Becoming a Better Listener
How do you know when someone is listening to you? Most of the time it’s pretty easy to tell. Someone who’s listening to you—really listening to you—makes eye contact, they give feedback by nodding or mirroring your facial expressions. Someone who’s listening to you interacts, sometimes asking additional questions or affirming their agreement with you. And, of course, the best listeners are the ones who remember what you said to them. They might ask about it the next time you see them. “Any update on that project that was stressing you out the other day?” Speaking from my own experience, someone who makes me feel heard is someone whom I will consistently value and trust.
On the other side, we all know what it feels like to observe that someone is not listening to you. And if we were honest, we know that we’ve done this to other people as well. Often, failing to listen is not intentional. We don’t set out to hurt people’s feelings by ignoring them. But being a good listener is not easy. And—as with all effective communication, as we’ve said before—you won’t become a better listener by accident. Being a good listener takes awareness, effort, and endurance, but it is well worth the time and energy it takes. If we want to be effective communicators, if we want to be that valued and trusted person in the lives of the people around us, then we must be good listeners.
But how do we become better listeners? To answer that question, we have to understand what makes listening difficult in the first place. Then we can determine how to overcome those challenges.
3 Things That Make Listening Hard
Lots of things can get in the way of our listening. There’s a lot of noise in our lives, both literal and metaphorical. (If that piques your interest, go read our previous post about the challenges we face in all of communication.) But the biggest threat to our attempts to receive and process the information that other people give us is our thoughts. And our thoughts make it harder to listen for three reasons.
We Have Loud Thoughts
Imagine it: You’re about to give a presentation to your team, you’re reviewing your points in your head, you’re reminding yourself to talk slowly, and you’re wondering if you have time to run to the restroom before you start setting up. And your favorite coworker comes up to you and says the dreaded words, “Do you have a second?” It isn’t quite time for you to get started with the presentation, so you say yes. And, however much you may physically hear of what your coworker says, there’s no room in your mind for you to actually process anything they mean. Your own thoughts are too loud for you to truly listen.
This is the first thing that makes listening hard—our thoughts are so often so loud. In our always-on culture in the West, we’re very concerned with productivity, optimization, and multitasking. The result? We get progressively worse at being still and being silent. If you’re not on the go and simultaneously planning your next move, then you’re failing in the eyes of many. But this constant motion and constant noise make it difficult to pause when someone needs to talk.
How can we listen when we have such loud thoughts?
Prepare. Try to notice what things distract you most from listening to others and take steps to quiet the noise.
We Have Fast Thoughts
We can think faster than we can talk. This is a good thing, because if it were the other way around, we wouldn’t be able to have conversations. Or, if we could, they would be very slow. We need to be able to receive, process, and formulate our responses to what other people are saying in order to communicate effectively. However, our fast thoughts also present a problem when it comes to being good listeners. If our brains can listen faster than people can talk, then they have more time than they need. And what happens when we have more time than we need? We get bored.
This is the second threat that our thoughts present to our listening—they’re so quick that our brains are liable to get bored in the meantime. This challenge is especially present in extended times of listening. Someone has a lot they need to say, and at first we’re right there, tracking with them. But they’re still going, so we start to think of something else as we continue sort of listening. And then, suddenly, the person who was talking is now asking you a question, and you don’t know the context because you got completely distracted. This is what happens when our brains get bored. We try to think about something else at the same time, but if that thing is more interesting than what we’re also trying to keep listening to, the more interesting thing will take over. And we find ourselves not listening at all when we only meant to be half listening.
How can we listen when we have such fast and restless thoughts?
Anticipate. Try to use the extra time you have in your mind to anticipate what the other person will say next—not so that you can start to respond, but so that your restless thoughts stay engaged with what’s being said.
We Have Pressing Thoughts
Here’s the one that gets me. Sometimes what makes it so hard to listen is not that we’re not interested in the topic our friend or coworker is talking about, but what makes it hard is that we’re so interested that we can’t wait to get a word in. So, in our effort to engage in the conversation and get a chance to share our own thoughts about the subject, we end up tuning out at least a little of what the other person is saying. We listen just long enough and just closely enough to get what we think they’re trying to say, and then we shift our mental focus to how we are going to respond. It’s not that we don’t care about the other person or what they’re trying to communicate to us, it’s that we care a little too much about getting our own pressing thoughts into the conversation.
There are two contexts in which this would particularly be a problem. Firstly, in the context of disagreement. Rarely is there a time when we are more concerned with what we’re going to say next than in a debate. Even if no one is offended or heated, when we are defending our position, we’re often not trying very hard to process and consider the other person’s position. If the argument is about which film franchise is better, Star Wars or the Lord of the Rings, then failing to listen well probably won’t harm your relationship with someone. (It’s the Lord of the Rings, by the way.) But in a more serious disagreement, rushing to your own response without listening well will do you no favors and will hurt your cause and possibly also your relationships.
Secondly, spending your listening time planning your next interjection is particularly problematic when someone just needs a friend to empathize with them. The classic joke is that women just want someone to listen to their problems, and men always jump in to fix things. While certainly not always the case, there’s a reason that stereotype exists. From time to time, men and women want someone to listen to them without offering any suggestions at the end. Listening itself is the way that you help them. And sometimes that’s very hard to do.
How can we listen when we have such pressing thoughts?
Return. Sometimes you’ll get distracted or want to race ahead, and that’s ok. But instead of giving in or beating yourself up about it, just bring your thoughts back to what’s being said. Make the effort to return to listening every time you find yourself getting off track. People will appreciate it.
Becoming a better listener is a process, and we all have room to improve. But don’t give up when it’s hard! Persevere, because making someone feel heard is one of the most valuable things you can give to them. So prepare your mind, anticipate to stay engaged, and return when your mind wanders or tunes out. Listen to others as you would want them to listen to you!
That’s all for this post. See you next time! And thanks for listening.
