Of the many constructive soft skills, active listening is surely one of the most helpful in the design thinking process. More than just listening to collect information, active listening is a mindset that fosters empathy for the speaker. In business and engineering, it’s our customer that’s speaking. Active listening seeks to understand not only the other person’s words, but also their attitudes and motivations.
For many people, even the idea of “being a better listener” seems ludicrous. Once you’re listening, how can you listen better? It’s like swallowing better or breathing better. [But the truth is, you can.] Even the best listeners periodically fall into a handful of traps that obstruct their understanding of their employer’s, customer’s, and loved one’s words.
The most common impediment to good listening is distraction. Instead of devoting our attention to the person we’re speaking with, too often we glance at our phone or a nearby television, or simply drift mentally into a more appealing thought. Conceding to distraction, even for a moment, halts the communication process. Not only does the listener stop engaging with what is being said, but more subtly, the listener’s body language, eye movements, and verbal feedback dramatically shift the direction of the conversation.
We’ve all experienced the feeling of talking with a distracted listener. Our most common reaction is to cut the story short, surrendering the possibility of truly being understood.
A second pitfall on the path to active listening is our flawed motivations for participating in the conversation. Ego is a powerful influencer. Far too often, we listen for the purpose of responding: to show off what we already know or to steer the conversation into a direction that allows us to feel important, competent, or needed. These motivations leave the other person feeling manipulated and depleted, usually without our notice. After all, egos are exclusively self-serving.
Christian pastor and Holocaust victim Dietrich Bonhoeffer characterized this ego-based listening by saying, “There is a kind of listening with half an ear that presumes already to know what the other person has to say. It is an impatient, inattentive listening, that despises the brother and is only waiting for a chance to speak and thus get rid of the other person.”
A third snare on the path toward better listening is defensiveness. After spending months developing a prototype only to have it shot down within the first minutes of a user forum, a posture of defensiveness often emerges. The strong temptation is to defend our product, point out that they’re not using it correctly, and show them how they’re wrong. But an attitude of defensiveness will cause us to miss the nuggets of truth in what is being said. By laying down our defenses, and opening our ears and minds to our customers, we have a far better chance of hearing all of what they’re saying. Later we can sort the useful feedback from the noise.
By practicing active listening, we do more than refine a soft skill — we cultivate an attitude that values others’ perspectives as much as our own. In the design thinking process, that openness can be the difference between creating something merely clever and delivering something truly meaningful. When we set aside distractions, ego, and defensiveness, we create space for deeper understanding, stronger collaboration, and solutions that resonate with real human needs.
Ray Harkins is the General Manager of Lexington Technologies in Lexington, North Carolina. He earned his Master of Science from Rochester Institute of Technology and his Master of Business Administration from Youngstown State University. He also teaches manufacturing and business-related skills such as Quality Engineering Statistics, Reliability Engineering Statistics, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), and Root Cause Analysis and the 8D Corrective Action Process through the online learning platform, Udemy. He can be reached via LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/ray-harkins or by email at the.mfg.acad@gmail.com.
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