Why Is No One Listening!
Listen to my summary or read the full article below.
A few years ago, I met an Irish guy in one of my workshops. He was smart, charming, intelligent, and enthusiastic (I'm sure he still is).
As I got to know him, two things surprised me:
His role: He had the presence and experience of an executive, but he was working as a foot soldier selling window blinds for a small company.
His struggle to influence: Despite his natural charisma, clients and bosses simply didn't listen to him.
It was weird for someone so affable. How does this misalignment between character and professional achievement happen?
It's Not Just the Irishman
After running hundreds of workshops and polling thousands of professionals, two desires consistently stand out above all others:
People want to be more intentional.
People want to be more influential.
The first desire is easy to understand - it's a busy world where task lists are longer at the end of the day than at the beginning. People generally feel like the world and their business controls them, like a pinball bouncing around someone else's machine.
Learning to be more intentional regains a sense of control, and therefore meaning.
The second desire, to be more influential, is growing stronger every year. More and more professionals feel silenced, sidelined, or outright ignored. Much like our Irish friend.
It's not a temporary fad or trend, it's a constant reality. So, what can we do about it?
Learning Adds Fire to Fire
As someone in professional development, I've built a career and earned a living by addressing this issue.
When people feel ignored, they sign up for communication workshops hoping to learn how to speak with more power and authority.
As someone who has benefited from learning, practicing, and embedding frameworks, structures, and technique into my communication (both written and verbal), I can confidently say this learning is helpful.
But these tools have clear limits.
If being ignored or dismissed is the fire we step into when entering a boardroom, communication frameworks are often just the fire we use to fight back. We use techniques to smash through the objection, belligerence, and conviction of our audience.
Adding fire to fire just creates a bigger inferno.
Unless fragile egos are wearing fire-resistant PPE, the interaction can become explosive - or at best, leaves you slightly singed while the underlying embers will continue to burn.
Why Doesn't Anyone Listen?
Great communication techniques make our arguments more succinct and structured. These are good things and can turn receptive audiences into advocates.
However, dogmatic and narcissistic audiences are unlikely to be moved through logic alone. And these audiences are far more common than we like to admit. In fact, they are everywhere and it is likely we ourselves have held this mindset as an audience to someone else. Here's why:
Combat: Philosopher Alain de Botton notes that capitalism by definition means consumers are promiscuous and competition is constant. It's a system fuelled by anxiety, driving people into an "eat-or-be-eaten" mindset. It is no wonder we want to hold on to our own beliefs and focus on self-preservation. (Calm, Alain de Botton)
Confidence: In Think Again, Adam Grant highlights how easily we confuse overconfidence with competence. Basically, if someone says something with zero doubt, we tend to think they know what they're talking about. But this is often the Dunning-Kruger Effect in action. Being certain or being the "know-it-all" tends to be rewarded, while active listening and open-mindedness are often sidelined. (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology)
Cliques: Humans became dominant due to one key skill - collaboration. Our need to connect, belong, and cooperate enables us to bond, trust, and build complex social networks. We do this by creating in-groups (people we trust and listen to) and out-groups (people we view with suspicion and stereotypes). Basically, if you're not in the gang, you've got no chance of getting their ear with standard communication techniques. (Dr Mark Williams, The Connected Species)
A Better Way Forward
In a world full of noise, pace, and anxiety we have large external obstacles to overcome if anyone is ever going to listen to us.
Technique helps, but we are kidding ourselves if we think it's going to do all the heavy lifting. Instead, recognising that it's not entirely their fault, and not entirely ours either, allows us to set realistic expectations and nudge ideas forward without burning out.
Consider this perspective:
No one is listening to ANYONE.
Even the people ignoring you feel like no one is listening to them.
Speaking clearly is important, but a better position is to be the change you want to see. Listen more, listen deeper, ask better questions, and pour some water on the fiery, combative, over-confident, and cliquey environments you operate in.
