Listening is a Skill - And Here Are 4 Ways to Improve It

by Anna Ortynska

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In consulting, listening is often treated as a soft skill. Something you either “have” or you “don’t.” In reality, it’s a core business capability because most strategic mistakes don’t happen due to lack of intelligence or data — they happen because leaders and consultants solve the wrong problem.

And more often than not, that starts with not really hearing what’s actually being said. Early in my career, I thought I was a strong listener. I asked the right questions. I took careful notes. I rephrased back what I'd heard. I practiced rapport

religiously. I had the certifications, the frameworks, the mental checklist of active-listening techniques. By every external measure, I was doing it right.

But what I eventually realized was: I wasn’t listening to understand the system, I was listening to respond. And clients can feel that difference immediately.

Over time, I started noticing patterns — subtle behaviours that consistently distort how we hear, interpret, and act on information. They don’t look like mistakes. They look like professionalism, but they quietly undermine decision quality.

Here are four of them.

1. Answering Too Fast

One of the most common signals of poor listening is speed. When someone describes a problem, and the response comes immediately, it often means the answer was prepared before the problem was fully understood. In consulting environments, this usually comes from pressure — to demonstrate expertise, to add value quickly, to “not look slow.”

But fast answers create a hidden cost:

• You anchor the conversation too early

• You signal that the problem is already familiar

• You reduce the chance that the client will say what actually matters

In practice, the most important information almost never comes in the first version of the story. It comes after a pause, when there’s enough silence for the client to add: “...and actually, if I’m honest…”

If you move too quickly, you never hear that part —and that’s usually the part you’re being paid for.

2. Confusing Comfort With Empathy

There’s a subtle but critical distinction between empathy and emotional comfort. Empathy means understanding someone fully — and still being willing to tell them the truth. Comfort means managing the conversation in a way that avoids tension.

In business contexts, this often shows up as:

• avoiding difficult questions

• not challenging contradictions

• softening observations that should be clear

It can look like strong relationship management. But over time, it leads to:

• unresolved issues

• misaligned expectations

• decisions based on partial reality

Clients don’t need comfort, they need clarity delivered in a way they can actually hear.

3. Accepting the Stated Problem Too Quickly

Another pattern I keep seeing across projects is this: everything looks right on the surface — the brief is clear, the scope is well-defined, the work is delivered exactly as agreed. And yet, somehow, it doesn’t solve the real issue. Not because the execution was wrong, but because the initial problem statement wasn’t the actual problem to begin with.

Most organizations don’t describe root causes — they describe symptoms. And if you pay close enough attention, you can usually feel that gap in the conversation. It shows up in small but telling ways: a mismatch between what people say and how they behave, subtle inconsistencies in how the problem is framed from one moment to the next, or emotional signals that don’t quite align with the “official” request.

The risk is not that you’ll fail technically, but that you’ll deliver something accurate and irrelevant. The shift here is simple, but uncomfortable:

Ask the question that reframes the problem — even if you don’t yet know where it will lead.

Because long-term client relationships are built not on perfect execution, but on the experience of being truly understood.

4. Trying to Fix Instead of Understanding

Many high-performing professionals are excellent problem-solvers — and paradoxically, that’s exactly what can get in the way. When you listen with the intention to fix, your attention quietly shifts: instead of fully hearing the person in front of you, you start scanning for something else — a familiar pattern you recognize, a solution you can quickly apply, the fastest path to resolution.

And in that moment, something subtle happens. You move ahead of the client. You’re already closer to the answer than they are — and as a result, you stop truly hearing them.

In consulting and leadership, this creates two very different trajectories. When you focus on fixing, you solve the immediate issue but often create a dependency. When you focus on understanding, you build the client’s ability to think, decide, and act independently — and that’s what actually scales beyond the conversation.

The role is not to provide answers faster. It’s to create conditions where better answers can emerge.

What Actually Changes Listening

Most listening frameworks focus on techniques. But in practice, the real shift isn’t technical — it’s internal. Listening starts to change the moment you stop trying to prove something in the conversation.

Because as soon as your attention moves toward how you’re being perceived — whether you sound competent enough, whether you’re being liked, whether you have the answer ready — you’re no longer fully present with what’s actually being said. And that has a direct impact on decision quality.

The paradox is simple:

the less you need to perform in the conversation, the more useful you become in it.

That’s when clients begin to say what they actually think — not the polished version, not the “safe” version, but the real one. And that’s where the work actually begins.

A Question Worth Sitting With

The difference between a productive conversation and a performative one is rarely obvious in the moment — but it shows up clearly in hindsight, if you know where to look.

So look back at your last few important conversations ans ask yourself:

Where were you trying to understand — and where were you trying to prove something? And what did that cost the outcome?