Effective Listening



Effective listening often is more than half of good communication because the listener not only receives the sender's message but also helps establish the physical and emotional context for the communication.

An example of not-so effective listening

Jim and Dee have been dating seriously for about six months. One day...

Jim says: Wow. They just laid off my supervisor. All of us are worried if who's next.

Dee says: Don't worry about it. You're a good employee. They'd never let you go.

Jim says: But if they do, I'm not sure what to do. All I see for my future is the blue screen of death.

Dee says: Maybe you shouldn't have turned down that teaching job. It was at least secure.

Jim says: But I didn't want to move that far away. And besides, teaching isn't really what I want.

Dee says: Maybe your should go to a career counselor. You're smart. You could do just about anything.

By this time Jim is probably muttering something like "Oh, hell, what's the use." A fight might even break out. Why? Because Dee's communicating to Jim that his anxiety is trivial, he's a bad decision-maker, and he doesn't know how to run his life.

Dee's trying to be a good friend. But her attempts to help aren't working because she's not responding to Jim's feelings. Instead, she's controlling the conversation with advice, comments and questions. She's trying to solve his problem, when what he wants is to feel understood and supported.

This situation is so common. When someone shares a problem with us, we feel almost compelled to change the person's feelings, offer suggestions, point out mistakes -- called constructive criticism -- or minimize the severity of the situation.

And when we're the source of the person's distress, we do all that and more: we offer excuses to defend ourselves, change the subject, withdraw from the conversation, or we counter-attack, which often moves the conversation onto the communication battlefield.

Being a good listener means being attentive, not only to what the person is saying, but more important, to what the person is feeling.

When listening, think of yourself as a giant TV satellite dishes. Your job is to take in as much as data as you can: thoughts, feelings, body language. Resist the temptation to comment, fix, support, defend yourself, or attack. Just listen.

Try to become the other person psychologically -- to see the situation as she or he does and thereby understand the reasons that she or he is feeling this way. Putting yourself in the other person's experience is called empathy.

Does this mean never asking questions or saying anything? Of course not. Sometimes you don't follow the speaker's train of thought. When that happens, ask for clarification. Say something like, "I didn't quite understand what you said. Can you tell me that again."

But try not to interrupt. And don't ask leading questions. Your job isn't to interrogate, but to accept and understand.

Becoming a good listener -- and therefore a good communicator -- may take practice because most of us think of conversations as: I talk, you talk, I talk, you talk, and so on. So, while the other person is speaking, instead of listening, we use our mental energy to create our portion of the dialogue. Instead of driving the dialogue onward, you'll be more effective if you...