by Steph Miller
The biggest obstacle to deep listening is our own desire to be heard and understood masquerading as compassion. We offer advice thinking we are being compassionate but really we are just looking to be understood ourselves, or get validation for how we handled something in the past. One of the components of compassion that was discussed a few weeks ago is action. Compassion is awareness + action. By default we want to DO something. But sometimes the best action is to do nothing.
In deep listening the action required is to do nothing. Do not try to ‘fix’ the problem. Do not try to think of a time when you had a similar situation. Do not make suggestions. Just listen until the other person has finished getting all of their thoughts out. Your ‘action’ in this situation is to be the catalyst that allows the other person to organize their thoughts and feelings enough to vocalize them. And sometimes the exercise of converting a thought into words is enough to allow the other person to understand their issue better and to find their own solutions.
Once they stop talking stay quiet. Reflect on what they have said. Allow them time to reflect on what they have said. Sometimes you don’t even realize you are feeling something until you say it out loud.
If you feel they want to say more you can ask them to keep going or expand on a specific point.
If they ask for your advice or help you can choose at that time whether it would be helpful or whether it would be more helpful for them to figure it out themselves. Maybe it would even be better for them to get professional help.
If you feel your advice would be beneficial to them take a few moments to think it over in your head before saying it. Is what you want to say really about them or do you want to talk about a similar experience so YOU feel understood. Sharing a similar experience you’ve had is sympathy, but what we want to have is empathy – understanding THEIR experience from THEIR point of view.
You should definitely have the opportunity to be the talker and have someone listen to you, but at the moment it’s the other person’s turn.
The book ‘the 7 habits of highly effective people’ gives a good example: Let’s say you go to an optometrist and tell him you don’t see very well. He says ‘I completely understand, I couldn’t see well either until I started wearing these glasses. Here, take mine, I have another pair at home’. But of course the glasses just make your vision worse because you don’t have the same prescription. This optometrist is being sympathetic… he’s sharing his own experience with bad vision and giving you the thing that solved his problem. But that doesn’t help you. You need empathy. You need him to understand the problem from your perspective.
So I have 3 questions for you to reflect on – do you ever follow advice given to you by others? Do you give advice and expect it to be followed? Are you disappointed if people don’t follow your advice?