A few years ago a client of mine came into a coaching session and pretty much talked nonstop for a full hour. I interjected very little, except to really give him my full attention and ask one or two questions. At the end he got up from his chair exclaiming: “Thank you SO much! This was incredibly helpful.”
He had found clarity and a path forward to deal with his challenges. And he gave me credit for helping him find that clarity.
I will never again underestimate the power of just…listening.
I have found listening to be, consistently, the activity that seems like the least amount of effort, while yielding the largest rewards: for myself, for others, and for the projects I am working on.
Listening responds to a fundamental human need for connection. It is how we get valuable information. And, perhaps paradoxically so, it is also how we influence others (more on that in the future).
Listening is deceptively simple. Emphasis on deceptively.
True listening is not just hearing something. And it’s not just making eye contact or nodding, while our thoughts wander elsewhere, or while we prepare the answer in our heads—which can be very obvious to the other person, by the way, no matter how good we think we are at hiding it.
True listening is…
… an exercise in being fully present. Giving our full attention to the other person. Literally setting aside our phone, and figuratively setting aside the “to do” lists in our heads.
… suspending judgment or skepticism just for a minute to see the world from the other person’s perspective. It does not mean you agree with it. But it does mean that you seek to understand it, with curiosity and openness.
… silencing the temptation to immediately offer advice once we get a few of the facts. Michael Bungay Stanier, my favorite author on the topic of coaching, calls it our “advice monster.” Over-advising is risky because the advice may be ill-timed or ill-suited. Sometimes people need to find their own answers to fully own the solution.
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For all these reasons, listening may seem simple, but it is very hard indeed.
It takes confidence in our own value to generously give up the spotlight for a minute; emotional intelligence to know when to stay silent; courage to ask the interesting (but often hard) questions. And effort. True listening is hard work.
The kind of listening I am describing is more than “active listening,” which only refers to a set of behaviors, without tackling the intent behind them.
This article calls it “mindful listening.”
Stephen Covey called it “empathic listening” in his famous “7 Habits of highly effective people.” His 5th habit is appropriately named “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
As with everything in life, there is a balance: exclusively listening is not effective either. There is a time and need to confidently take up airtime to express our point of view, tell a story, or challenge an opinion.
But my challenge to you is this: next time you encounter staunch resistance in your dialogue with somebody, rather than continue to push, convince, or articulate arguments, do the opposite. Listen and seek to understand. You might be surprised.
