Listen with the intent to understand: Don’t listen with the intent to judge or reply.
We all appreciate the benefits of listening, such as listening to ignite other people’s thinking, but most of us are not that good at it.
As Stephen Covey points out, we tend to listen with the intent to reply rather than to understand, or we fall into the trap of ditting other people’s stories, or we start to judge or evaluate what they have to say.Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.
We can learn many techniques to improve our listening ability, such as empathic listening. But there is a fundamental problem with listening.
Even if we can withhold judgment, and although we may be genuinely intent on listening, the instant a spark of an idea or a response enters our heads, we stop listening and start to compose our response silently in our minds.
Possibly worse still, at least for the conversation and the relationship, if the spark is more interesting than what the other person is saying, it is tempting even to cut short the chat so we can spend time developing the thought!
It is hard not to do this. It’s a conversation, after all, and we are afraid that when it comes to our turn to speak, we will have nothing to say or have forgotten our earlier ideas, or that we may be somewhat bumbling in our response if we have not rehearsed it in our heads.When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say.
Most people never listen. Nor do they observe.
You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that.
If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling.
Try that for practice.
On the surface, this may seem like an insurmountable barrier to listening to someone. But maybe it is easier than we think.
Let go!
Just drop all intentions of replying at any point in the conversation and only listen, and when those responses pop into your head, ignore them.
Then when there is a pause in the conversation, and it makes sense to respond, go with it in real-time.
I realize this takes some confidence and trust that you won’t make a bumbling fool of yourself, and there may be more prolonged silences between taking turns in the conversation, and you may not even get to say much, but then you are trying to listen after all. And in any case, short periods of silence where everyone can reflect on things can only be good.
A good listener listens slowly to what is being said.
He does not jump ahead nor does he rush to judge nor does he sit there formulating his own reply.
He focuses directly on what is being said. He listens to more than is being said.
He extracts the maximum information from what he hears by looking between the words used and wondering why something has been expressed in a particular way.
It is active listening because the listener’s imagination is full of ‘could be’ and ‘may be’ elaborations.
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All very nice and well, however… one should take care when ‘mixing’ listening for the purpose of getting information and listening for the purpose of taking part in a conversation-type exchange of ideas. We are predisposed, indeed self-programmed to ‘con’tribute to the ‘con’versations we take part in. Otherwise we listen to a ‘lecture’. Covey has a point though, we do listen to lectures looking for a ‘fault’, in particular if they seem like arguments in favour for whatever the subject may be…
Hello Dan,
A big thanks for your comment. You have a very good point that I had overlooked. I need to reflect on it a little and then will get back to you more fully here and update the post in light of our “conversation”.
Thanks David