I remember being on a Zoom call with a mortgage advisor while he answered messages as I spoke. He did it several times in the same conversation. I manage people myself, so I understood the psychology. A notification feels like a small thing at that moment I know. It takes a few seconds to respond to a message without leaving the conversation. I probably had more patience for it because I know how easily attention gets divided. None of that changed how it felt to be on my side.
That is what poor listening does. You keep going, but the most useful part of it starts disappearing. People shorten their answers, leave out their doubts, and stop trusting you with what they actually think. For a manager, that is a serious failure. You can only act on what people are still willing to tell you.
Your team will rarely tell you exactly what is wrong in one sentence. You hear about a broken test pipeline, missing updates, or an engineer not engaging the PM. The problems are already there for you to see. Listening well means noticing these signals, connecting them, and doing something about them.
Patient Listening
An important part of effective communication is patience. People move at different speeds when they share. I’ve been learning to ask a question and then wait, which gives people the time and space to reach something deeper. Most people don’t open up immediately, and if you rush them you miss what they were actually trying to say. A pause tells them they are not on the clock, and their thoughts come out clearer for it. Patience signals safety, and safety invites honesty.
Listening to Share, Not to Solve
This one has taken me years, and I still get it wrong. Most of the time people talk about a problem without looking for a solution. They are telling you how they feel. The real ask is not a solution but acknowledgement, and people want to feel understood before they want to be guided. Knowing when to listen and when to advise gets easier as you know the person better. Offer a fix too early and you can quietly invalidate the experience. I jump in way too early more often than I’d like to admit, and even when I mean to help, the other person hears it as dismissal. Reflecting back what you heard is usually worth more than reaching for the fix.
Hold your horses.
the subtle art of listening
Inclusivity in Listening
Some people don’t tend to speak up in larger forums, and they go unheard unless you ask them directly. Reflective people process internally first and share an idea only once it’s fully formed, so the loudest voices in the room are rarely the whole picture. If you rely on whoever speaks first, you miss a large part of your team’s intelligence. Asking a quiet person for their view, in a way that feels safe, is how you value all voices equally. It improves your decision quality and shows people their perspective matters even when they aren’t the first to talk.
Reducing Distractions
Another key part of listening is removing distractions. When I put my phone away during a conversation, it tells my team I’m completely there with them. It’s a small gesture, but it changes the tone of the whole interaction, and it keeps me from half-attending. The brain is quick to detect divided attention. Even a brief glance at a screen tells the other person they are no longer your priority, and that single look chips away at trust and openness.
Take the distractions away and people feel it. That feeling shapes the honesty and depth you get back.
Still Learning
I still get this wrong regularly. Every conversation teaches me something about how people think and what they need, even the random ones. Maybe especially the random ones.
You don’t master listening once and keep it. It needs consistency. Some days you do it well, other days you catch yourself drifting mid-sentence, already forming your reply. What matters is noticing it and stopping. The person across from you can tell the difference, even when they never say so.