How to Be a Good Listener

How to Be a Good Listener
Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf. - Native American Proverb

Listening is an essential part of communication. And it is different from hearing. Being a good and patient listener helps you not only solve many problems at work or home, but also helps you see the world through the eyes of others, thereby opening your understanding and enhancing your capacity for empathy. Besides which, you learn a lot from listening! As deceptively simple as listening to and acknowledging other people may seem, doing it well, particularly when disagreements arise, takes sincere effort and lots of practice.

Steps
1. Place yourself in the other person's shoes. It is often too easy to wonder about how what the other person is telling you is impacting on you. As you worry about this, you reflect any tension, annoyance or irritation back in your body gestures and facial expressions. Active listening is not about inward-thinking. Instead, you must draw away from the temptation to do this by looking at the issues from the other person's perspective and actively trying to see his or her point of view. It is not a good idea to consider yourself too smart and assume that if you would have been in their shoes, you would have not taken more than 3 microseconds to see your way through the problem or situation the other person is in.

2. Remove all distractions. Give the speaker one hundred percent of your attention. Turn off cell phones, do not let your eyes wander about looking for a break and politely brush aside any interruptions such as waiters or people who suddenly spot you and want to say hello. It may be easiest to arrange to talk somewhere that such distractions will not occur.

3. Practice the empathetic sounding back technique. At appropriate intervals during the conversation, it is helpful to "summarize and restate" and/or "repeat and encourage" the main points:
a. Repeat and encourage: Repeat some of the things said by the speaker. At the same time, you encourage the speaker with positive feedback. For example, you might say: "You didn't enjoy having to take the blame. I can see why." Go easy with this technique, however, because if you overwork it, it may come across patronizing.
b. Summarize and restate: It is also very useful to summarize what the speaker is saying and to restate it in your own words. This is a form of reassuring the speaker that you have truly been listening to what he or she is saying. It also provides the speaker with an opportunity to correct any mistaken assumptions or misperceptions that have may have arisen during the course of the conversation. This is an especially good technique to try when you find yourself getting frustrated or restless in your listening.

4. Do not interrupt with what you feel/think about the topic in discussion. Wait for another person to ask your opinion before interrupting the flow of discussion. Active listening requires the listener to shelve the opinions temporarily and to await appropriate breaks in the conversation for summarizing as described in the step beforehand. Abstain from giving direct advice. Instead, let them talk their situation out and find their own way. Besides, if they take your advice and something goes wrong, they'll be likely to blame you (whether they tell you or not).

5. Ask meaningful and empowering questions. Do not seek to probe or make the other person defensive. Rather, aim to use questions as a means by which the speaker can begin to reach his or her own conclusions about the concerns or issues being raised. Once you have shown empathetic listening (as previously described), it is time to move into empowering listening by re-framing the questions that you ask the the speaker. For example: "You didn't enjoy having to take the blame. But I cannot understand why you feel blamed rather than merely being asked not to do something that way." Wording the question in this manner presents the speaker with a need to respond directly to your lack of grasping something. In the process of doing so, the speaker should begin to move from a more emotional response to a more constructive response.

6. Wait for the person to open up. In the process of encouraging a constructive response, an active listener must continue to be patient and let the speaker acquire his or her full flow of thoughts, feelings and ideas. Keep yourself in his/her shoes and try to estimate why he/she is in such a situation.

7. Use body gestures and facial expressions to express your interest and to unearth what is left unsaid. Active listening involves the entire body and face - both yours and that of the speaker's:
a. Your expression: Look interested and meet the gaze of your speaker from time to time. Do not overwhelm the speaker by staring intently but do reflect friendliness and openness to what you are listening to.
b. Read between the lines: Always be alert for things that have been left unsaid or for cues that can help you gauge the speaker's true feelings. Watch the facial and body expressions of the speaker to try to gather all information you can, not just from the words. Imagine what kind of state of mind would have made you acquire such expressions, body language and volume.
c. Speak at approximately the same energy level as the other person. Then he or she will know that the message is getting through and that there is no need to repeat.

8. Be patient and respect pauses. Do not jump to speak up after the speaker has come to his or her own conclusions or resolutions and there is a pause. It is possible that more is yet to be said by the speaker. Let the speaker be the first to break this silence. You can always come back with your solutions or suggestions next time you talk, or the speaker may ask you to clarify your thoughts or offer more opinions at the time. Listening is about understanding another person, not about making suggestions (unless asked).

9. Try to reassure the speaker that all is well. Whatever the conclusion of the conversation, let the speaker know that you have been happy to listen and to be a sounding board. Make it clear that you are open to further discussion if needs be but that you will not be pressuring him or her at all. In addition, reassure the speaker of your intention to keep the discussion confidential. Offer to assist with any solutions if you have the ability, time and expertise. Do not build up false hopes, however. If the only resource you can be is to continue to be an active listener, make that very clear; in and of itself, this is a very valuable help to any person.

10. Accept that everyone has a unique thought process and ways to express himself/herself. Too often we jump to conclusion before others finish talking because we place a fact, a concept or any bits and fragments of information we heard into our own thought process. Try not to do that. Instead, look for fine differences if it sounds like the speaker may be agreeing with you and look for areas he/she might indicate agreement if it sounds like an objection. Understand that you do not need 100% agreement to reach the same decision.

Tips
Never criticize when listening, and never attack another person for their feelings. This spoils your reputation as a listener and will completely remove the speaker's motivation to speak up.

Listening is about creating a caring environment in which the other person feels encouraged by your ability to understand.

The more you listen, the more trusted you become.

The more it becomes difficult to listen, the better and more important it is to listen.

Remember that when your counterpart feels that he/she has been listened to, he/she is a lot more likely to listen and hear about your ideas. On the contrary, if nobody listens to each other, you fall victim to bad listening as well and you will not have a chance to fully express yourself. So your desire to express should begin with listening well to others.

Postpone an important conversation if you are not in the mood to listen. It is better to not talk about it if you are not ready than trying to force through a conversation where you are too distracted by emotions, worries, and other things that prevent you from listening.

Avoid phrases that imply that you have not listened fully to the points communicated to you such as "Yeah but ...". Instead, learn to use phrases that provide confirmation that you have heard the other side fully, such as "I see ... now tell me what you would say to this...".

Keep in mind that sometimes we need to listen "between the lines" but there are times when we need to absorb things at face value. When we listen intensively, our minds are often times busy placing what we hear into the situation and our emotions, which create barriers to our ability to listen fully what is being said. This is similar to making judgement and drawing conclusions before all has been said! Don't do that. Take it at its face value and go with the flow.

I read this today and thought to myself "I would like to be a good listener". Please pray for me that I will listen to what this is saying to me.