The Art of Listening
- Jürgen DV
- Jun 6, 2021
- 5 min read
Updated: Feb 27
“When you talk you are only repeating something you already know. But, if you listen you may learn something new.” Dalai Lama
Have you had a chance to talk to a great listener recently? Amazing feeling right? Deeply listening to someone with the sole intention to understand may be the most beautiful gift you can give to that person.
Listening is not only one of the key leadership skills but essential for mastering all your relationships. Here are some practical tips for practising the art of listening.
Ting: the art of listening
The Chinese symbol of Ting – to listen – masterfully captures the essence of listening as a combination of 6 elements:
To hear, being fully engaged in the discussion;
To be present, with your mind cleared from distraction;
To see, notice if the body is saying the same thing as the spoken words;
To focus, giving all your attention to the conversation and to the speaker;
To feel, showing empathy, compassion and care for the speaker;
To think, being mindful of the words but also respecting the silences.
According to this ancient philosophy, listening includes hearing all spoken words in an open, fully present mind. It requires seeing the body language, focusing on the speaker, feeling what the speaker feels and respecting silences to think about the words spoken.
How to practice the art of empathic listening?
“The essence of empathic listening is not that you agree with someone, it’s that you fully, deeply understand that person, emotionally as well as intellectually.” – Stephen Covey
According to Brian Tracy, there are seven keys to get along with people :
Be agreeable: even if the other is obviously wrong, ask yourself: How important is this? If not important, let it pass rather than disagreeing. If it’s so essential, remain agreeable by using the “third party disagreement: putting the words of your argument in the mouth of an imaginary third person. Like, if someone were to ask this question, how would you answer it?
Practice acceptance: simply smile. Your smile expresses your acceptance of the other, making them feel valuable and important.
Express gratitude: simply saying thank you means you make them feel more competent and worthwhile.
Give praise for accomplishments: it’s the easiest way to make someone feel happy and proud. For maximum impact, praise should be immediate, specific and, if possible, in public.
Give admiration on positive traits or possessions: recognising certain personality traits or qualities, like being punctual, generous or persistent, will always boost someone’s self-esteem and self-respect.
Attention by active listening: without interrupting, pausing before giving a reply, raising questions for clarification and not for sharing your opinion, paraphrase or summarise.
Use the boomerang principle: whatever genuine emotion you express toward the other will boomerang back on you.
Be genuinely interested in others, get into their lives, think of ways that you can help them.
How to deal with negative feedback?
“Listen first. Give your opponents a chance to talk. Let them finish. Do not resist, defend or debate. This only raises barriers. Try to build bridges of understanding.” Dale Carnegie.
Dealing with criticism in a positive manner is an important life skill. However, you can either use criticism in a positive way to improve yourself or in a negative way, lowering your self-esteem and causing stress, anger or even aggression.
Remember that your own insecurities or lack of self-esteem may increase the impact of negative feedback. As explained by the sociologist Charles Horton in Human Nature and the Social Order, the notion of “Looking-Glass self” is described as our reflection of how we think we appear to others: “I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am“. However, how we think we appear to others is not always true.
When challenged by another person, it is common to react negatively. First, consider how negative reactions make you look – and more importantly, how they make you feel. How you choose to handle criticism has a knock-on effect in various aspects of your life. Therefore it is better to identify ways to benefit from criticism and use it to your advantage to be a stronger and more able person.
How to avoid arguments by using strategic dialogue?
What’s the best way to get someone to listen to you? Why not try showing the example and start by really listening yourself? Listening to understand their motivation and where it comes from, avoiding to harm their ego with snappy answers or condescending comments are the first steps to successful strategic dialogue.
If your counterpart is repeating a group idea, try listening to figure out what attracted them to this group. Segregating their individual from the group’s arguments may remove the obstacle of loyalty to the group and help them to open up.
Another barrier to deal with can be the status quo bias, meaning the fact that they feel comfortable not to change opinion. Carefully adding a new discomfort can be effective here. For example, some people believe that Mr. Trump was a great president. Once they’re made aware of unbiased facts about the use of charitable funds to pay for private and political expenses, this belief may become uncomfortable. Why would a great president do this?
The next barrier you may have to deal with is misinformation, either because people were misled or misinterpreted factual information. Again, being prepared with hard facts can help, but sometimes they may refuse to change their belief. Instead of bluntly confronting them with your facts at the risk of making them feel foolish, you can explain how you discovered the misinformation and how it changed your understanding.
The final stage of strategic dialogue is to know what they want and why they want it by asking questions and carefully listening to their story.
Changing someone’s mind can be very challenging, especially on an important subject. However, keeping in mind the barriers of ego protection, loyalty, status quo bias and misinformation will help you along the way.
How to become a better listener?
With his “Deep Listening Quiz”, Oscar Trimboli designed a nice, quick tool to explore your listening in workplace situations. After completing the quiz, you will receive a personalised report showing your main “listening villain”.
This can be one of four: Interrupting Listener (interrupts, focused on solving the problem before it’s fully expressed, feels speaker moves too slow), Dramatic Listener (loves creating drama, gets stuck in detail, too engaged in the story), Lost Listener (lost in your own mind, busy thinking) or the Shrewd Listener (shrewd enough not to interrupt but already solving the problem before completely understanding it).
The report will also give some practical tips to improve your listening skills.
Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. Roy T. Bennett
Are you ready to be a better listener?
Take care & stay safe,
Jürgen
Inspired by:
Podcast: Deep Listening, Oscar Trimboli : https://open.spotify.com/episode/0ELvgg3jSfv0t0CfUL9Loo?si=ed46bd5f7bcb45c7
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