Originally published on LinkedIn on 30-Jun-2016 (Agile and the Curse of Selective Listening)

One fine evening, I was trying to have a conversation with my elder kid, Nishaad, on how his day went by. He was watching his favorite TV show, while I was trying to speak and get something out from him.

Me: So, how was your day?

Nishaad: Good.

Me: Anything new happened in school today?

Nishaad: Nothing much. The usual studies.

Me: Which new topic did you learn in Math class?

Nishaad (smiling, looking at the TV): …

Me: Anything new you learned in Math today?

Nishaad (still smiling, engrossed in some action sequence): …

Me: I am going out to get some ice-cream.

Nishaad (still smiling at the TV): I need the one with choco-chips.

Me: Forget the ice-cream, let’s discuss some Math.

Nishaad (frowning, looking at me): You never get ice-cream for me. I need it NOW!!!

Well, this happens quite often, isn’t it? And this isn’t applicable to 10 year old kids only. We see this phenomenon in every walk of life. People tend to direct their attention to words/phrases which are more important and interesting to them. In this case, Nishaad was not interested in discussing anything about Math, but the moment he heard about ice-cream, all his auditory senses were directed towards it. And I am sure he will remember this conversation forever, because I didn’t get any ice-cream that day.

People are proficient in what is called as “Selective Listening”. This is not an acquired or a learnt skill, but somehow each one of us is skillful in practicing it. You can witness this in almost all conversations; husband-wife, friends, siblings, boss-subordinate and others. Our minds have a tremendous capability of systematically filtering out unwanted sounds and information.

This is very closely related to the “Cocktail Party Effect”, which talks about the human ability to focus on a single speaker in virtually any environment, even if that person’s voice is drowned out by a jabbering crowd. This is usually a positive trait, wherein humans tune-in to what they are interested in hearing, without getting distracted by the surrounding noise. However, as with any coin, there’s a flip side to it.

How often do we see politicians been quoted out of context in mass media by certain reporters? And what is the motivation and intent of such reporters to exhibit such behavior? Obviously, by resorting to such means, readership and viewership of the content increases, thereby generating more revenue, but at the expense of goodwill and honesty.

We can cite numerous examples of selective listening, from the software development world also. The small comic strip accompanying this post is just one instance. Anybody new to the Agile philosophy, usually is aware of its stated benefits such as time-to-market and customer satisfaction. However, by listening selectively, people try to get the benefits and forget the smart work required to get these benefits.

Once I was facilitating a training session on Agile and was talking about the importance of relative sizing of requirements. I discussed in detail about the benefits of relative sizing including quick estimation, collaboration, shared understanding, high-level planning etc. After spending an hour explaining these benefits, I got this question: What’s the formula to convert story-points into hours? Well, nothing wrong in this question, but the only reason which I can think of such questions arising is “Selective Listening”. All the participants did hear everything that I said, but some of them listened selectively to only what they wanted to listen.

I do not intend to provide a solution to the “Selective Listening” problem in this post, but just want to highlight that we need to be aware of this phenomenon in our day-to-day interactions and proactively take measures to thwart miscommunications arising out of it. Furthermore, it’s important to drill down to the root cause of such behavior; understand why the listener is selectively paying attention to only certain part of the communication. Understand what are the constraints and limitations that are nudging the listener to listen selectively.

Oftentimes, I think, maybe this is the reason why Agile adoptions do not succeed to the extent we want such initiatives to succeed. Or maybe not. What do you think? I would love to “hear” from you on your experiences with “Selective Listening”, particularly in the Agile world. It surely will make an interesting read.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_auditory_attention

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/04/11868/how-selective-hearing-works-brain

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author’s current or previous employers.