Some time back, I wrote an article about the "Five Levels of Listening" (starting with ignoring on the low end, and progressing upward through pretending, selective, active, and hitting the apex with empathethic listening).

When I wrote that piece, I felt confident in my own skills, rating myself as a largely empathetic, or at least an active, listener. Recently, I received a reality check when a person extremely close to me informed me that in actuality, my listening skills leave a lot of room for improvement.

Recognizing the critical importance of listening in all human interaction, this wakeup call gave me pause to revisit the whole listening issue and delve a little more deeply into the importance of listening, the hurdles we must overcome to really do it, and how we can move up the proficiency scale.

As we head into this new year, I invite you to positively impact every relationship you have by joining me in a pledge to make "empathetic listening" your super power.

Why it matters

Why is this listening thing such a big deal anyway? I guess it depends on what you want out of life. The bottom line is that unless you are a hermit with absolutely no human interaction, the way you behave in conversations will directly and profoundly affect the success of that interaction.

Whether you are a boss or an employee, a parent or child, spouse or friend, prospect or client, or yes, even a benefits adviser, your success will be determined by your ability to not just hear, but to listen.

Most of us hear words and sounds passively, as opposed to listening actively. According to the mountain of available research, when a person feels heard, truly listened to and understood, the feelings created are so close to those of feeling loved that most people can't describe the difference.

When I work with our leadership development and engagement programs (directed by Ph.D.-level professors from West Point), the first imperative that we emphasize to our CEO audiences is empathy. To win the hearts and minds of others, they want to feel heard, respected and cared about. This is the bridge to all successful relationships.

But most of us don't set out to be poor listeners. So why is it so difficult to achieve proficiency at this seemingly natural and easy behavior? Why didn't they take the time to teach us these skills in school?

While I don't have the answer to the second question, here are five of the realities that make empathetic listening so hard, and some suggestions for overcoming them.

1. Short attention spans

When asked to guess the average adult attention span, most people say around 30 minutes. According to statistics, however, it is actually only seven seconds! That's right - every seven seconds our brains take us somewhere else.

If we are listening, we need to make a conscious effort to remain engaged and resist the attempts of our brain to go somewhere else.

If we are speaking, it helps to pause from time to time to re-engage the other person. If we monopolize the dialogue, we are almost guaranteed to lose the other person. In fact, by definition, that stops being a dialogue, and instead becomes a monologue!

Pausing allows the other person to respond, ask questions and feel like their perspective is valuable.

Also, use examples to create visual anchors for your concepts. In conversation, sharing a concept without an example is like a tree without roots or a house without a foundation. Without the ability to create these visual anchors in our brains, many concepts just won't stick.

2. Too many distractions

Consider this: In 1970, the average person was exposed to about 500 advertising or sales messages per day. Today, that number approaches 5,000 per day! The number of products in a grocery store was about 7,000 back then, versus almost 50,000 today!

We just have so many stimuli competing for our attention that as a coping mechanism we focus only on those people and those things that are either the "loudest" or that actually have meaning for us personally. Everything else becomes white noise.

Where practical, engage in important conversations away from as many of these distractions as possible.

3. False assumptions

If we are not careful, we will automatically make assumptions about the other person and what they are saying.

We allow our own emotional biases to determine how and what we hear, even judging if it is worthy of our attention. It is surprisingly common for us to define and judge not only what the other person says, but also why they are saying it even before they have finished.

This is compounded by the fact that the average person speaks at about 140 words per minute, while most of us think at about 600 words per minute. Our minds try to read ahead and interpret information, before we've heard it all.

We just don't take the time to really understand. Try going into conversations with a sincere desire to understand not only the message, but also the true feelings and the motives of the other person, not the feelings and motives that our minds want to arbitrarily assign. Keep asking yourself the question, "why is he saying this; why does he feel this way?"

When you are speaking, try to state your perspective several different ways to minimize false assumptions.

4. Lack of training

Few of us were formally taught how to listen. Though you and I probably took Econ 202 or Writing 300 in college, how many of us ever took Listening 101? It's little wonder listening is such a challenge for most of us.

Try establishing and maintaining good eye contact - just don't go to a creepy extreme. It is amazing how much more you can engage intellectually and emotionally with someone just by maintaining strong eye contact.

And remember, if you are talking to a prospect, their buying inclination is going to start with the emotional feeling they develop toward you, much more than what they think about the quality of your service, tool, or product.

Learn how to be present with people, and give them your full, undivided attention. Ask yourself repeatedly, "why does this person feel that way?" Ask them questions. Don't try to multi-task, don't read e-mail or look at your computer screen; resist allowing yourself to be distracted.

5. Listening is work

And finally, empathetic listening is just plain hard work. When you're empathetically listening, your respiration rate goes up and your heart starts to beat faster.

If you are not conditioned to listen effectively, go into training. Build up your proficiency and stamina to listen. Go into conversations with a conscious determination to be empathetic; to understand both the "what" and the "why" of the other person.

The results will be astounding. Relationships will be stronger, sales efforts much more successful and life so much more rewarding. That's my goal. That's my commitment. Empathetic listening will become my super power in 2010.

Nielsen, president of the LeaderLabs, can be reached at rnielsen@theleaderlabs.com.

Severance pay, outplacement support and other continuing benefits for terminated employees impact the morale of remaining employees, even affecting the company's brand and public image, according to new research on separation benefits.

The study of more than 1,200 business leaders from 45 countries, conducted by DBM, a global outplacement firm, and the Human Capital Institute, a research group, reveals that most organizations (85%) provide severance to at least some of their employees, with almost half (45%) offering severance to all of their employees, including part-timers.

Other key findings include:

* Virtually all organizations reported problems resulting from a reduction in the workforce, particularly decreased levels of morale (71%) and reduced loyalty (62%).

* Companies place the greatest emphasis on departing employees (84%) and protecting the morale and commitment of remaining employees (82%) over financial considerations such as budget (68%) and return on investment (40%).

* Most organizations (81%) believe providing higher levels of separation benefits (such as severance pay, outplacement support and other continuing benefits) most significantly impact the morale and productivity of the remaining workforce

Among those employers that provide severance support, 66% pay it in lump sums instead of as continued salary payments. Just over half (54%) of respondents increase severance benefits for terminations resulting from organizational changes such as mergers, acquisitions, closures, outsourcing and sale of the company.

About half of companies provide senior executives and executives with three weeks or more of severance for each year of service. Managers and those below generally receive two weeks or more per year of service.

Outplacement services are provided to some terminated employees by 75% of companies with 100 or more employees. Among those that offer them, the primary reason for doing so is corporate values (76%), while less than 10% identify labor relations or legal considerations as the rationale.

The level within the organization is the factor most often used to determine outplacement support, followed by years of service. More than half of companies (58%) increase levels of outplacement support under certain circumstances, such as mergers, acquisitions and facility closings.

"When employees leave an organization, they don't just become ex-employees," says Robert Gasparini, CEO and chairman of DBM. "Departing employees become customers, referral sources, competitors and perhaps even future employees returning to the organization. By well managing employee separation, companies can fortify loyalty and mitigate retention risk among the remaining workforce."