Listen! Are you listening?

Listening is one of the key steps to having meaningful conversations. In order to have meaningful conversation exchange, you need to listen carefully to understand what your conversational partner is trying to convey. Even more, listening is critical to building long-lasting relationships in both professional and personal domains. The Trillion dollar coach emphasizes the importance of listening in leadership. “When you listen to people, they feel valued. A 2003 study from Lund University in Sweden finds that “mundane, almost trivial” things like listening and chatting with employees are important aspects of successful leadership, because “people feel more respected, visible and less anonymous, and included in teamwork.”

A lot of the arguments in daily life rooted in one side (or both sides) stem from people who felt that they were not heard, that the other party didn’t listen to them. Do you listen to understand? Or do you listen to respond?

Most of the time, we listen to respond. Recall your very last conversation. Were you paying full attention to what the person was trying to say until he finished his words, or were you starting to compose your response before he finished his words? Most of us, myself included, fall into the latter category. We are eager to respond the moment we start hearing words from another person’s mouth. We started “drafting” our responses the moment we hear something that we can respond to, so we can respond with witty, funny words. We want other people to hear us out while we are not able to do the same for them. In other words, we constantly ask for what we are not able to give fully. How can we change this?

Through years of experience in conducting behavioral research, observing good listeners, and communicating through non-verval manners on the dance floor, I’ve developed a few useful tips that you could try:

Make eye contact - this sounds elementary, but a lot of the time, we forgot to do so. We are often busy taking notes, thinking about what we are going to say in response to what we just heard, or planning our next meeting. The number of times that people touch their phones each day is likely more than the number of times that people look at their significant other these days. Making eye contact when you are in a conversation with people signals to them that they are the center of your universe right now. Eyes are the window to your soul. When you look at people into their eyes, you connect with the person, you make them feel valued. Most importantly, the person knows clearly that she has your full attention without questioning. This enhances the connection you establish with the person and creates a more meaningful bond between you two.

Recognize that you heard the person - nod or smile to signal that you hear the person. People want to be heard. A clear signal to indicate that helps. This is especially critical when a lot of in person communications are replaced by phone calls, emails, or video conferencing these days. Recognizing that you hear a person while everyone is busy running around from one meeting to another makes the conversations more effective. A lot of the time, we feel we are listening to the person we are in conversation with, but the person might not necessarily feel so. Signaling to the person that we heard him can take more than making eye contact. When I am on the floor with my dance partner, we always reflect on how we feel after each dance, meaning every 2 mins throughout the 2 to 3 hour practice. Sometimes, if we are lucky, we have a few things we want to say about that 2 minutes, we get to take turns and hold space to recognize what we heard and reflect together. A lot of the time, both of us have a lot to say about that 2 minutes, then we started talking “at” each other without holding time to recognize what we heard. As you can imagine, no improvement will happen in the latter case, since we do not have time to process what the other person said. Or sometimes, we listen but we are not sure how to respond yet, so the other one feels they are not being heard because of the silence (from the lack of response), which creates an unconstructive feedback loop that leads to nowhere. Recognition can be accomplished with a simple nod; a repetition of what you just heard; or even a clarification question. It lets the person know that you heard what she said and creates a space for further discussion or elaboration.

Pause - silence in conversation or social context can make people uncomfortable. Yet, it can create a space to let people know that you are listening and truly processing what you have shared with them. One of my previous colleagues used this technique a lot. Every time I had a conversation with him, there were always moments that he would just pause and look at me as he was processing what I just said carefully. When he first did this to me, I was like “what’s happening now?”. He looked at me and said (without me asking), “So just to make sure that I heard you, you were saying…” He then rephrased what he heard from me and waited for me to confirm or make any clarification if needed. Strangely, that pause, in combination with his calm, firm looking at me, put me at ease, made me slow down and pulled me away from the immediate problem-solving mode, but helped me to focus on understanding the situation, with him. This pause makes the following easier. Often we were able to connect with each other and come up with actionable items for the matter that brought us together.

A British TV show, Sex Education, tells a story about a teenage boy, Otis, who starts a sex clinic in school for his peers with his friend Maeve. One of the common threads of the advice that Otis gives out to the teenagers coming to him for sex advice is “listening”, exemplifying how critical “listening” is to relationships. Even when there are conflicts in his own relationship with his mother and best friend, the core issue centers around the lack of listening.

Listening plays such a key role in your relationships with your significant other, children and colleagues. Next time when you have the chance to be with a person who matters to you, try these tips in your conversations. You might feel more connected with the person and find your time with the person is more well-spent.