“There’s a lot of difference
between listening and hearing.”
― G. K. Chesterton
Some time ago a friend of mine remarked to me that “most people think listening is just waiting for their turn to talk.” As time has gone by, I have not observed this to be any less true. The skilled listener is an often-prized individual in any group, the one to whom other members look often for empathy and insight. Active listening is such a valuable skill that there are professionals such as counselors and psychologists, who make a living in part from doing just that extremely well. While hearing is a biological process embedded in the auditory system of many animals, listening is the active taking in of a message for the purpose of understanding. This involves the whole body not just the ears and in particular the eyes and most importantly the attentive mind. True listening is something quite uniquely human in quality. It is a show of care of and of respect for the one listened to. Now allow me to disclose that my dog is an excellent listener to all appearances, but I cannot know for sure if he has digested and understood what I tell him. All in all, why then should we put forth the effort to develop this humane skill even to the point of making it a habit? It is this very question I hope to pose and onto which I hope to shed some light.
Learn something new.
The 14th Dalai Lama once said “When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen you may learn something new.” This is a very simple and practical insight as to the virtue of listening. It is a fallacy of egotism, with which most all of us struggle, to think that there is anyone from whom we have nothing to learn. We can learn from children as well as from the elderly, those with limited formal education as well as the well-educated. Why do I cite the ego? When we are just “waiting for our turn to talk” as my friend put it, it is with an intrinsic assumption that the only person in the conversation with anything meaningful to say is ourselves. If we really held our conversational partner in equal esteem, we would put just as much effort into understanding our message as relating our own. In fact, some would say that in order to keep this ego in its place, we should see this former task first.
Gain social currency before spending it.
Stephen Covey in his best seller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People touted one of these seven habits as “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Knowing of the phenomenon described by my friend, Covey recommended the strategy of putting the task of ensuring our partner of our understanding of their message ahead in time of seeking to have our own message understood. We give our time and attention to those who we deem worthy. It’s as if we are engaging in an economic exchange. With some long-standing relationships we have built such a savings or “line of credit” to speak that at times we can expect to be heard and understood out of the gate. For most human interactions however, we are entering with a “zero-balance” and the way to gain that social currency is to put in the time and effort to understanding our conversational partner. When we attain and effectively communicate our understanding our conversational partner’s message, we satisfy a need they have to be understood and in that allow then the psychological room to then understand our message to follow. To put our own need to be understood aside for a moment to see first to the need of another is not only an act of humanity, it is an act of love.
A matter of love.
What is love? That answer to such a question is an entire life’s work in and of itself. Leo Buscaglia made it his life’s work at The University of Southern California until his death in 1998. Buscaglia said:
“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”
If we take as one of the fundamental principles of love to be the ability to set aside one’s own desires and even needs for the sake of another than in this sense, true listening is an act of love toward another human being.
The fallacy of agreement.
When we truly listen, we seek to understand. We should not be lulled into thinking that to understand is to agree. Sometimes this is on seemingly benign matters daily life choices. I can understand why some people would wish to be vegetarian for example, but that does not mean that I agree and adopt this practice myself. It only means that I have an understanding of why these others have made this decision and can see their logic in doing so, even if I disagree with it. There is however the possibility that in listening to my vegetarian friends that I may change my mind and adopt a vegetarian lifestyle, this being a result of my own agreement but not of understanding alone. But if I do not at least seek to understand then I will be denied the wonderful possibility of consciously changing my mind. There are however instances where the difference between understanding and agreement may become magnified due to circumstance. Forensic psychologists spend time trying to understand why those who have committed heinous crimes did so, but by no means does this mean they agree with those decisions. In my practice of medicine, I have patients who have made decisions to abuse substances as well as other practices that are detrimental to their health. I certainly do not agree with those decisions but if I can take the time to understand them, then empathy is possible and with empathy there is a hope toward healing. This does not in any way mean the condoning of behavior destructive to one’s self or others but rather an expression of empathy and humanity for another.
To Lead
“Leaders who don’t listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say.”
-Andy Stanley
Who is a leader? A more complete answer should be reserved for another post, but a shorter answer would be to “Who isn’t a leader.?” Suffice it to say that we all have a leadership role in some way at some point, even if it is between ourselves and one other person. When we lead then we engage in a human relationship dependent on trust and the ability to communicate freely. If we can listen well to those we lead then we can anticipate obstacles, fill in knowledge gaps as well as see where we ourselves need to grow. If we fail in this habit as leaders then we will fall into the trap described by Reverend Stanley.
To be able to actively listen, to truly understand in a moment another human being is an act of love which can enrich not only the lives of those with whom we engage but our own as much if not more so.
More interesting links and reading:
https://medium.com/wordsthatmatter/why-listen-is-the-word-of-the-year-7136ffee99c5
https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/leo_buscaglia
http://www.buscaglia.com/books
https://www.franklincovey.com/the-7-habits.html
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/collections/201210/the-art-listening
