Here are two hypotheticals:

One.

A friend of yours comes from a date and you ask him how did it go?

“It was a disaster”, he says. “The girl just kept listening to my stories too intensely”.

Two.

You’re looking for a psychotherapist and ask a friend if they know the one everyone is talking about to help you deal with your issues.

She says, “Anyone but him. The guy just listens too carefully and it’s annoying”.

My guess is you’ve never heard this before.

You’ve probably heard the opposite.

A date that never shuts up and goes on talking about themselves. Or a therapist that doesn’t get you and it feels like talking to a wall.

Why is that?

Part of the reason is that we spend a big portion of our lives being taught how to speak publicly, how to debate, and how to improve our end of the conversation.

We might have the notion that being a good listener is something you’re born with. You either have it or you don’t.

But there’s also the notion that listening is a disadvantage. If you keep quiet you’re weak. If you are silent you’re complicit. If you let the other talk, they’ll win.

We’ve already built a society praising the loudest in the room and look at where it has driven us so far. What if we shifted towards larger pauses, more acknowledgment of others and actually listening for once?

What is listening?

Let’s start with what listening is not.

• Listening is not talking.

• Listening is not waiting to talk.

It’s not about remaining silent desperately waiting for your turn to vomit out what’s been building inside of you.

• Passive listening, where you nod out of politeness but you’re not grasping other people’s point.

• Hearing others but just to promote your agenda.

You might want to try and find the flaws in their reasoning to strengthen your argument later on or find what they need to better sell them your product.

We tend to fall into these listening traps often, but if we’re able to catch ourselves doing so we’re already one step ahead shift into a true listener.

Krista Tippett beautifully defined it:

Listening is being curious about others.

And for curiosity to arise you have to be interested in them or the topic they’re talking about. You have to appreciate them in some way or another.

Is it teachable?

You could set the foundations in the formal educational system for people to develop this skill over time. But another part of the process will come from life experiences.

Listening is a complex skill.

It requires other sub-skills and values to work on to become a good listener. You will have to:

• Improve your ability to understand differences (e.g. values, behaviors, ideas) and not feel threatened by them. Accept and not condemn them. See them in their own context.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to adopt them as your own.

• Show empathy for others. Put yourself in their shoes, experience what it’s like to be them, and pause your judgment for a while.

• Be humble. Accept that you can learn something from others and that you don’t have all the answers.

And if listening doesn’t come naturally, there are exercises to help you improve this skill.

Mirroring or mirror back listening exercise

In this exercise, individuals practice reflecting or mirroring back what they have heard from another person. Instead of simply paraphrasing or summarizing, they aim to capture the essence of the speaker’s message and convey understanding.

One person takes on the role of the speaker while the other acts as the listener. The listener’s task is to attentively listen to the speaker’s words, focusing on both the content and the underlying emotions. Once the speaker finishes sharing their thoughts or feelings, the listener responds by restating or summarizing what they heard, attempting to capture the speaker’s words and emotions accurately.

The purpose is twofold:

• It allows the speaker to feel heard, understood, and validated, fostering a sense of trust and connection.

• It helps the listener to sharpen their listening skills, promoting empathy and building effective communication.

Silent listening

How many times do we feel the need to interrupt or can’t wait to tell others our side of the story?

To help us deal with these internal emotions we have the silent listening exercise.

The listener practices active listening without interrupting or offering verbal responses.

The listener maintains eye contact, nods or uses non-verbal cues to indicate understanding, and fully absorbs the speaker’s message.

The goal is to give the speaker space to express themselves without any interruption and give them your full attention. It’s particularly useful in situations where the speaker needs to share their thoughts or emotions without being interrupted or influenced by immediate feedback. It helps the listener to resist the urge to jump in with their own opinions or solutions and instead provides space for the speaker to fully articulate their ideas.

Although these exercises may feel superficial, where you’ll feel you’re focusing more on the form than the content, it doesn’t mean they can’t fundamentally change your behavior later on.

The more you work on it, the more it can become part of you.

Don’t they teach this in Psych 101?

Sadly, I didn’t get as much training in listening for my psychology degree as I would’ve expected.

But I did get to have two powerful experiences.

And surprisingly both were in my first year at college.

The power of silent listening

In an introductory psychology course, we participated in an enlightening exercise that aimed to explore various conversational dynamics. Paired with another individual, we were tasked with taking turns assuming the roles of listener and speaker. The exercise unfolded in two stages.

During the first role play, the speaker was encouraged to freely express themselves while the listener demonstrated active engagement solely through non-verbal cues such as nodding, maintaining eye contact, and displaying open body language.

The listener refrained from speaking, allowing the speaker to share their thoughts uninterrupted. This highlighted the power of attentive listening and the impact of non-verbal communication in fostering a sense of being heard.

In the second round, the dynamics shifted dramatically. The listener deliberately averted their gaze, covered their face with a hand to shield it from the speaker’s view, and fixed their eyes on the ground. As a result, the speaker experienced a noticeable decline in their ability to communicate effectively.

The lack of visual engagement and the listener’s disinterest hindered the speaker’s flow of conversation, leaving them feeling unsupported and hindered in expressing their thoughts.

Also, as the listener in this instance, the disconnected posture and lack of visual cues made it challenging to follow and fully comprehend the speaker’s message. The absence of active listening created an atmosphere of awkwardness and severed the connection between the speaker and the listener.

An intimate journey of uninterrupted storytelling

The second experience happened in a self-knowledge course. My classmates gathered in two circles: an inner circle and an outer circle, each with a specific role to play.

In the inner circle, one individual took center stage and had the extraordinary opportunity to share their life story for an uninterrupted hour. There were no restrictions on what could be said; it was an invitation to express oneself authentically and openly.

Meanwhile, the members of the outer circle assumed the role of active listeners and observers. One person from the outer circle was designated to write down what the speaker was narrating so that after the experience you would get a transcript of all that was discussed during your session.

As the speaker poured their heart out, the attentive listeners absorbed every word, taking in the depths of their experiences and emotions.

After the hour-long monologue, people could ask questions about the speaker’s life story. These questions were driven by a genuine desire to understand us on a deeper level. The speaker, now encouraged by the curiosity and compassion of their peers, continued sharing their story for an additional half an hour.

The experience left a lasting impact on me. I felt a genuine sense of being heard and listened to, as my classmates embraced both active and silent listening. It also helped me to explore my thoughts more deeply, articulating them better and uncovering new insights. The questions I got from my peers demonstrated a comprehensive understanding of my journey, offering a sense of validation and support.

I’d recommend trying this exercise so that you can unlock personal insights, strengthen relationships, and foster a greater appreciation for the power of listening.

Final thoughts

Listening requires being genuinely open to the other person’s experience but if it doesn’t come naturally it can be developed over time.

For this to arise naturally, you’ll probably need to experience it as both in a formal setting (e.g. at school, college, work training, etc.) and as a life experience.

If you listen to someone that you quite disagree with and become enraged by them, it’s very unlikely you’ll ever get to feel empathy or try to understand their point of view.

Also, watch out for crossing the line into interrogation mode. You don’t want to question them to the point where they feel threatened (instead of being welcomed to share more). Don’t just keep asking questions, digging into the topic, without sharing yourself in it. Make it feel like that information is being understood and internalized.

Imagine if we shifted our focus to listening as a society, what kind of community will we be able to forge from that genuine attention to each other?

As Rachel Naomi Remen beautifully said,