Listening in Business Communication

Address by Alfred A. Tomatis to the Communication Forum, Milan, 7 and 8 November 1991.

“To introduce the concept of listening into the vast field that communication within the enterprise represents is a genuine challenge.

And yet the human ear possesses potentialities that are decisive for the “putting in common” which is essential in matters of human relations.

Several elements that seem to me essential must be raised concerning the role the auditory apparatus plays at the level of the voice, of posture, of language, of behaviour — in short, of everything that intervenes in the transmission of a message.

Whether verbal or non-verbal, that message must be emitted by one party and received by the other or by the others. This is a first step that must not be neglected.

To the classical scheme of communication, which brings into play a speaker and a listener, it is fitting to add a notion of self-control allowing the one who emits the information to direct his discourse in such a way that it is received in its fullness.

The cybernetic laws we set out in the 1950s take into account the feedback indispensable to the elaboration of a message that carries meaning. Certain parameters intervene in this domain of self-listening.

1º- The intimate relations that exist between hearing and phonation (voice, articulation);

2º- The close connections that unite the ear to the body (posture, behavioural attitude);

3º- The bonds that govern the affinities existing between the faculty of listening and the cortical potentialities (memorisation, concentration, semantic interpretation, creativity).

All these connections are of course made through the intermediary of the nervous system, whose various networks were brought to light by us a few decades ago.

To this mastery of the message to be transmitted by the speaker, it is fitting to add the mastery of the reception of the said message by the listener. The same parameters must be raised for a true communication to be established between the two protagonists.

These various considerations cast a new light over the whole set of actions and reactions proper to relational dynamics. The keystone of the proposed system resides, in our view, at the level of listening. Indeed, this “auscultation” alludes to openness onto all that “is” through the intermediary of hearing, of phonation, of vision (listen and you shall see), of touch, of bodily attitude (gesture).

It is indeed the whole body, in its capacity for perception and emission, that is engaged in such a process of communication. It is therefore fitting to know how the various participants in a single encounter listen, how they “hear one another” — how they get along. This last expression introduces notions of understanding, of sharing. And there is no communication without sharing, without putting information in common, without communion.

Listening thus takes on a quite particular aspect through the essential role it plays at the level of the voice, of language, of bodily expression, of creativity. One will therefore not be surprised to see it join the myths of Hermes, of Orpheus and of Narcissus, the themes of this forum.

Hermes, god of eloquence, hence of listening; Orpheus, the greatest musician of Antiquity, hence essentially engaged in a process of listening and creativity. Finally Narcissus who, seeking a dialogue with himself, finds himself face to face with a being he did not know.

On the practical level

On the practical level, it is evident that, within an enterprise, one must seek by every means to improve communication between the leaders and the heads of department, between the teams, between the members of staff.

Through the concept of listening, it is possible to envisage several procedures:

1º- Assessment of listening, of the voice, of gesture, of behaviour (Listening Test) in a perspective of recruitment or reclassification.

2º- Implementation of a communication strategy by means of the Electronic Ear, intended to:

a. recharge the cortex to increase the possibilities of memorisation, concentration, creativity, initiative (awakening techniques),

b. improve the voice and elocution of the speakers by dextralisation of the control circuits (audio-vocal techniques),

c. put the various members of a group on the same wavelength so that the transmission of the message does not give rise to “misunderstandings” (dynamics of communication),

d. stimulate the capacities for oral expression, especially at the level of the learning of living languages (linguistic integration),

e. remove the psychological blockages that compromise the quality of relational life,

f. allow each active element of the enterprise to make the fullest use of these potentialities.

It is therefore a matter of reinstating listening in its reality since, in our view, it presides over the elaboration of all the mechanisms of communication.

Only the skies of Italy could bring back to life all the poetics of the Mediterranean basin to express the multiple axes of the relational dynamics that bind men to one another. This symposium, dedicated to Communication, thus naturally sets out here on the path of a phantasmal imagery capable of evoking human behaviours through symbolic projections more telling than the grand theories that tend to explain the laws of the interactions which characterise human society.

Hermes, Orpheus and Narcissus

Since the dawn of time, humanity has oscillated between an art of living to which it aspires and the existence imposed upon it by the components of its fundamental nature. It is projected towards a paradisiacal universe, without however managing to extricate itself from the set of weaknesses that distance it from what it would like to attain.

The ideal allows it to create a cosmogony where the accessible summits of thought people Olympus with a pyramidal structure governing the universe. There, an order of Pythagorean cast draws the Cosmos into a celestial course. On earth, the same laws govern the world, but they find themselves transgressed by men who react strongly to the rules that nevertheless furnish their ontological memory.

Far from blaming themselves, the ancients knew how to grant their gods at once the supreme qualities and the vilest baseness. Thus they found themselves absolved of their doings, obeying their demon, sole responsible for their behaviour. Already, temperaments had their specific traits, opening in each the possibility of exploiting good and evil. The whole relational dynamic functioned under this double aspect.

Ideal messenger, god of communication, escort of souls, master of eloquence, initiator of competition, model shepherd, patron of physicians, vector of revelations, Hermes alone summed up the major part of the functions that allowed him to invite man to fulfil himself, like the gods themselves, in a harmonious social milieu. But it is true that this same Hermes, son of Zeus, was to beget the god of thieves! It was also he who was called upon to prepare the “dirty tricks” of the gods of Olympus. Capable of teaching men the best and the worst, he acted upon each of them according to their qualities and their faults, their temperaments in short.

The one most drawn to the inspired, poetic, hermetic side was assuredly the enigmatic Orpheus. A brilliant composer, enchanter, seducer, inducing fascination by the sound of his lyre, living in his dream and spending his time losing it, he nevertheless did not manage to realise what heaven offered him in the course of his intuitions.

More dramatic in his behaviour was Narcissus. Resembling the gods in beauty but incapable, in his attitude, of benefiting from the advantages that fortune had dedicated to him, he adopted the unfortunate failings of his nature and drowned in his own image.

Who does not recognise here the human mechanisms, no doubt remained identical since man has existed. The basic rules that direct humanity are ontological. They are the same for all the beings who partake of them. Their application depends on their resonance with the idealised figures we have just imagined on a symbolic plane:

• like Hermes, the leader, the front-runner, the trainer, the talker will find himself engaged in a dynamic of sole or shared responsibility. It is true that his inclination to exploit his advantages risks leading him down the slippery slope of the delirium of power,

• as Orpheus did, the creative person will turn towards research, whether artistic or scientific, but his genius must well guard him against shutting himself away in the universe offered to him by nature and forgetting to distribute what heaven has revealed to him,

• like Narcissus, built like a god and incapable of placing at the service of men what good fortune has bestowed upon him, the executant will rediscover, in an infernal march, the obsession with his egotistical structures.

In fact, in this trio, the whole of humanity can be enveloped. And all would be for the best in the best of worlds if each knew how to make an offering of the personal gifts allotted to him. In that case, and only in that case, can communication be rendered possible.

Hermetic, Orphic and Narcissistic forms of listening

To rally to the ancient mode that multiple attachments make sing within us, we shall say, after the manner of the ancients whom we will gladly take as models, that there exist hermetic, orphic and narcissistic forms of listening. As one already sees, these designations carry a meaning that speaks volumes. It is fitting that we explain ourselves, in the course of this congress, on this quite particular approach.

To listen and to communicate are therefore for us identical mechanisms, and it is evident, in accordance with what we have just put forward, that the manner of carrying out the sharing implied by the act of communicating depends on the manner of hearing as a function of the mode of listening.

Once self-mastery is acquired, knowledge of the other appears easier, and social life already crystallises around this nucleus. When a group comes to exist, its activity is the result of a synergy of concomitant actions which have all the more chance of operating in that the whole set of members composing it is tuned to the same wavelength. From then on, the interest of the enterprise becomes the object of the sharing and gives evidence of the commitment of the participants, without any of them, for all that, abandoning the personality inherent in his temperament. The essential condition for the good functioning of any system resides in the free adherence of each as regards the different planes that structure it.

But there exists no little cluster, however small, nor any vast and broadly hypertrophied organisation, that can claim to live in autarky. Every organisation must take into account an environment in which a dynamic is established under the angle of commerce, which will touch all the modes of exchange, of competition, of cooperation, of merger.

It is evident that, for any enterprise, the interests that motivate its existence will have to be harmonised with the commercial policy of the moment. It will have to opt for the most elaborate means in order to favour the development of its activities without disturbing its internal rhythm. By extension, it is easy to envisage the particular dynamic that could be adapted to a larger group, indeed to the State itself.

There more than elsewhere, the types of listening to which we have alluded earlier — that is to say, the hermetic, orphic or narcissistic types — will determine the territories of accord and will create the barriers of discord. On a conceptual plane that depends essentially on the functional use of each one’s potential, relations will be established on the most variable, and sometimes the most opposed, modes. Some will be founded on an ethic in which loyalty will be the prime motor, contrary to others for whom this latter value will find itself cleverly occulted. The most virulent and most perverse blows will then be admitted.

It is evidently man whom we find again at every moment in all these circumstances; he will be, according to the case and according to the instant, the target or the shooter, the loser or the winner.”

Alfred A. Tomatis Communication Forum, Milan – 7 and 8 November 1991 Digitisation of the document, by Christophe Besson, 4 June 2010

Source: Alfred A. Tomatis, “Listening in Business Communication,” Communication Forum, Milan, 7-8 November 1991. Transcription from the facsimile.