“Listen or your tongue will make you deaf.“ Native American Proverb
Recently when I went to the doctor, out of about 10 minutes the doctor was speaking 9 minutes. She gave me less than half a minute to explain my issue, then interrupted me and showered a litany of explanations on me. I had not finished explaining myself and when I wanted to ask questions about her proposed treatment, she immediately assumed I was against it and became very agitated. I left the place feeling utterly unheard and overpowered.
Whatever you might do in life, listening is at the heart of building relationships and extending yourself to others. If you are a leader, listening needs to be at the heart of your leadership. Listening will help you find out what your colleagues think, what their concerns and ideas are and what is going on around you so that you can base your proposals and strategies on what is happening. Listening will help you to be connected. When you listen as a leader, you will help people grow and develop.
“When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually grow within us and come to life. … When we listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us … . We are constantly being re-created.“ (Ueland, B., 1998) By listening we help other express themselves. Their ideas will flow, their mind gets uncluttered and they feel liberated. By listening we support their thinking process. Once they feel listened to, they will also become more open to what we might have to say and to see things from new angles. Listening truly to each other then becomes a mutual process.
When we do not listen we build loneliness. We only draw from inside ourselves and keep rewinding our own stuff. We may have brilliant ideas and a lot of to say but others will get exhausted by us. In our presence they will shrink and we will not know them or at least not the whole of them. They may become resentful of us.
So why don’t we just listen then? Listening requires effort. Our mind tends to be cluttered with a constant train of thoughts, To do lists, memories, anxieties, judgments,… ‘Oh this person said this which is unfair… I need to do this or that …, I need to get this point across ..’ Listening requires moving out of our train of thoughts, becoming present in the moment, focusing on understanding what the other person is saying and letting go of self -assertion. If we examine ourselves closely, we may find that we hardly ever listen effectively to others!
Some cardinal rules for listening are: 1. Be patient and don’t constantly interrupt, 2. be empathetic and non-judgmental, 3. be aware of your own and the other person’s body language, 4. listen with all the senses, 5. don’t jump to conclusions before they have finished, 6. subtly acknowledge you are listening. And most importantly: don’t prepare your argument while the other person is talking, waiting to launch it, …. Give them space.
“Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends, to those who love you and those who don’t, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle, and perhaps a great one.“ (Ueland, B., 1998)
Reference: Ueland, B. (1998). Tell Me More: On the Fine Art of Listening. Arizona: Kore Press. Reprinted from: Ueland, B. (1993). Strength to Your Sword Arm: Selected Writings. Holy Cow Press