“The worst thing about communication is the belief that it has taken place.”

What’s happening with the spare brain function when you’re listening to someone speak? We speak at about 150 words per minute but have the capacity to listen at 1000 words per minute. All that spare capacity is used for filling in the gaps, adding our own spin, making assumptions about what the person is saying and wondering what’s on telly this evening.

I also have a bit of a theory that different personality types deal with incoming data in different, ways rather like radars: some deal with lots of fine detail but are quite short range in their thinking and some have a slower data rate but are thinking much further out. Some of this may also be going on.

I was in Turkey last year working with the American Army headquarters when a delegation of British senior officers visited. The two senior Brits were airman and therefore interested in the big picture of what was going on in a sort of ethereal sweeping general Middle East view. The American soldiers wanted to talk about a piece of land about 20 miles square. I listened to the conversation. I suspect I was the only one listening, because no-one seemed to be interested in what anyone else was saying. They were all talking in turn but their conversations barely had a nodding acquaintance.

When we communicate our words pass through several filters. The person transmitting will make some assumptions about the person they’re talking to and edit their output accordingly: talking to a child there’s a chance they’ll simplify and patronize; talking to their boss, or someone who can affect their career, they may edit out any bad news or try and make themselves sound sophisticated; to their colleagues they’ll abbreviate into work slang and to their friends they’ll refer to shared jokes and memories. The receiver will make assumptions about the speaker based on their prejudices: age, sex, race, nationality (I have worked with a lot of instructors who naturally assume that their foreign students aren’t as intelligent as their English students because of their language difficulties). Assuming you Listen Without Prejudice (to quote an album by the much missed George Michael) there are a whole bunch of other filters that will hamper understanding. Tiredness, stress, or your mind being elsewhere, will block the meaning.

And then there’s the speed at which we think. Our inner chimp will start rummaging for any suitable templates so it doesn’t actually have to make the effort to listen to the whole story. It’ll try and create its own bullet points. If your chimp is particularly quick to react it’ll have a template ready and waiting almost as the first words are out. That’s why so many husband and wife ‘discussions’ descend into the same arguments: both of their inner chimps see an opportunity to save them some effort and deploy the ‘same old arguments’ rather than listening to what’s actually going on.

One of my least favourite expressions is; “I hear what you’re saying.” The receiver is ‘hearing’ a noise but has already made up his mind about what is being said and has decided that there is nothing new to be learned.

But people mostly start conversations because they believe there is something new to be said. By not listening we’re denying ourselves the chance to learn something new and denying the chance of a fruitful engagement.

So how to commincate better? If it’s important that what you’re trying to say is passed fully ask the recipient to put what you’ve said in their own words. The same if someone says something to you. As they’re speaking watch their eyes and their mouth. Concentrate fully on what they’re saying rather than trying to think of your reply. Rephrase it back to them. Listen for people’s use of language. Listen to how you speak. Don’t interrupt. Pause, think, then engage mouth.

In the flying world we read everything important back. Clearances in particular have to be read back in full. Clearly not every conversation in normal life isn’t going to end up in two jumbo jets colliding on the runway but the root of the misunderstandings is the same.

Why not have a look at the Inflow Performance website, Facebook page or Breaking free Group. I’d love to hear your thoughts.