Distracted Listening – A Two Minute Solution

Alex speaks with Tom Lemanski of Chicago Executive Coaching about the negative impact of distracted listening on workplace relationships. Listeners will learn a simple, actionable technique – two minutes of undivided attention – to improve their presence and build trust with their teams.

Tom Lemanski is an executive coach and leadership advisor at Chicago Executive Coaching. If this conversation sparked something for you, visit https://chicagoexecutivecoaching.com to learn more or get in touch.

Transcript

Speaker 0:04

Welcome to Leadership Breakthroughs, where executive coaches and leaders explore the mindsets and strategies that drive real growth. I'm your host, Alex, and today we're talking about something that's quietly damaging relationships at work and at home. Distracted listening and what you can actually do about it. I'm joined by Tom Lemanski, founder of Chicago Executive Coaching. Tom, welcome.

Speaker 1 0:27

Good to be here, Alex.

Speaker 0:29

Tom, you draw a comparison in your writing between distracted driving and distracted listening. Distracted driving is obviously dangerous in a physical sense. What made you want to put those two things in the same conversation?

Speaker 1 0:40

The comparison is useful because distracted driving gave us a framework we all understand. The it can wait campaign, the laws, the cultural moment where we said this behavior is not acceptable. And I wanted to ask, why haven't we had that same reckoning with distracted listening? The harm is real, it's just slower and quieter. You don't see it in an accident report, but you see it in relationships that erode, teams that stop trusting their leader, people who stop bringing you their real problems.

Speaker 1:10

So the damage is real, just harder to trace back to a single moment.

Speaker 1 1:15

Exactly. Nobody walks out of a meeting and says, I felt diminished because you glanced at your phone three times. They just start to disengage. They start editing what they bring to you. And the leader usually has no idea why the relationship has gone cold.

Speaker 1:31

You list some specific words in the post. Insulted, angry, diminished, disrespected. That's a strong list. Is that what you actually hear from people? Or is that your read on what they're feeling but not saying?

Speaker 1 1:43

Both. Sometimes people say it directly, usually in a coaching context where they feel safe enough to be honest. More often, it's what surfaces when you ask someone to describe a leader they don't trust. The language is remarkably consistent. He's never really there. She's always half somewhere else. People don't always name the behavior, but they name the feeling, and those feelings are on that list.

Speaker 2:07

That's interesting. They describe the feeling before they describe the behavior.

Speaker 1 2:12

Because the feeling is what sticks. The behavior is the cause. The feeling is what shapes whether that person will go to bat for you, tell you the truth, bring you a problem before it becomes a crisis. Those are high stakes. We're not talking about hurt feelings as a nice-to-have concern. We're talking about the quality of information and trust a leader can access.

Speaker 2:32

So the practical answer you offer is two minutes of total presence at the start of every interaction. I want to make sure we're precise about what you mean by total presence, because that phrase can mean a lot of things.

Speaker 1 2:44

Fair point. It's not a soft concept, so I don't want it to sound like one. Total presence means you are consciously, deliberately giving one person your exclusive engaged attention. Not split attention, not mostly paying attention. You have eliminated the distractions, you are listening with your eyes and your ears. You are reading body language, you are picking up on emotion, and for that moment, nothing else in the world matters more than this person in front of you. That is a specific, effortful act. Most people are not doing it most of the time.

Speaker 3:16

Why two minutes specifically? That sounds almost too short to matter.

Speaker 1 3:20

Two minutes is the entry point, not the destination. The reason I say two minutes is that it's achievable. If I tell someone, be fully present for every conversation for the rest of your career, they nod and nothing changes. If I say start every interaction with two minutes of complete undivided presence, that's a manageable commitment. It creates momentum. The two minutes sets the tone for the entire conversation and it starts building what I think of as listening muscles, your capacity to sustain genuine presence for longer and longer periods over time. The goal is not two minutes. The goal is a fundamentally different way of showing up.

Speaker 3:56

You're describing it as a habit you build rather than a switch you flip.

Speaker 1 4:00

Right, and that framing matters because people try to stop distracted listening by willpower alone. Just try harder, just put the phone away. That doesn't work. To change a habit, you have to replace it with something. Two minutes of total presence is the replacement behavior. It gives you something to do, not just something to stop doing.

Speaker 4:20

Let me push on that a little. Someone listening to this might think, I'm a senior leader. I'm managing a lot of moving parts. I genuinely cannot give everyone my undivided attention all day. Is there a version of this that's realistic for someone with that much competing for their focus?

Speaker 1 4:37

That's exactly why the practice starts at two minutes and not two hours. Nobody is saying you solve every organizational challenge by being maximally present in every interaction forever. What I'm saying is that when you choose to engage with a person, when you're physically with them, own that moment. The person in front of you made a decision that this conversation matters. The least you can do is show up for it. The irony is that leaders who are genuinely present for even short interactions are perceived as far more engaged than leaders who are physically in the room, but mentally elsewhere for the whole conversation.

Speaker 5:12

Quality over duration.

Speaker 1 5:15

Completely. And when you start with two minutes of real presence, the quality of the entire interaction improves. You've signaled that this person matters. That signal does something to the conversation. They open up more, you get better information. The ROI on two intentional minutes is disproportionate to the investment.

Speaker 5:33

You make a point that distracted listening is probably not a conscious choice for most people, but the word you use is still inflicting. That's a loaded word. Is that intentional?

Speaker 1 5:44

Very, because whether it's conscious or not, the impact is the same. The person on the receiving end doesn't experience it as, oh, he just has a lot on his mind. They experience it as dismissal. And leaders have to be held to a higher standard here because the power dynamic amplifies everything. When a leader is distracted during a conversation, the message the other person receives is you are not important enough. That is a statement about their value. Good intentions don't undo that.

Speaker 6:12

So awareness of the habit is necessary, but it's not enough.

Speaker 1 6:16

Not even close. This is something Dale Carnegie understood well. Knowing something and doing something are completely different things. Knowledge only has value when you apply it. A leader can intellectually understand that distracted listening is damaging their relationships and still reach for their phone the moment there's a lull in conversation. Understanding the problem doesn't build the habit, practice builds the habit.

Speaker 6:40

Last thing I want to ask before we get to the takeaway. You end the post with a fairly direct line. Reaching for your phone during a conversation is guaranteed to inflict emotional distress. No hedging. Is that too strong?

Speaker 1 6:53

No. And I'll tell you why I'm comfortable with that language. We know from everything we understand about human psychology and social dynamics that being dismissed in a conversation, having your presence treated as less important than a notification, registers as a genuine social threat. The feelings on that list, insulted, diminished, disrespected, those aren't soft feelings people should just get over. Those feelings determine whether a relationship is safe or not. And once someone decides a relationship isn't safe, you have lost something that is very hard to get back. So no, I don't think that's too strong. I think most leaders are just not paying attention to the cost.

Speaker 7:31

Tom, if someone is listening to this on their commute and wants to try one thing this week, what do you tell them?

Speaker 1 7:37

The next time you sit down with someone, your direct report, your peer, your boss, start with two minutes of total presence. Phone face down or not on the table. Eyes on them, ears open. Nothing else matters for those two minutes. You are not doing anything sophisticated. You are simply deciding that this person in front of you is the most important thing in the room right now. Do that consistently, and you will start building a capacity for genuine presence that changes how people experience you as a leader. They will not be able to explain exactly what is different. They will just know that you are someone who actually listens.

Speaker 8:14

That's leadership breakthroughs. Thanks to Tom Lemanski for a conversation that's worth slowing down for. You can find Tom's Leadership Breakthroughs blog and coaching programs at Chicagoexecutive Coaching.com. We'll be back next week.