We have discussed the skills required to speak from your own experience, let others speak to their own (opening safe spaces), and trust them to do that. The last item to talk about is how to listen to others openly. What does that even mean, right? To me, it means combining the last two skills and taking it one step further. If we have spoken from our own experience, have created safe spaces for others to be authentic, and we trust that they are indeed being authentic, the last step is to listen to them fully and openly. What does that require? Four things: listening to understand rather than to respond, putting aside our assumptions and believing in others, being patient, and thinking before we respond. These four things assist in supporting each person to feel heard and understood.
Listening to understand versus listening to respond is something I have been hearing a lot in common conversations. I don’t know who first coined the phrase or where it originated, but it is a good one to remember. Most of the time while another person is speaking, we are listening to a portion of what they are saying, and then we go off somewhere into our own mind and start thinking about what we want to say when it is our turn to speak. This is why when respond quickly with a response we started formulating while they were still speaking, people don’t feel heard. It feels like we were just waiting for our turn to say something. Some conversations this is not a huge deal. We have lots of conversations where we are each sharing our ideas and thoughts, like brainstorming or sharing events. There isn’t a needed response to each person’s statement. We are all just throwing out information of our own. However, even in these situations, taking a moment to consider what others have said before putting out our thoughts will go a long way toward each person feeling heard.
Other times, people are expressing something important to them and want to hear a response to their idea, story, experience. If we respond quickly based on only sort of hearing what they said, it will usually not feel like we are listening or care about what they are sharing. We were working on our response, not on hearing them, so we will show we didn’t in fact hear them. It can be challenging to know what someone needs or expects in conversation. We will always do better at figuring that out if we set aside our thinking processes while someone is talking and listen to them fully before we start considering how we want to respond. Basically, most people need us to take a breath and hear them before speaking. Sometimes, what people want is to hear something encouraging, supportive, or empathetic before we start moving on to what we need or want to say. We need to show others we hear them, which means we need to actually listen with an effort to understand them, rather than partially listening while we are working on what we get to say next.
Putting aside our assumptions is essential to effective communication. If we enter a conversation thinking we know what a person is thinking, feeling or what their intentions are, we are going to be wrong a lot of the time. No matter how well we know another person, we have filters and blinders on that prevent us from really seeing or knowing what is going on inside other people. We can guess, but guessing is often what derails the effectiveness of the communication. Try to hear more than the person’s words. Yes, listen to what they are saying and also open to their heart, what are they feeling? It can be hard to express complicated emotions. People often take a roundabout way of getting them out. If we stop listening because, we think we know what a person is experiencing, we will often get it wrong. Someone trying hard to express something complicated is looking for language that expresses their deep feelings. Our culture does not teach this skill, expressing emotions. People will struggle with it. First step is to stop thinking we know what someone else’s experience is. Stop telling others what they are thinking, feeling and intending with their words or actions. If we start feeling like we “know” what someone is experiencing, intending, thinking or feeling, rather than focus on our assumption as being right, what if we stopped, opened our hearts and minds, and then asked, “Can you tell me more about what you are saying? What did you mean when you said. . .? Where are you going with that idea?” We will make assumptions. I am not saying stop making assumptions. I am saying, after you have made them, set them aside and ask the other person what is true for them. Then listen to them fully and believe them. If you trust the person, then trust them even when your assumptions are different from what they are expressing is going on with them. Trust them to know themselves.
After the first two, patience seems obviously needed. If we want to be listened to in order to be understood, rather than being listened to in order to respond, we need to give people time to process what we have said and formulate their response. We also need to be patient with ourselves while we process information and figure out how we want to respond. We need to be comfortable with silence and everyone taking time to process. We need to be okay with slowing everything down so people can feel heard and understood. If our goal is to get through this conversation quickly, we will fail to listen well and will probably respond in ways that don’t work most of the time. The goal is connection and building relationship. With that as the goal, we need to create space, so be patient with all involved so we all feel heard and understood. Patience also means that we need to be okay with people not immediately understanding us, so when they ask questions to clarify or understand, do not become defensive. Be patient when we or others do not understand. Be patient when people ask questions that might seem obvious to us. The best way to practice patience is with breath. If you feel like you are becoming impatient with yourself or others, take at least 2 breaths before considering your options for what to say next. Be okay with silence and space, breathe, and then consider how to proceed.
That leads to the last point, think before speaking. Allow space for each person to process and consider how to proceed. Take that space yourself to think, consider, or allow the information to sink in and then formulate how you want to proceed. This can be hard, because it takes time to allow this to happen on both sides of a conversation. Go back to the previous skill of patience and remember, the goal. We are attempting to create connections and build relationships. Considering a response before making it, seems like a no brainer to getting us closer to that goal.
This is the last entry following up from the Gas Lighting, Disagreement, or Humans Processing Life article. The point of that article was to help us understand one another and offer more grace and compassion when there is a conflict or disagreement. However, the skills that we followed up with are not just for disagreements. They can be useful for any conversation, even a casual one, if the goal is connection and building relationship.
Until next time. – Namaste