Do you find yourself having the same conversations with the same people? I do. It happens in work, in relationships, even internally – in our own heads. It’s most obvious in relationships because conversations with people close to you are infused with loads of emotion. And emotion is a really great barrier to active listening, partly because it cuts deep to the emotional brain: our ‘inner chimp’ as Dr Steve Peters would have it. It’s really uncomfortable. To keep the inner chimp protected we retreat behind a wall we constructed last time we sensed this discomfort. As soon as the first signs of danger appear in a conversation or the person you associate with that conversation starts engaging you, the chimp will hide behind the wall, rummage around in the box marked ‘previous conversations’, get out the template that looks most like the new conversation and deploy all the arguments used last time. As there are two ‘chimp brains’ in this conversation it quickly degenerates to two people in their own fortified positions throwing the same brickbats, trying to bludgeon the other with the same arguments. If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

Part of the problem is that the chimp brain thinks that ‘history repeats itself…exactly’. In fact there are always subtle differences, but only the human brain, with its higher fidelity, can spot the differences. There would be no need to repeat conversations exactly. They’re normally restarted because one party has some new information or ideas. Unfortunately as soon as the chimps catch the drift and get involved the conversation degenerates to the ‘same old, same old’, thus proving the chimp right that history does repeat itself. It’s a vicious circle and can only be broken by listening very carefully.

Ironically there’s a lot of emotion involved in ‘vertical’ communication, too. In families the parent ‘chimp’ thinks the offspring are direct clones of themselves so it already ‘knows’ what the child is going to say; the children become quickly used to hearing the word ‘no’ so that it loses its potency. Parents apply the ‘child is being difficult’ template, whilst children apply the ‘mum/dad is just banging on’ template. In organizations managers are told that ‘leadership’ involves robust man-management and any sign of dissent in the ranks should be snuffed out, or they feel they need to ‘protect’ their position and repel boarders. Either way a junior who voices a new idea is ‘just grumbling like all workers’. Junior staff either want to be promoted so will do whatever they think their managers want or have decided that their managers are incompetent and see them as blockers. Out comes the ‘whatever you say, Sir’ or ‘I hear what you’re saying but with all due respect…etc’ template. Even colleagues at work will let their inner chimp ‘compete for position’. That’s why the smoking shelter or Friday night happy hour is where so much work gets done: people have time to listen properly or have left their emotions in the office.

Even individually we apply templates rather than listen to ourselves. Children are told for so long that they are ‘naughty’ for listening to their inner wants and desires that they learn to dismiss whole swathes of thoughts and feelings. The child grows into an adult and is so adept at applying the ‘I mustn’t because that’s a naughty thought’ template that they may miss new feelings, sensations or thoughts.

So when communicating do you apply templates or listen properly? Would you rather relax in the comfortable ‘knowledge’ that there is nothing new to learn from a conversation and the world can stay ‘just as it is’ or are you prepared to listen to new stuff and allow you, your relationships and your companies to ‘grow’ as the world changes?

Jace