When is the Last Time You Really Listened to Someone?
I’ve been on a hiatus for a short while, and I apologize for the lack of response from me lately. Things have been overly busy for me and the blog is still new, so I don’t have any guest posts stored away yet (are you interested?). Hopefully, now that some personal matters have come to a close, I can begin to build my routine back.
An unfortunate turn of events had an old family friend stay with us for a few days. My wife and I had not seen her in quite some time and and we both enjoyed spending a bit of time catching up with her; all of us were eager to express where we had been in life, what progresses our kids had made, and how we’ve grown in the time we had been apart.
During our conversation, I found myself thinking of ways that I could include little anecdotes or stories about what my daughter had done last week to match the stories about what her son was doing. I caught myself not really listening to what she was saying, but simply waiting for my turn to speak.
I had to remind myself to keep my mind quiet and really listen to what was being shared. If I wanted my friend to listen to my stories with genuine interest, I would need to show the same level of interest in her stories.
When is the last time you actually listened to someone?
I don’t mean “listening”, as far as the skill of effective listening is concerned; I’m referring to real listening. The kind of listening where you and the person you are speaking with are so involved in the conversation that the world around you fades away and the only thing you notice is the conversation.
Sometimes, we forget about listening and the act of conversing with one another becomes either a routine or a competition. The conversation becomes a means to an end; your focus is the goal. My wife laments that I am very guilty of this in my conversations with her. The intention is a major factor of great listening.
Your intention of a conversation will dominate how you listen. If your goal is to get through the conversation as quickly as possible (for example, deciding what is for dinner), you are not likely to listen very well and instead make statements about what you want and what you don’t want. However, if you are attempting to build a relationship or to give advice or teach, you are much more likely to carefully and completely listen to the conversation.
In order to improve your listening, change your intention of the conversation. Make every conversation about building the relationship. In short, stop being so selfish. Listening to someone is the ultimate method of showing them you care and that you love them. Make the conversation about the other person and not about your personal agenda.
Doing this requires effort, sometimes, which also plays a major influence on how well you listen. Make the effort to understand what the other person is telling you, even if it is something simple. Remember the last time you were really listening to your spouse and you were able to finish their sentence for them? It feels good that someone is listening so intently and they are so in tune with you that they can finish your sentence (although, like everything, over-abundance of this can cause annoyance). A connection has been established and there are very few who walk away from a conversation like that with any negativity. Make the effort to understand; this will help you with completely engaging the person you’re speaking to.
Putting for the extra effort to listen and empathize with someone will require attention. Instead of sending that text message while you’re talking to someone, or checking your watch, stop everything you are doing and give that person in front of you your full attention. You cannot really listen to someone if you are not giving them your full attention, no matter how well you can “multi-task”. A lack of attention to the person you’re speaking to is not only rude, but makes it more difficult to remember the conversation later. If you were supposed to pick up dinner on your way home and you weren’t really paying attention and forgot about dinner, among many other things, you would have failed at effective listening.
Really listening to someone can drastically improve a conversation and, in many cases, extend the experience beyond a simple and generic “how are you” conversation.
How well do you listen?
Oct 5th, 2008 at 1:03 am
Why should we all listen when all you do is listen? You’ve heard all the stories. You’ve laughed at the anecdotes. You’ve heard every problem. Sometimes you just want to tell your own, yet when that time comes, most people don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to listen because the strong person, the person who is always there for them is supposed to be strong, they’re never supposed to go through these things. The strong ones have to deal. They listen. They never get the chance to say how they truly feel because no one wants to listen. At some point, that becomes tiring. Listening to everyone else while no one will listen to you. Maybe that’s where miscommunication comes in, maybe that’s why so many people feel alone. Certain people are only supposed to have happy times to talk about. My question is what about the bad ones? What about the times when you feel so alone all you want is to vent to your friend but they are too busy? No one really wants to call all these hotlines. They want to tell it to a friend, but the friends don’t want to listen. They tell you to get over it, forget about it, you’re supposed to be stronger than that. It’s time to move on. What about the people who are tired of being the listeners and just want to be heard for once?
Oct 6th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
@Tasha,
At the risk of treading on personal information, I’ll keep my response generic. We can discuss things further offline.
“What about the people who are tired of being the listeners and just want to be heard for once?”
Express your intentions.
Simplistic, but not everyone has the listening skill, and we have a tendency to say things and just expect that others have heard and understood us. We assume the person has understood our intention, when really, the other person is not clear of our intention (of course, many won’t ask either, so the cycle of misunderstanding continues over and over).
I have met very few people - so few that I can count them on one hand and have fingers left over - who flat-out refuses to even attempt to listen. Most cases of a person not understanding you can be traced back to a breakdown in communication. Perhaps you only wanted to vent some frustration and you got advice about how you should be living your life. Maybe you wanted to get an opinion, but you only got a sympathetic “I’m sorry you feel that way”. Typically, this happens if you do not express your intention clearly. Sometimes, you need to grab someone by the ears, look them in the eyes, and say “Please do not try to fix this; just listen to me complain” (of course, modify this to your intention).
Some people are really good about reading people and can pick up a persons intentions based on their tone of voice. Hats off to them; most of us are not that lucky. Sometimes, you have to sing it for us.