Stop ditting: Why, in conversation, do we not only listen with the intent to reply but the intent to dit – to trump the other person’s story?
In conversation, ditting is the dubious art of sharing anecdotes while trying to trump the previous person’s story.Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.
Too often, discussions fall prone to it, and we end up not listening to the other person’s story but recalling and rehearsing our own in our heads so we can trump their story.
We all do it at one time or another when we would do better to take the time to listen to and fully appreciate the other person’s story.
Monty Python’s Four Yorkshire Men is a humorous ditting sketch that demonstrates ditting at its extreme.
The Four Yorkshiremen SketchBut closer to real life is the scene near the end of the Jaws movie where Brody, Hooper, and Quint share their “scar” stories.
Jaws (1975) – Scars SceneDitting can be a bit of fun at times, as in the Monty Python sketch, but all too often, it is just a game of one-upmanship. We should listen more carefully and fully appreciate the other person’s story.
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This chimes with me personally. I don’t think this habit of rehearsing what you’re going to say is limited to trying to trump another’s story. I get so nervous that I’ll sound like a bumbling fool when I speak that as soon as the idea that I might ask a question, or want to share something, comes into my head my listening switches off in an instant. I’ve tried to train myself to write things down, and that works sometimes. I’d be interested to know if others suffer from this, and techniques for overcoming it.
This is a brilliant comment Patrick and has reminded me of all that Stephen Covey has to say on conversation. (I have added a quote of his to the page). Here he talks about empathic listening:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1727872/using-empathic-listening-collaborate
It has prompted me to at some point add my own post of the subject.
But even Stephen hasn’t pointed out what you have – as soon as we start to think about replying/responding in any way – we stop listening – and start to compose our response. It is very hard not to do that – its a conversation after all :-)
Techniques to overcome it? Let me think on that :-) But the obvious answer is – drop all intention of replying and simply listen and when there is a pause in the conversation and it makes sense to repond then just go with it in real-time. But that takes some confidence and trust that as you say you won’t make a bumbling fool of yourself :-)
thanks David