Good listening is all about the other person. It requires us to give full attention to what they are saying, not only to the actual words but also to their body language and tone of voice. We need to be sensitive to the personal and physical context of the conversation; we need to be alert to shifts and nuances as the talk develops.
Whether you’re listening to a friend or family member, a student, a client, a social acquaintance, your boss, a colleague, they need to feel they have been given the appropriate degree of attention and a satisfying level of response.
The phrase ‘I feel seen’ has become (tiresomely?) familiar, but when, for example, your child talks about being unhappy at school, or your pal confides about relationship difficulties, or tells a funny or uplifting story about something that’s happened, you want them to think ‘I feel heard’. And that means focusing on them and putting aside your own thoughts and preoccupations for the duration of the conversation, right?
Not entirely. Good listening means engaging without bias or prejudice, and having a mind that is open to the other person and their experience without your own thoughts and feelings getting in the way or slanting the conversation in a certain direction.
Bias and prejudice? Who, me? Well, yes, if you’re human. Everyone has beliefs and ideas which shape their view of the world and govern their behaviour. These ideas colour our reactions and influence our relationships, and could affect the way we listen.
For example, if you strongly believe in the value of a university education, that might prevent you from actively hearing someone’s reasons for not wanting to go down that road. You might find that you’re trying to listen, but your head is saying ‘yes, but’ and you’re waiting for the opportunity to bring them round to your point of view.
Your support of children’s right to build independent lives might cause you not to hear and respond to the sense of loss in your friend’s voice when they try to sound unequivocally happy about their offspring’s plan to emigrate.
Suspend your personal views
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have strong views, or that you shouldn’t share them. But it’s helpful to be able to suspend them when you’re listening to someone who may have different biases.
To do this, you need to know what your ingrained views are, and to have the self-awareness which means you can briefly mentally acknowledge your instinctive bias and override it for the time being. The same is true of situations where you and the other person are totally on the same page about something — you might miss significant points which challenge your mutually-held views.
Ingrained views can range from deeply ethical, value-led beliefs to deeply trivial, knee-jerk reactions which seem to come from nowhere but pop up unexpectedly. You’re probably aware of where you stand on the big issues in your life, but you may not have articulated them, because we don’t, on the whole. It might be helpful to be able to voice these beliefs to yourself, and become familiar with them.
You might have well-defined views about family life, relationships, religion, society, politics – and these may have changed during the course of your life, and may change again. So no need to be dogmatic with yourself, or paint yourself into a corner, but just be aware of the areas which might interfere with the active listening process.
It can be harder to acknowledge our more superficial prejudices. There’s a chance they might reflect badly on us, unless you reveal them in one of those games played when everyone’s been drinking, or on a television panel show. But just to become aware of why you instinctively are favourably inclined to one person and unfavourably inclined to another, think if you may hold prejudices in any of these categories:
- Physical appearance
No getting away from it, we are all influenced by an appearance we find attractive. Perhaps just be aware of how much this matters to you. If it matters a lot, you might subconsciously endow the person with attributes they may or may not possess, and you might have to work hard not to let their gorgeousness stop you from listening to what they are saying. At the same time, physical qualities that you dislike, such as a certain body shape or hair colour, might present a barrier to meaningful communication.
- Voice and accent
This has been a minefield for centuries. George Bernard Shaw said, ‘It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him’, and with a few tweaks, that sentiment applies as much today as it did then. If someone speaks in a way we perceive as ‘posh’, we might find it difficult to listen to them without prejudice. Inbuilt assumptions about a person’s background and way of life might present a barrier to unbiased listening and prevent us from hearing anything which contradicts or challenges our ready-made view, positive or negative.
- People who remind you of someone
It happens. There’s something about a person that reminds you of your old teacher, or a family member, or someone at work, and it’s very hard to get rid of that impression. You could try just acknowledging the situation to yourself and putting the perceived likeness in a mental compartment to enable you to tune in to the actual person and hear what they are saying without being distracted by your experience of their doppelganger.
- Age
Yes, this is one of the big ‘isms’ which is very familiar, but in spite of our familiarity with and acceptance of its principles, we might find that we categorise people in terms of their generation, and that this tendency leads us to make assumptions about their way of life and their views and opinions. Almost without realising it, you might think that anyone you perceive as young, or as old, can’t have anything useful to say about politics, or relationships, or finance, or fashion, or music, or just about anything really. And it’s easy to look at your own circle and find plenty of examples to prove that you are right…
But once you are aware of this (maybe) unconscious bias, you can adjust by focusing on the whole person, on what they are saying and the way they are saying it, and by being alert to your own reactions. If phrases like ‘typical of a boomer/GenZer/ know-nothing youngster pop into your head, find a way of sending them packing.
And if in conversation you find that you are on the receiving end of this kind of prejudice, bring it into the open. No need to be combative or aggressive. Start with an expression like ‘I’m feeling that..’ or ‘I’m getting the impression that…’ Build a bridge and meet in the middle.
Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed it well in a much paraphrased saying which expressed the view, ‘What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say’. It’s hard to set aside prior knowledge and perceptions and properly tune in to what is being said in the here and now, but unbiased listening is a great gift to experience. Yes, we all want to be heard. Buddy Holly puts it simply and movingly. ‘Listen to me,’ he sang. ‘Listen closely to me.’
He might have added ‘without any bias or prejudice’, but he didn’t need to. The plaintive warmth of the sentiment says it all.
