A GOOD LISTENER

Are you a good listener? Many people are too caught up with themselves to be good listeners. Effective listening requires much more than just listening to the words. Have you ever experienced that you were thinking “Please listen to me!” when you had a conversation with someone? A businessman told me recently that he had just attended a course concerning communication. He thought he was a good communicator and was very surprised when he found out that he was a very bad listener. He was very happy about learning how to improve in this area.

If you start to listen to conversations you may find that a lot of people are not listening. One day on the train I watched two people chatting together. Perhaps it would be more correct if I said one was talking to the other. The “talker” kept talking and talking and never paused to hear what the other person had to say. Listening not only concerns hearing the words, it also involves the process of understanding the meaning of the sensory experience.

If people have a problem, they often solve it if you invite them to tell you about the problem. A person working on a computer may have a problem and call for help. The helper may then ask the person with the trouble to explain the problem. If the helper is a good listener, the helper may all of a sudden hear the person with the obstacle exclaim that he or she actually just found a solution. If people come to you with problems about fear, sadness, or anger it can be very rewarding to be a great listener. That way you can help people handle their feelings and solve their problems.

If you really want to help another person then remember that your attitude towards the person is very important. We cannot not communicate, and if you truly want to listen in order to help and to respect the person, you will convey that attitude. What causes persons to be bad listeners? The cause could be that the persons grew up feeling insignificant and excessively worried about approval. This can often give problems with concentration on what is being said because the persons are too occupied about themselves. If you accept and respect yourself it is easier to accept and respect other people.

One of the things to pay attention to is to learn to stop jumping in too quickly when listening to another person. Allow the speaker to finish, and enjoy pauses. They can be invaluable! You can check your listening skill by observing yourself when you are in a situation where you want to be a good listener. Do you interrupt and take the lead? Do you follow the conversation or do you take over and change topic? Are you patient and enjoying pauses?

Another good way of checking yourself as a listener is to turn the conversation into a movie that you are watching. How is the expression of the talker? And the listener? Are they in rapport? – You can also ask yourself, if you would like to be in the other person’s shoes? Closed question (questions that can be answered with yes/no, such as “Was it a great evening?”) can stop a conversation. Open questions (questions that need an explanation, such as “How did you enjoy the evening?”) are great for facilitating a talk.

Short responses can encourage the speaker, for example: “Really?” “Sure.” “I see.” “Mmm.” – These short words are very neutral and just show you are listening. Be careful not to overuse them. Years ago I had a little conversation with one of my daughters. She was 2 years old, and we were sitting in the garden. I was very tired and she kept talking and talking. I got into the pattern of responding with “hmmm” etc. for quite a while. All of a sudden she exclaimed: “Are you unable to talk?” – I woke up, and paid attention!

A lady had a mother who was a very bad listener. One day her sister had called the mother and told her she was getting a new dog. The sister had added on the phone that it was as if she was getting her third child. -A couple of days later the mother called back and had the sister’s husband on the phone. She told the son-in-law that she recently had talked to her daughter. She continued with a whispering voice, that the daughter had told her a secret. The husband said he did not know of any secret and asked her to explain what it was about. The mother told him, that he was not allowed to tell the wife anything, and then revealed that the daughter had told that they were expecting their third child!