“Our attitude is the crayon that colors our world.”—Allen Klein, cancer doctor.
In a time-pressed, relationship-diminished world, you are able to demonstrate a caring attitude most quickly through compassionate, complete listening. Yet we are so rushed, slowing down to listen, without interruption is an increasingly rare happening—so of course you’ll really stand out when you do.
Seeing the rewards for listening may help you become motivated to practice. Upfront, I admit that what I’m prosing here has often been hard for me to practice myself.
Learning to listen is more difficult than learning to ask good questions but there are rich and immediate rewards from being an obviously thoughtful listener. With less stress and energy on your part, you naturally bring others closer sooner, when you listen without interruption, rather than asking questions.
You can confirm by listening what you have most in common with that person, in that moment, so you can see where to build bridges to deepen the relationship. The deeper the relationship the stronger the roots of connection for the inevitable miscommunication or disagreement.
Further, you’ll know what part of your needs or request to bring up first to attract their support, because you have observed their hot button interests and dislikes. You can approach a topic by suggesting your idea in a way that serves the interests the speaker has already mentioned in the conversation. In a crowd of active speakers, you may feel left out or shunted aside when you speak less, but if you wait until others have spoken first, you can propose your suggestions or idea as specific extensions or examples of what others have already said is important to them.
“Quieting the chattering mind promotes directed action.”—Kare Anderson
Listening may seem like a passive task, but, in fact, it requires more mental and emotional energy to do right than even speaking compellingly. Why? Because our gut instinctual reaction is to perceive that other people mean the same thing that we would mean if they say or act a certain way. For example, a man who once worked for me when I headed a high tech division of a company was often treated as if he was thick-headed or even a withholder because he took longer to respond to others’ questions, spoke much more slowly and haltingly than most everyone else in this fast-paced company and seldom looked people in the eye when he spoke to them.
“There is much to be said for not saying much.”—Frank Tyger
As well, he seldom answered a question directly but often gave lengthy preambles and apparently tangential facts before he main his main point.
