening needs more work, then, as a reality check, there is a second questionnaire, in the form of a survey, that allows associates to offer their assessment of the manager's listening abilities. Ideally, the results of these two tools should be reasonably matched. If not, the discrepancy in assessment scores will point the way to more effective listening abilities.
* Glenn Withiam is the director of publications at the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research.
