In 1979, the Sperry Corporation embarked on a most unusual advertising, public relations and training program. The program did not focus on products, plants or services. Rather, it focused on people and how these people communicate.

Specifically, the program brought to the attention of millions of people around the world the fact that most of us have never been trained how to listen. Because we do not listen, or we listen poorly, we frequently have breakdowns in communications. These breakdowns can result in costly mistakes. A product reject, a lost sale, an angry confrontation, a broken heart, or a broken home – all because someone didn’t listen.

The Sperry Corporation, through the establishment of an ambitious listening program, set out to create an awareness among its employees, customers and stockholders that these misconnections in communications could be minimized. The corporation’s training council, made up of one representative from each of Sperry’s five operating divisions (Sperry Univac, Sperry New Holland, Sperry Division, Sperry Flight Systems and Sperry Vickers), and Dr. Lyman Steil, as an advisor, developed an eight-hour listening workshop as its main training device.

“The workshop has been translated into five languages and tailored to meet the needs of managers and supervisors, our marketing people and salespeople, and our general employee population,” says Sperry Vickers training and communications specialist Janice M. Feldbauer. Together with Robert Immel, marketing training and development manager, the two trainers have presented listening workshops to more than 60 groups over the past two years.

The objectives of the program are:

1) Create an awareness of the importance of listening

2) Learn how to overcome the barriers to listening

3) Identify poor listening habits and practices

4) Improve responsive listening skills

“Most people come to the Listening Workshop with some doubts and reservations,” Ms. Feldbauer says, “They take listening for granted, and believe that they listen much better than they actually do.”

Ms. Feldbauer’s statement is borne out by the results of the first of two tests which are given to workshop participants to measure their listening efficiency. In the first test, where participants are asked to predict their score before they take it, a brief four sentence message is read by the course administrator, who then asks ten questions about the reading.

“The rather alarming average listening effectiveness score on this test – even though the message is still very fresh in the minds of the participants – is only 42.8 percent,” Ms. Feldbauer says. The participants’ average pretest prediction of effectiveness is 68 percent.

Immel notes that the second test is in response to the key points made in a film entitled, “The Power of Listening.” Participants have averaged 58 percent effectiveness immediately after receiving the message. “As can be expected,” Immel says, “the workshop participants by this time are ready to admit that they don’t listen as well as they thought they did. Then we can go to work on overcoming barriers to listening.”

Those barriers vary group-to-group, according to Immel. “In the case of salespeople, we’ve observed that too often the salesperson simply did not tune in on a prospect’s response. When we ask why, they usually tell us they were mentally formulating their next question. How many times have you done this…ask a question, then, while the other party responds, you preoccupy yourself by thinking of the next question?”

Immel says in the case of somewhat detail oriented people like engineers, the listening barrier may be a lack of sensitivity to feelings or emotions expressed in the message.

Other barriers Immel and Ms. Feldbauer frequently mention:

Day dreaming

Jumping to conclusions

Job and personal pressures

Prejudging the subject

Deciding the subject is “over my head”

Boredom

Physical distractions

Judging delivery and not content

“Listening training isn’t new at Sperry,” explains Immel, who spent more than twelve years at Sperry New Holland prior to his move to Sperry Vickers in 1978.” In the late 60’s, we used a packaged program on listening. It was helpful, but it didn’t cover the subject nearly as thoroughly as the current Sperry program does.”In addition to the eight-hour workshop, listening is fully addressed in four of Sperry’s management seminars, as well as in two professional skills programs.

During the first year of the program, 13,000 Sperry Corporation employees around the world attended approximately 600 listening seminars conducted in 10 countries. Immel, who has a degree in rhetoric from Michigan State University says participants like the program because it gets them involved personally. “And because the program focuses on barriers which were identified by the participants, it makes it their program,” he explains.

“Of course,” says Immel, “the key to any program of this nature is the bottom line: results. Reflecting on the objectives of the program, we’ve pretty well evaluated it as an overwhelming success.”

The evaluation indicated that:

1) An awareness has been created throughout the company as to the importance of listening.

2) People are more aware of the barriers to listening, so that they can be on guard to avoid or to overcome them.

3) Individuals, through the course of the program, can identify their own personal, poor listening habits and practices.

4) Responsive listening skills have improved.