My Boss Never Listens, What Do I Do? (Ask Christa! S6E69)

Introduction

Hi everyone and welcome to Ask Christa! where I answer listener questions about business challenges and workplace issues. I’m Christa Dhimo, and first—a quick reminder! My show is a free resource to help people get through common day to day issues at work. I keep it going because of the questions I receive and my listeners, but it helps if you like and subscribe wherever you’re watching or listening—and I THANK YOU for the support.

This is episode 69 in Season SIX. In this season we’re focused on bad bosses, and since most people aren’t prepared to be a manager, there are a lot of bad bosses out there.

Today’s episode is about what to do when you feel like your manager isn’t listening.

Listener Question

Here’s the listener question, “My manager doesn’t listen. Our team is small, only three people, and we often repeat the same things meeting after meeting, even when we’re tracking in an action chart. He’ll ask us for status on items that aren’t due for review until the following month and he’ll ask us to repeat things we talked about earlier in the day. He writes a lot of notes, but we’re starting to wonder if he’s writing notes about our meeting or if he’s doing other work. We’re starting to talk about it outside of the meetings. It’s becoming a problem for us because we feel like we shouldn’t communicate so much if he’s just going to ask us to repeat things later on. He just doesn’t listen. It’s frustrating. What do I do?.” 

It IS frustrating when you feel like someone isn’t listening, but there are a few things you CAN do.

Most People are Really Bad at Listening

The first thing is to understand just how hard listening is for the average good human. Most professionals were not raised in environments where listening was taught, modeled, or practiced as a key skill. Children are told to listen, but how much of that do they really see around them? For example, how much active listening did YOU see from adults around you while growing up? Yeah…. That’s because most people don’t actively listen—they don’t know how. They’ve never seen it, they’ve never learned it, and they don’t practice it.

From a work perspective, when you look at a crisis or why a big miss was missed, most of the time it’s related to communication, and A LOT of the time it sounds like this, “well, I spoke up, but no one was listening,” or worse: “I spoke up and they didn’t want to hear it.”

So at the foundational level, I want to start out by saying that listening—REALLY listening—is hard to do. We live in distracting environments. We rarely have a moment to think, much less to listening, and to listen, you have to be able to hear, then you have to understand what is being said, and make it mean something within the context of the discussion. And of course, how you interpret what is being said will include your own context and experience (by the way, this is ALSO what makes listening so hard to do, and why so many people jump to conclusions before someone is even mid-way through what they intend to communicate).

Then after all of that, you have to retain the information and use what you heard to speak to others about it, or integrate it into your work, or take action, or hold the information for a length of time before it can be used. And so, the actual act of listening takes energy and concentration just to do it well, then MORE energy and concentration to retain and recall it in the right way and at the right time. 

That’s a lot of work… And that’s part of why we’re so bad at it.

Listening (really listening) is Hard to Do

The average human doesn’t know how to actively listen to others, so as they are “listening,” they are usually only half-listening, or they may have even stopped listening after hearing one point because they are already thinking about what they’ll say or how they’ll respond. For the average person, they’re already making predictions and assumptions about what you’re saying before well before you’ve concluded what you have to say. 

 And yes, you do it, too. Next time someone speaks, see how quickly you are ready to respond. 

So before we talk about skills for being heard, I want you to think about skills to actively listen when others are speaking. Knowing what it takes to listen well will help you with what it takes to be heard.

The best and fastest way to give your brain a chance to listen? Bring paper with you and write down the distractions and responses that pop into your head in the moment so you can immediately capture initial thoughts, clear your mind of those thoughts, then go back to listening. 

Another way to get better at listening? Asking clarifying questions and repeat what you just heard. This doesn’t just test your interpretation, retention, and ability to recall, but enables the discussion to truly focus on what was just said.

And let’s not forget about our work environment—most are not setup for good listening to take place, so, before you attempt to actively listening to someone, remove distractions. You probably do this if you enjoy listening to music or if you are watching TV shows and movies, right?  So, if someone approaches you at work because they want to share something, and if you REALLY want to listen, cut out the distractions first. This might mean you close a door, find a less distracting place if you cannot close a door, put your phone away, or even step away from your desk if the thought of emails coming in are distracting to you.

 By the way, distractions aren’t just in our physical environments. Some of the worst listening issues are because of distractions on the inside. If we haven’t had enough sleep, if we’re hungry, if we’re thirsty, if we just had a difficult conversation with someone, or if we’re in the middle of caring for a sick family member—those are all distractions. It’s OK to tell someone, “I’d love to listen to you right now—can I catch up with you later, though? I’m not in a listening space due to a few distractions going on, and I want to be in a place where I can fully attend to what you are saying.”

And then remember… listening is hard to do.

Skills for Being Heard

As for being heard, there are a few things you can do that will be the flipside of what it takes to listen:

·       Ask a clarifying question that evaluates retention and understanding of your listeners in the moment. After you’ve said your bit in the meeting, look around the table and say something like, “That was a lot of information I just shared. Can you each let me know your key take-away so I can be sure I covered all the points I wanted to make?” That tests the clarity of what you said; then confirms for you what they heard, what they retained, and how they are recalling it. And it does in a way that should feel safe and supported and not like you’re calling someone out or testing them on the spot.

·       Another way to help people listen? Strategically use silence as a way to refresh your listener’s minds, and change your speaking cadence and tone. These are common tactics to help your listener’s minds refresh (see what I just did there?).

·       You can also pause mid-way through what you’re reviewing to check in on your listeners. For example, finish one point and then say, “I’m going to stop for a moment and ask: who has questions?” or you can ask, “what do you think?”  Notice that I did not ask a closed-ended question like, “does anyone have a question.” As you can imagine, and probably as you’ve done, most people say, “no.” Asking a prompting question instead, such as “what do you think?,” invites others to talk, then engage in a discussion. The discussion helps to clarify and confirm the key points of what you are speaking about, while deepening a chance for your listeners to retain and recall the key points.

·       And for our listener, another fast tactic to improve what seems to be a listening issue with your boss it to… ask. Go to your manager and ask, “Hi manager—what do you think about my updates during our team meeting? I noticed you come back to me with various questions about the topics I reviewed, and I’m curious about how I can change my communication so that it is more easily retained and recalled. For example, do you think a pre-read before the meeting would be helpful? That would give everyone a chance to see some key information before the meeting, take notes on the pre-read, then ask questions in the moment? What do you think?” 

See what happens.

When Listening Isn’t the Actual Problem

All of that said, I DO want to point out that our listener is describing behaviors that actually signal an issue that’s less about listening, and more about retention and recall. 

 When I read this question, I fully understood the frustration and how it might appear that the manager isn’t listening or isn’t a good listener… but the fact that he takes notes and that he asks about what was already discussed and wants to review items that aren’t in queue to be reviewed yet… that tells me there may be something else going on. For example, sometimes it’s a comprehension issue, which can happen if someone is listening to a second or third language being spoken, or if someone hasn’t had enough sleep… or if someone is dealing with a medical issue.

But always remember that no matter what might be happening, or what you might see as an observable behavior, there are a million other things going on with the good humans we work with, and we’re only seeing a small bit of that. 

And I’m guessing some of that is probably going on with our listener’s manager.

Additional Resources

For your resources, located in the show notes, I’ve included an article I found that provides a listening quiz, too. I’m not familiar with this site or organization, but when I found it I was impressed with how on point the listening resources. The site is called A Meaning of Life, and it’s a nonprofit organization focused on improving relationships. The article is called, “Master the art of listening—take the listening assessment.” It’s from August 2024, and it has a few additional resources about listening, too, and I encourage you all to explore the entire site.

And given how many resources there are to learn about active listening, and how you can apply those same skills to help others listen to you, I’m only offering this one resource for this episode. 

In the meantime, listening may seem a skill that’s in short supply… so… learn it, model it, practice it. You want others to listen better? Be the good listener.

Wrap Up & Submitting Your Question

And there it is, Episode 69 from season six focused on Dealing with Bad Bosses. Like and subscribe here, but also go to my site and send in YOUR question. It’s AskChrista.com, that’s Christa with a C-H. You’ll also see answers to other questions, listed by category and season, and every season has a theme. As always, thank you for your support. And remember, if you have a business challenge or a workplace issue—Ask Christa!