"Poor listening skills" ranks among the top complaints about managers with attention deficit disorder.  This complaint is no surprise  — if only because few people talk as fast as an ADDexec’s mind can process information.

With bandwidth to burn while listening to our "slow-talking" colleagues, our minds give themselves permission to consider other things — our calendars, our next meeting, the bird flying by the window…   Sometimes, of course, our minds save enough bandwidth to stay tuned in to whoever is trying to talk with us.   But other times that bird flying by the window hooks our attention completely and takes it all away.  And then who’s the bad guy?  No, not the pretty bird — but the Boss Who Never Listens.

But maybe there’s a good side to this fat bandwidth habit.

Harvard Business School professor John J. Gabbaro has pointed out a "managerial paradox" in the the need to listen in two different ways that seem to contradict each other:

"…while it is crucial that managers be able to listen nonjudgmentally (to understand other points of view and get valid information), the essence of management is to do just the opposite–to make judgments…  The danger, then, is that this bias for judging will subvert a manager’s inclination to listen carefully and, in doing so, sabotage his or her ability to make accurate business and people judgments.

"Managers may be tempted to resolve this paradox as an either/or…  But if one thing has made itself clear in the past 40 years, it is that managers must have the capacity to do both.  They must recognize that to make judgments, you must suspend judgment."

"Normal" managers might have a hard time with this.  But for the ADDexec whose mind needs more than some talkers give in real time, might this be the great opportunity: to simultaneously hear everything "twice" — with half of the mind listening to understand, while the other half listens to judge?

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Reference:  John J. Gabarro, "Retrospective Commentary" (Harvard Business Review, November-December 1991) on "Barriers and Gateways to Communication" by C.R. Rogers and F.J. Roethlisberger, originally published in the Harvard Business Review, 1952.)

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