I recently gave a keynote

on the topic of seeing and believing in others, and how the skill of being able to really listen well is so foundational to the ability to create trust, understanding, and a deeper connection with others.

You may be nodding your head and thinking - "yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard all this before." But before you conclude that you don't need to read this because "I already am a good listener," read on.

Just like driving a car, we all suffer from an overconfidence bias about how good we all think we are at things. My wife Lea's driving is a perfect example. Everyone in the family is anxious as hell when she's behind the wheel because she is so easily distracted, and she comments like a Baptist preacher about the driving sins of everyone else on the road.

She actually says, out loud, that she is a great driver despite her husband and 6 kids never wanting her to drive whenever we go out. And on top of it all, she calls out all of our driving sins to each of us when we are behind the wheel!

So, what's this got to do with listening? Most of us think we know how to listen well despite never being taught the specific skills involved. However, learning how to listen well is a skill that can be learned and honed over time.

Why is listening so important? It' simple: because the quality of your relationships at home and at work determines the quality of your life.

If that is true, and it is, then one of the most powerful ways to improve the depth and quality of your relationships is to really try to see another person - it is the key that will unlock the door to better understanding, more trust, and a deeper connection with others.

I want to share a note my daughter Rachel sent me to show how making an effort to learn and practice the skills of listening can have such an incredible impact on how people perceive you and, therefore, your relationship.

This is Rachel's opinion of my listening skills 14 years ago: "ridged, closeminded, lacking empathy, narrow definition of how life should be lived, unapproachable, perfection is the only option."

This is Rachel's opinion of my current listening skills: "open, vulnerability is a good thing, approachable, ability to listen without judgment, grounded advice not rooted in preconceived notions of what people should do …truly listening to the situation and remaining diplomatic, considerate, compassionate, an acknowledgment that everyone has faults and those faults can be a good thing, life isn’t perfect."

And I can tell you without reservation, thank God - being 70 and in the fourth quarter of the game of life (I hope I am not in overtime and don't know it!) - our relationship has been transformed by my learning how to listen and see her better.

So, how to listen? I suspect you may have come across this insipid advice about what one needs to do to be a good listener:

1. Not talk when the other person is speaking.

2. Let the other person know you are listening with facial and verbal cues.

3. Repeat back what they said, word for word or by paraphrasing.

Picture someone sitting there not saying a word, nodding, smiling, frowning, squinting - whatever improv BS they can muster up, and then they repeat what you said.

Nuff said.

Now let's look at specific things that get in the way of being a great listener (resources at the end of this newsletter):

1. Our Egos - we make it all about us by spewing out our opinions, our judgments, our points of view, and the worst: our f*^%ing advice.
2. Lack of Genuine Curiosity about the other person - largely driven by our egos and making it all about us.
3. Anxiety - about how we are coming across socially. We worry about what the other person will think if we say the wrong thing or don't say the right thing.
4. Inability to Imagine the Other Person's Perspective. Anais Nin said it best: "we don't see the world (and others) as they really are, we see them as we are." We are so immersed in our own simulation of reality that we fail to see or understand that everyone else has their own unique simulation of reality. A simple example: a woman on the other side of the river yells across to a man on the other side of the river - "How do I get to the other side?" - and he yells back - "You are on the other side."
5. What David Brooks calls Lesser Minds - this is where we make simple and judgmental sweeping assessments of others and think about them in black and white terms, like: "That guy is only in medical school to make money and for the prestige" but "me, I am in medical school because I care about people and want to help heal others."
6. We Objectify Others - when we put people into buckets (democrat, republican, black, white, union worker, rich, poor - which can close the door to seeing the astounding and unpredictable set of unique circumstances that go into that magic mix of what makes each of them remarkable human beings.
7. Stereotyping - Germans are orderly, Asians all are math whizzes, Norwegians are stoic - and even though there is often some basis in reality, they objectify, and they are false and potentially hurtful.
8. A Static Mindset - you think people don't change. Think of parents who continue to treat their children as if they are still their kids - as if they haven't changed over time.
9. And finally, Being a Topper as David Brooks calls it. Example: you run into your partner and say: "damn, that case was a bitch. I was stuck in there for 8 straight hours sweating bullets." You top that experience with your own - "yeah, the same thing happened to me last week, but I was in there for 12 hours!" You think you are validating their experience, but it just shuts down their desire to talk. It is a form of one-upping them to make us feel good.

David Brooks calls people who embody the habits above Diminishers: those who make people feel small and unseen, as things to be used, and not as persons to be befriended. They ignore.

Conversely, he calls people who work to really see another person Illuminators. Illuminators have a persistent curiosity about other people and have trained themselves to understand others. They lift others like the kinetic energy of a trampoline by shining the brightness of their care on them that lifts them up, and makes them feel lit up, respected, and seen.

The skills to master to become an Illuminator:

1. First understand that the overall goal is to create an experience in which the other person really feels heard. Note the word feels. I am sure you can recall a time when someone did this for you and how good it felt.
2. Recognize that listening is not the act of hearing words. Great listening is the art of understanding the meaning behind the words.
3. Treat your attention to the other person as an on off switch, and not a dimmer (i.e. with half-assed attention).
4. Create a safe space for someone to do what Deeyah Khan calls empty the bucket (the bucket being full of what is pent up that needs to be given breath to). To do this, drop all of your preconceived notions about how you think things should be, don't judge them or what they say, don't be a Topper (see below), and don't offer advice.
5. To help them empty the bucket, don't remain silent and do all that improv stuff - get genuinely curious about the story they are telling, and draw out more and more and more with phrases like "tell me more," "what else," or "that's interesting." Then rinse and repeat until you sense that the bucket has been emptied.
6. Ask questions periodically - if you are genuinely curious about their story, then it should be easy to ask questions that your curiosity has sparked. They should be clarifying questions or ones that can help them dig deeper into what is going on inside because there is almost more than meets the eye with every story we tell. Asking clarifying questions and digging deeper questions can dramatically help the other person both feel heard and gain discoveries and insight, from themselves, and not you.
7. Make them authors by being an archeologist piecing together the events of the story by asking questions that bring in the details of the story they are telling you. Dig deeper by asking, for example, about how they experienced it, the details of the scenes, what they felt, how the other person responded, and so on. Help them flesh out and construct the details of the story with your questions. Avoid personal and appraising questions like “What do you do for a living?” or “What part of town do you live in?” or “When did you last go to the grocery store?” Here is a great example of asking an open ended question during a focus group from the book Your Not Listening “Tell me about the last time you went to the store after 11:00 p.m.” A shy, unassuming woman who had said little up to that point raised her hand and responded, “I had just smoked a joint and was looking for a ménage à trois—me, Ben, and Jerry.”
8. Don't fear the pause! We are often very uncomfortable with silence. Get comfortable with it and its power to let things marinate and bring out the deeper flavors of the conversation.
9. Make suggestions, but do so in a way that they will accept and open other ways to think about things. This one took a lot of work and experimentation for me to get better at it but boy is it valuable. I like to use phrases like "what do you think about...," "this is just a hypothesis but I was thinking.....," or "how does this idea sit with you?" It shows you are engaged and listening carefully, and they may open the Discovery channel for them.
10. Finally, listen to their values hidden beneath the words. When you see that there is an emotional response to something, think about what value or values the other person may hold that may have been challenged by the event or story they are telling you about.

This stuff takes practice, and like anything worth learning, pick some parts and practice. If you can't keep your mouth shut, start with that. If you are a Topper, work on stopping that first on a regular basis. Then move on to the next skill.

Learning these skills will prevent the following downward relationship spirals and what David Brooks calls: "the millions of emotional casualties: husbands and wives who don’t really see each other, parents and children who don’t really know each other, colleagues at work who might as well live in different galaxies."

Remember, the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life.

Resources:

How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

You're Not Listening by Kate Murphy

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