“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” ― Ernest Hemingway
“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” ― Stephen R. Covey
“Sometimes all a person wants is an empathetic ear; all he or she needs is to talk it out. Just offering a listening ear and an understanding heart for his or her suffering can be a big comfort.” ― Roy T. Bennett
Listening. Really listening to another human being feels like a lost art these days. My great-grandmother used to say that we have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak. And she was a great listener. She seldomly spoke, so when she did, I always listened, because I knew that what she had to share would be valuable.
I used to listen very attentively as a child. It was mostly a survival mechanism. You see, listening to what the adults around me were saying, helped me gauge the information I needed to stay safe. My life often literally depended on it. So, I became very good at listening to what was NOT being said, and to paying attention to the energy in the room.
I also discovered early on in my life that I’m an auditory learner, which means I process through listening. When I listen to a talk, or a lecture, I am often able to retain most of what was said. It’s probably also why I love audio books. I learn best when I listen to something. And I’m also a verbal processor, which means I process by talking through stuff. This was a truly valuable gift in my teaching career, because for me there is truth in the saying, we learn best through teaching it to someone else. When I share what I’ve learnt with someone else, I am more likely to make new connections, and to remember what I’ve learnt.
And today I want to talk about far more than simply listening for learning or for our own personal understanding. I want to talk about what it means to listen deeply to another in a way that has you both feeling seen, heard, and deeply connected.
Despite my ability to listen and retain information, I don’t think I really listened well to others when I was younger. I would often listen at the content and tonality levels – i.e. I would listen for the content or information that was being shared, and for the tone of voice or the energy with which it was being shared. However, I did not always listen to the person and to the meaning they were trying to convey through what they were sharing.
A lot of this had to do with my own perceptions and assumptions. I tended to make assumptions about what someone meant by what they were sharing, and I would often project my own feelings onto them, instead of really seeking to understand the true meaning of their share.
How I listened started to change for me when I read Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. The second habit Covey spoke of was Seek First to Understand, and how he explained it is that you want to listen for the meaning of what someone is sharing, and you want to check your perceptions and assumptions against what you are hearing, by rephrasing back to the person what you heard them share and asking whether you understood correctly. When you listen in this way, you are seeking to understand the world from the other person’s perspective.
When you seek first to understand, it means you remain open and curious about the other person and their view of the world. You are seeking to see the world the way they do. This doesn’t mean you will always agree with them, but it does mean that you choose to drop any judgments you might have about them or what they are sharing, and you seek to understand how they see the world from a neutral perspective on the inside.
And this was a game changer for me. Suddenly, there was this awakening to the possibility of other world views that were truly different from mine. There was more opportunity to learn in a very different way. And there was the opportunity to truly understand at the person and meaning level of listening.
Then fast-forward a few years, and I embark on coach training, and in my training, I’m invited to deepen my listening skills even further. I learn about three levels of listening, and I start to appreciate what an incredible skill deep listening truly is.
From a coach’s perspective, there are three levels at which I could be listening to someone. Each level represents a different orientation for the listener. On the first level, I’m simply listening to my own thoughts and feelings. I’m not really listening to the person in front of me. In fact, my own inside chatter is preventing me from really listening to the person in front of me. This is when you are listening only to hear the content of what someone is sharing, and you are merely waiting for them to stop talking so you can share YOUR story, views, or opinions. Often the goal is to impress with what you know.
There are times when this type of listening IS the goal. For example, in an oral exam, you want the listener to be listening to the question and then to be listening on the inside to their own wisdom on how they will respond to the questions being asked. And in a coaching conversation, the goal is for the client to be tuned into this level of listening – i.e., fully focused on their own internal world and on the thoughts and feelings that reside there. In a coaching conversation, the client is listening to themselves and to what is coming up for them.
However, this is not the space the coach wants to be in during the conversation. The coach is seeking to listen at the other two levels of listening that are available.
On the second level of listening, I put my attention fully on the person in front of me. I’m not listening merely to the content of what they are sharing. I’m also listening to tonality, to the person and who they are being, and to the meaning underneath what they are sharing. My full attention is on the other person, and NOT on what is happening on the inside for me, because my goal is to seek first to understand.
I want to get to a place inside where I have a grasp of the other person’s view of the world, even though it might be vastly different from my own view of the world. And the best way to do this, is to suspend any judgements I might have about what they are saying. The moment I move into the space of deciding whether I agree with what they are saying or not, my attention is no longer on the other person. It is now on myself and my own inner dialogue. So, I am back in level one of listening, because the focus of my listening is internal, not external.
The third level of listening available is far trickier to incorporate. It’s the level of listening to intuition and to what is not being said. It’s staying alert to the context in which the conversation is being held. It’s listening to subtle tugs from your own intuition about what the person is NOT saying, but that might be in the space. It’s noticing how the person looks and sounds as they share. It’s noticing subtle shifts in the environment.
This is a skill I developed early on in my teaching career to be able to read the classroom and sense when the energy was shifting. It made all the difference to stay in tune to the energy in the room. And it’s far more subtle in a one-one-one conversation with another person, because I must also be mindful of my own projections.
There is a difference between intuiting and projecting. When I’m projecting, I’m making assumptions about what the other person is thinking and feeling and thus projecting my own thoughts and feelings onto the other person. However, when I’m intuiting, it means I’m listening so deeply to the other person, that I’m picking up on their energy vibration, and I can sense what they might be experiencing on the inside.
Joseph le Doux wrote extensively about heart energy and how when two people are deeply connected in conversation, their hearts beat at the same frequency. They are in sync on a physical and psychological level. When I’m connected to someone in this way, I can intuit what needs to be asked or shared without even knowing how I know it, because the answer doesn’t come from my rational/logical mind. It comes from a deeper knowing. It comes from my internal sense and my connection with the other person. It’s my heart’s answer to what is transpiring, not my brain’s answer.
Four years ago, my coach introduced me to the concept of heart-felt listening which is essentially a deepening of the intention to seek first to understand. Heart-felt listening isn’t really a skill. It’s an attitude. It’s a way of being in the world. It’s a conscious choice about the internal space I choose to inhabit when I’m listening to someone.
When I’m in heart-felt listening, I’m seeking to see the magic in the other person. I recognise, appreciate, and respect that we are all spiritual beings having and using a human experience and that there is a divine and loving essence inside the other person who is calmly aware of their own ego perceptions and actions. I trust that the other person is wise and has all the inner resources to deal with their life, their challenges, or with anything that transpires in the conversation. I’m seeking to truly understand the person in front of me from a place of deep loving and non-judgment.
Depending on the person and the situation, this is often hard work. We are hard-wired for judgment, and we tend to do it without even noticing that we are doing it. A judgment is any “assessment” you are making in your own heart and mind about what someone is sharing. Any time you catch yourself either agreeing or disagreeing with what someone is saying, you are bringing judgment, because deciding whether something is good or bad, right or wrong, or whether you agree or don’t agree, creates polarity in the mind, and pulls you out of your heart and into your head. Suddenly, you are back in level one listening, where your own thoughts and feelings are what’s driving you on the inside, and not your yearning to truly understand the other person.
If you have ever been on the receiving end of heart-felt listening, you will know that it can be life-changing. Nothing compares to feeling truly seen and heard. It’s why I have a job. I get paid to make people feel seen, heard, and understood. I get paid to help people understand themselves. And often I do that by mirroring back to them what I’m seeing and hearing from their share.
From my own experiences of being on the receiving end of heart-felt listening, I can say that it is life-giving and healing. It is such a gift to be seen, really seen, and heard. It’s such a gift to be listened to in that way. It’s essentially what we are all seeking. What I know from being a mom, is that what my kids want most in the world is to be seen and heard. What they want most in the world, is my attention. And that need never leaves us, not even in old age.
If you haven’t been on the receiving end of heart-felt listening, try being that for someone else. Commit to listening to someone from a place inside where there is only loving, and no judgment. Commit to letting all your judgments and assumptions go and choose to stay open and curious instead, and see what happens. Because here is the good news, listening to someone in that way is also life-changing. It can be truly transformational if you let it be. It can help you feel deeply connected to another human being. It can help you see their humanity with eyes of loving compassion. And let’s face it when we give, we receive so much ourselves too.
References:
- Breytenbach, C. (2020). The Lost Art of Listening. Available online at: https://chantalbreytenbach.com/lost_art_of_listening/
- Covey, S. R. (2004). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. New York: Free Press.