Kate Murphy, the author of You’re not listening, considers herself a professional listener. Her job as a journalist and report stories pushes her to pay close attention to the people she talks to and her being good at her job is uniquely linked to her listening skills. She would however disagree with this. Not the bit about her being a good listener, but the uniqueness of listening we seem to associate with her profession. She believes that almost every job today requires us to collaborate which in turn depends on how we listen to each other. It is that what makes good listening so important today. I try to summarise my key lessons from this book below.
Great conversations tend to stay with us long after they are over. Listening is less about hearing words and more about focussing on how they are being said, responding and capturing the other person’s state of mind. Active listening is just a lot of dos and don’ts. It’s a mindset.
Listening leads to connections (Brene Brown’s thoughts on authentic connections are quite relevant here) and helps one have and enjoy much better relationships. In today’s world where loneliness/suicides are fast becoming a public epidemic, being able to listen to people around us can have important societal benefits. Japan, for instance, has legitimate businesses from whom one can hire actors pretending to be their relatives or friends.
Getting things done, while in a conversation, is not the right mindset. We need to be really curious to be a good listener else we risk coming across as inauthentic. We must take the time to listen and absorb and not do anything else. This singular focus on listening allows us to use the brain resources to notice their body language rather than to come up with a response.
In presence of opposing views, we need to train our amygdala to react differently. This is the toughest part about being a listener as it is extremely satisfying to give in to the knee jerk reaction and roll our eyes and dismiss what is being said.
Lose your assumptions as they act like earplugs. The understanding that what I know is different from what you know is important for communication. We need to realise that out spouses or close friends aren’t the same people, whom we met us years ago. Our cognitive experiences change us and we are continuously evolving.
Open mindedness is also an important trait of the scientific method where one needs to constantly challenge the dogma. Daniel Kahneman is said to have the unique skill of remaining completely unemotional and ready to detonate his work completely and start afresh at the first sight of conflicting evidence.
Humour not only makes people more comfortable, it is also perceived to be a marker for high intelligence and competence. This is however, a delicate topic and you must really know your counterpart well before indulging in humour.
Successful humour often makes other people lower their guards and listen more intently. Improv class has benefits and it makes people better listeners as you wait to repeat back to people what they said with punch lines or twists. (Note to self – see if you can take an improv class 😉)
Don’t rule out gossiping. It’s a way to gather intelligence and stay in the loop of the ever changing social dynamics.
It’s a social signal that you’re trustworthy and is linked to social exchange theory. It is also an important tool to foster the importance of reputability(as bad actors know they will be gossiped about). Robin Dunbar says less than a third of gossip is bad. Gossip always involves listening to stories and leads to better understanding of our surroundings.
Our desire to show off our skills can prevent us from having meaningful conversations and exhuming authenticity. People who walk away feeling smarter after talking with you are likely to enjoy your company more than those who get impressed by learning how smart you are. We always have a choice between offering a “support response” (further their agenda and topic) and a “shift response” (move the conversation to around ourselves ). While the former allows us to learn more about others, the latter can allow us to impress others about our capabilities and experiences.
Our need to show what we can do, often gets in the way of exploring what we can do together.
I run a startup called Harmonize. We are hiring and if you’re looking for an exciting startup journey, please write to jobs@harmonizehq.com. Apart from this blog, I tweet about startup life and practical wisdom in books.