The importance of modeling listening

Recently I was sitting in a plane about to take off and noticed something interesting during the usual safety instructions video.

Did the flight attendants travel up and down the aisles checking that I’d fastened my seat belt and my personal item was fully under the seat in front of me? No, they didn’t.

Did they retire to their little jump seats, while the locations of the exits were described in a comforting baritone narrative they’d heard a thousand times before. Nope.

Instead, the crew stood, unmoving in the aisles, facing the passengers for the whole three minutes. The conscientious ones stared at the nearest monitor, even though they couldn’t see what’s on it because they were looking at the back!

Why did they do this?

My flight attendants were modeling listening.

Why? Well, if they appeared to be ignoring the safety video (which they could probably repeat backwards perfectly in their sleep), here’s the message that I would receive:

You don’t need to listen to this.

And my interpretation would be:

Not only is this stuff they’re telling me not important, the flight attendants also think it’s a waste of time too.

Let’s face it; listening well is something that’s extremely hard to do for any length of time. During the facilitation of a large peer conference roundtable that lasts a couple of hours, I find it impossible to do perfectly. But even though, at times, I revert from listening to hearing, I always try to model listening. As the facilitator, if I appear disengaged from what participants are saying I send a message, not only to the person who is speaking but also to everyone present, that what is being said is unimportant. Such behavior, dis-empowering in so many ways, can seriously weaken the building of connections and intimacy amongst conference participants.

I hope I never need to urgently know the positions of the six emergency exits on an Airbus A320, but if that day comes and I do, it will be due to the consistent and persistent modeled listening of the flight attendants on all the airplanes I’ve traveled on over the years. Thanks guys!