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Discerning & Comprehending the Five Listening Approaches
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Response to a Question Regarding the Personal Listening Profile
The Question: As I am reviewing the Personal Listening Profile, some of the definitions confuse me…and I am a bit worried that I might get grilled on it with my first session, as it is a tough crowd. My primary confusion is between discerning and comprehensive. In my own mind, when I think of discerning, it represents being able to “see the shades of grey” and be able to sort of “read between the lines”. When I read the Inscape definition, though, it speaks more to “gathering complete information… not necessarily making meaning of it.” In fact, Inscape defines Comprehensive as “understanding the meaning”… I would debate this… and see it is as more like comprehending. It almost feels to me that the meanings for Discerning and Comprehensive have been switched, and I am having a hard time getting my head around it. Can you offer some thoughts on how to explain this?
The Answer: When Dr. Miriam Kragness developed the Personal Listening Profile in the early 1990’s, she preferred using the ‘ive’ endings because that was how they were written in the research on which she was basing the profile. I wrote the Volume 2 Scripted Seminar in the Personal Listening Profile Facilitator’s Kit and preferred the ‘ing’ endings, (Appreciating, Empathizing, Discerning, Comprehending, and Evaluating) because I personally found them easier to work with. (The original research also used “Discriminative” to describe what we now call “Discerning” – and we knew we wanted to change that original research term, as that was also a time when Diversity and Anti-Discrimination were hot topics, and we didn’t want to be confused with those two. So it was decided we’d use the word Discerning – and the dictionary at the time seemed to define what the approach was that we were trying to describe.)
Well, as you can see in the profile, I didn’t win on the choice of the word endings, so the ‘ive’ endings were printed in the profile. I still use the ‘ing’ endings when working with clients – and I still do find them easier for participants to grasp and work with.
Since your primary question was around Discerning and Comprehending, let’s start there. The Discerning and Comprehending approaches both pay attention to the factual information of the message – they just prefer to process this factual information a bit differently.
The Discerning approach tends to prefer to ‘take it all in’ and then go back and sort it out later to get the complete meaning. For example, this is the person who takes notes during a lecture or seminar and then must go back and review/rework/rewrite their notes to have them really have any long-term meaning to them. (One of my seminar participants described this as ‘Cold Notes Syndrome’ if he didn’t go back and rework them soon after taking them.)
This is also the person who, because they aren’t exactly sure at the time what will ultimately be important, will take in as much of the detail as possible. For example, let’s say we were in a meeting and you said, “Gee, I don’t remember us discussing that….” The Discerning person would say, “Yes, we did – remember, it was that hot day in August when the air conditioning was out and the fans were so loud we could hardly hear Julie’s presentation. She covered this in her presentation and we discussed it then. Remember, that was her first day back to work after her Extreme Makeover and she was wearing that new blue suit and her new haircut…. Remember???” And you find yourself amazed that this person remembered all that detail – but then it triggered your memory as well and you remembered that yes, we had, in fact, discussed this!
Another way that I like to describe the Discerning mode is to use the analogy of someone taking shorthand (which I used to do) or someone doing Court Reporting. During the actual session, it is more important to just ‘get it all down’ and then you go back and transcribe your notes. I agree, there does need to be some level of understanding of the material as it is being presented so you aren’t writing gibberish, but when taking shorthand, you are more concerned with getting the other person’s comments down exactly as spoken than ‘digesting it’ completely at that time. That ‘digestion’ happens when you go back and transcribe your notes.
Comprehending also works with the factual nature of the message – with a slightly different approach. The Comprehending approach wants to be sure that they, (1) understand the message completely and (2) understand what to do with it as they are hearing it. If they don’t, they want to stay with that piece of the message until they do; and if they can’t, they will become frustrated. That’s why it is good to give a ‘broad overview’ of the message for a Comprehending listener and then go back and deal with the details in an organized manner, as the details relate to each piece of the broad overview. (Working in ‘Outline Format’ is a good way of thinking about it.)
A good metaphor/analogy that I’ve used that seems to help folks understand the differences between the two approaches is to describe a closet and clothes being put into it.
A Discerning listener will take the clothes from you, as you give it them, and will put them all on the bed. Then once you are done giving them all the clothes that need to go into the closet, they will study what they have, study the closet space, and decide what is the best way to organize the clothes, so they fit best in the closet. Once decided, they will put the clothes into the closet in an organized fashion. That’s how they ‘understand what to do with it.’
A Comprehending listener would prefer that you ‘gave them an overview’ and told them initially that you wanted them to put clothes in the closet and that you had shirts, pants, coats, and shoes that needed to go into this closet – and ideally it would be even better if you could share that you thought the shirts should go on the top rod to the left, the pants on the bottom rod to the left, etc. Then a Comprehending listener would prefer that if you started with shirts, you’d give them all the shirts to be dealt with at once. Since they know they are to go on the top rod to the left, they will start putting them there as you give them to them. As long as the shirts fit, there’s no problem. If there are too many shirts for the space, then there’s a problem, and they’ll want to stop and deal with that before they move on to another/different clothing type.
It frustrates the Comprehending listener if you were to give them the clothes in a haphazard manner – first a shirt, then a pair of pants, then another shirt, then a pair of shoes, oh, and here’s another shirt, etc. If you’ve initially done a good job of setting out the framework of how you want the closet organized, they will deal with your haphazard manner but will be irritated that you can’t be more organized in your approach. (Since they know that shirts go on the top rung to the left, they’ll hang it there; pants on the lower rung to the left, and hang it there, etc. as you give them things – but they’ll want to deal with each piece before they take the next one.) If you haven’t given them a good framework/overview, then when you give them a shirt, they’ll ask, “Well, how many shirts will there be?” and they’d like you to be able to give a good answer to that question, etc. before they go on to the next items. And, heaven forbid, in the process you gave them a BELT – you didn’t say there’d be any BELTS!!! Now, where exactly did you want these BELTS to go!?!? :-)
I don’t use the closet/clothes illustration for any of the other listening approaches – just to describe the differences in Discerning and Comprehending. Both Discerning and Comprehending approaches deal with factual content, both want a ‘finished’ understanding at the end (which in my analogy is the ‘finished’ and organized closet) – it’s just that they go about it a bit differently in their process to get to that same end result.
And since we are covering the Personal Listening Profile, let me share some insights into the other approaches as well.
An Evaluating listener’s approach seems to be one of compare/contrast and accept/reject. When in an Evaluating listening approach, the listener is comparing what you are saying to what his/her own base of information is and then deciding whether to accept or reject your message. If there is dissonance (what you are saying doesn’t ‘fit’ with what I know to be true) and the topic is important to them, they are willing to debate and disagree with you. If the topic isn’t important to them, you may just be ‘dismissed’ (if not physically by their actual leaving, at least mentally, by their tuning you out.)
I also explain that Evaluating listeners as having a very well-tuned “Crap Meter.” They are quick to determine when something doesn’t fit for them and their Crap Meter goes into the red zone. And we’ve all heard of Evaluating listening in the extreme…“Don’t bother me with the facts, my mind is already made up…”
I like to use cartoons in training and I have a favorite Dilbert one for Evaluating Listening. The first frame has a title, “Dogbert’s Communication Seminar” and he is sitting on a stool saying, “There’s really no point in listening to other people.” The second frame he continues, “They’re either going to be agreeing with you or saying stupid stuff.” And the final frame is him with his own thought bubble, “That should cut down on the questions…..”
The Empathic listening approach is concerned with emotional connections. When in this listening approach, the person wants to know how the other person is feeling and to let that person know that their feelings/emotions are being understood and accepted. For them, it is all about the ‘check in’ to see how you are before getting on with other content.
I have another Dilbert cartoon that I use for the Empathic approach. In the first frame, Dilbert is talking to a female co-worker and says, “I got the latest numbers from Yvonne.” In the second frame, his co-worker says, “How’s Yvonne doing with the sextuplets now that her house burned down and she had shoulder surgery?” In the final frame, Dilbert says, “It didn’t come up.” Not surprising…we can tell in the cartoon strip that he doesn’t appear to be so ‘naturally tuned’ to Empathy!
The Appreciating approach deals with our own personal aesthetic, enjoyment, and comfort needs when listening to a message. Appreciating listeners would prefer that the message be enjoyable in content rather than sad or distressing (who wouldn’t?) The Appreciating listener is also highly attuned to their own comfort needs, so if it is too hot or too cold in the room, or if the person’s speaking speed is too fast/too slow, or the voice volume is too loud/too soft or of a tonal quality that is off-putting to them (too raspy, too whiney, too high-pitched), or if the speaker is monotone (which is often translated to be boring) or the speaker’s ‘accent’ isn’t familiar enough (so it is hard to figure out what is being said) then the Appreciating Listener has a tougher time staying attuned. All of us have our own perceptions and preferences, and they impact our attention span. For someone with a high Appreciating listening approach, things that aren’t preferences will be an issue sooner. That’s why you’ll hear someone say, “I know that conference presentation was an important one, but it was so cold in that room, I couldn’t stay in there another minute.” Or “Yes, he does know more about the system than anyone else, but do I have to take the training from him? I just can’t stand to listen to him drone on….”
When discussing the DiSC® model, we define each behavioral style as a ‘stand alone’ entity and then remind participants “we all have all of these styles operating in us, just at different intensities.” The same is true of the five Listening Approaches – while we discuss these Listening Approaches singularly to begin to understand each, the Listening Approaches work in concert and we ‘move through’ the approaches by increasing/decreasing the intensity of their impact on our attention span, as it seems appropriate to us. Dr. Kragness described the Appreciating approach as also being slightly different in that it is ‘always playing in the background’ to satisfy our personal comfort needs.
A simple example could be a phone call at 6:00 p.m. (when, of course, you invariably just sat down to dinner, no less….) When you answer the phone, you are likely in the Discerning approach – you want to ‘take it all in’ and get the ‘gist’ of the call (who the caller is and what they want, etc.) Once you determine that it is a tele-marketer trying to sell you something, your Evaluating approach likely kicks in, especially when you say, “No I’m not interested” and hang up. And if something in the telemarketers voice or approach grates on your Appreciating preferences, the ‘no thank you’ could even come before you totally understood what the person was trying to sell! Empathic listening likely doesn’t play into the conversation too much – you are not likely to be concerned with how the tele-marketer is feeling during the call, except that possibly if you have a naturally highly-occurring Empathic listening approach, you may feel a twinge of guilt for having ‘shut them down so quickly’ and may wonder how this person can continue to do these type of calls, call after call, facing continuous rejection.
The key is to know that all the Listening approaches are available to us (some are more naturally a part of how we listen and others can be developed through conscious practice) and to match our listening approach (intake) with the speaker’s intent (output) when he/she is sharing his/her message.
I’ll share a final story to illustrate this point of ‘being with the speaker where they are.’ As we were developing the Listening Profile and its supporting Facilitator Kit materials, there was an employee at Inscape Publishing (then known at Carlson Learning Company) named Regina whose daughter had just had her first baby. Regina’s daughter would call Regina and complain about something that wasn’t right with the baby…not something terribly wrong…just the normal stresses and anxieties that occur when having to learn to care for a tiny infant for the first time. Regina would go into ‘problem solver mode’ and give her daughter ideas, tips, etc., to resolve the issue and, as Regina would describe it, her daughter would seem to ‘fade away,’ become vague, and say things such as ,”Yeah, I suppose…,” and end the call. Regina began to notice that the calls became less frequently; and when she initiated a call to ask how things were going, her daughter would vaguely say, “Everything’s fine…” and again quickly end the call.
When Regina completed the Listening Profile and went through our pilot training of the tool, she realized that she lived in the ‘right side’ of the profile…the factual content side. It hadn’t occurred to her before, but now, when she reviewed her conversations with her daughter, she realized that her daughter may have just wanted more Empathic listening via ‘an understanding ear’ or ‘sounding board’ rather than a problem solver. So she decided that, while it didn’t come to her naturally, she’d try the Empathic approach the next time her daughter and she talked. She invited her daughter to lunch. She said it was hard for her not to go into “Problem Solver Commando” mode as she listened; but instead, she was determined to stay with the emotional state and say Empathic things, like, “I know…it can all seem a bit overwhelming…I remember how overwhelmed I felt with my first baby….” And frankly, she said she spent most of the lunch just sitting forward with a caring face, listening and nodding….. At the end of the lunch, her daughter gave her a big hug and said, “Mom, I feel SOOOO much better. I just needed to talk to someone who’s gone through this and understands…..thanks so much. I love you.”
Later, to satisfy her curiosity, Regina told her daughter about the Listening Profile and her conscious decision to change her listening approach. Her daughter shared with her that the initial conversations (when Regina was in ‘problem-solver mode’) made her feel anxious, judged, inadequate for not having thought about those options herself, and wondering if she could turn out to be a good mother because she probably ‘should have known’ how to do the common sense things Regina was suggesting. When Regina was in Empathic mode, her daughter felt supported and understood and that someone really cared about her and what she was going through, which is what she needed. (As a side note, Regina said she also learned that with this daughter, Empathic came first and she could then satisfy her own need to problem-solve, but only after she ‘got permission’ by saying something like, “You know I tried a few things when you kids were little that seemed to work for me. Would you like to hear about them?”
Hope all this has been helpful in understanding the various approaches of the Personal Listening Profile - Just let me know if I can clarify anything further that I’ve described above.
Good luck with the Personal Listening Profile. I think it is a powerful, but under-utilized, tool in Inscape’s arsenal of learning assessments. And now that we have the Personal Listening Group Report that creates a composite report so that a team can see what their naturally predominant listening approaches seem to be – it can be a very powerful discussion tool to help people communicate more effectively more often.
Dee Clarke, Sr. Consultant
The TEAM Approach, Inc.
If you are not familiar with the Personal Listening Profile and would like a complimentary EPIC access code to complete and review the feedback of your own personalized assessment, please contact us.
Note: Another tool for trainers using this instrument is the idXready program, Improving Your Listening Skills.
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