Dealing With People Who Don't Listen! » Mind Tools Blog

A lot of questions on families not listening but I'll give you questions on situations that occur everyday in the office. I work at an IT company and other employees that don't listen not only affects us emotionally but also financially if the contract's requirements are not being met this is what clients are made to believe but in reality most managements couldn't care less about listening unless it affect the bottom line. I think we've created a culture where management does not want to listen because the benefits outweigh the liabilities.

For example, management see's no point in firing an employee if they harass females or make racist comments in the office. If it doesn't affect the contract or work deliverables then management will look the other way and the person making the complaint is the bad guy or a distraction in their opinion. If a bad employee is talented they will get away with a lot of stuff, they and management will not listen to a few shortcomings. Point is, choose a battle you can win because no good deed goes unpunished. You see this culture in sports as well, the player is a criminal but teams look the other way just so they can win, luckily with the media coverage these days some of it comes to light but it still goes on. This may work in sports where there is a lot of coverage but in the corporate world its about survival.

Let me through out a few office examples about listening:

For example #1, if a help call is missed, and I tell the employee to call them back, the employee does not listen. I can then try your approach to ask them an open ended question about if its courteous to call them back. They respond with, if they hang up or got tired of waiting, it's their problem. How are you suppose to deal with this? People don't like to hold or leave voice messages and my employee's don't want to call them back. So I've been unable to get through. When the client complains about calls not being answered, then it undermines our contract. Sure you can fire people but it could be worse with the next employee, so management is in a dead end. Or is it?

Example #2, if someone assigns lets say a technical document from upper management and then you spend time to write the documents to standards. You email the work. But get no response or they are unwilling to listen to what you've done. What is one suppose to do? This seems more like a trust issue, why assign work if they won't trust your judgement? If they don't trust, how can one earn trust so they will listen? Your suppose to just sit and wait until your in a position of authority? How is one suppose to move up in the ladder if no one listens?

Example #3, if your assigned work to make sure your company follows certain procedures and you discover the company has been lying or cheated to get credentials/procedures it doesn't have and convincing customers it does have them, who will listen to this type of complaint? It not only puts the employee in a trap but also cheats our customers. Sure you can quit and go to the next cheating company or how are you going to get someone to listen?

If people don't listen to these small things what would make them listen to the bigger things? if you enable people to not listen on these small things then it creates a pattern where they will mind their own business when they see bigger things. Maybe they'll see a someone getting harassed but look the other way, if someone taught them to stand up maybe they might save someone's life. Looking the other way is not the culture our kids should be receiving, in the end its just hard to do something good.