Reasons for not Listening and Abiding by Directives, Even When Urgent
What is behind the problem where action is not being taken
Not listening and heeding what is said, whether to employees or employers, can be frustrating, troublesome, costly or worse dangerous.
Recently, an interview was broadcaster about a near miss between a landing airplane while another one on the ground crossed its path at Chicago Midway airport.
The video showed an arriving Southwest Airlines plane having to abort when it saw a private jet, a Bombardier Challenger 350, bisecting the runway.
An explanation was provided as to the why a crash could have happened.
"It appears this was a failure of the flight crew from FlexJet to listen and abide by the instructions of air traffic control,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy on Fox & Friends.
There is another concern about listening in this story. More on that in a moment.
It’s curious and alarming as to why employees may not always “listen and abide,” especially in matters of safety, as in the case of the near disaster mentioned above.
Generally, there are three possible reasons, according to Jasmine Bloemhof, a personal publicist and media visibility strategist.
“Fight or flight response,” is one she says. “When someone feels pressured or criticized, their brain may naturally trigger a defensive response, causing them to reject the message, even if it's urgent.”
Self preservation is a second possibility.
“If someone thinks that the message communicated might threaten their self image and potentially take them out of their comfort zone, sometimes people react and deny processing the message altogether,” Bloemhof says.
And third, she presents, is “cognitive overload,” or for short, “TMI (Too Much Information).”
That leaders learn about this regarding employees should not be entirely surprising, Bloemhof says. "Many of us are in a constant state of receiving and processing information. Employees are not exempt to this phenomenon.
“I think sometimes people appear to not be listening because they are stressed and overwhelmed before receiving the urgent message and their brain may literally not have the bandwidth to process something else, despite it's urgency.”
It’s not just employees however that are judged to not be listening, processing effectively and acting as expected, as the newscast addressed.
"Over the last couple of years, here is what I can tell you,” Homendy elaborated about the problems of air traffic safety. “The NTSB has sounded the alarm bells over and over again about the potential for catastrophe.
“Last spring, I testified before the Senate Commerce that the Department of Transportation that it needed to take action to get beyond words, beyond safety forms and that didn't happen. And here we are today," she lamented.
Bloemhof points to two clear issues that are responsible for leadership inaction, even in the face of necessity and immediacy.
“If someone doesn’t fully trust the person delivering the message, they may subconsciously dismiss or downplay the urgency,” Bloemhof explains. “Add in a natural layer of skepticism and the resistance to process and listen fully to a message is even further exaggerated.”
The second factor, she says, is “misaligned prioritization.”
Bloemhof elaborates.
“All of us carry different life experiences that alter our perception of the here and now,” she points out. “Even though someone else might tell us that something is urgent, our life experiences might perceive it to be otherwise.
“If someone tells us that something is really important and urgent, our mind may or may not agree with that. If we don't agree that something is urgent and important, we may delay processing it, ordering it as less important and lower in our list of priorities.”
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