Listening Now Blog

We’ve all had this happen.  We’re talking to someone, sharing an experience, telling a story, possibly having a whinge, sharing an anecdote.  We may say something like: “So I was talking to my boss the other day at work and she was saying that a new restructure in our division is on the way.  There’s a new restructure practically every week here, I still haven’t gotten my business cards from the last one!  But it’s ok, I’m a bit bored in my role, and a redundancy payout could actually be a good thing right now.  It was a tough conversation, though, and I didn’t see it coming”. 

Our interlocutor (fancy word for “person I am talking to”) is giving the appearance of hearing us.  They open their mouth to respond and say something like “that sounds too hard.  Clearly management have it in for your division”.

They have selectively listened to what you’ve said.  They haven’t heard the whole thing.  And they missed really important parts of what you said.   Not only did they miss things on the surface level of words, which is bad enough, but they also missed the deeper structures at play in what you said –  how you feel (and felt), your experience, and what meaning you made of what you’re talking about.

We all selectively listen.  We can’t help it.  Our brains would melt down if we had to take in every piece of information that is presented to us.  And sometimes we get away with it.  Other times, selectively listening by deleting part of what we hear, does ourselves and our conversation partners a grave disservice.

When we selectively listen (by deleting part of what we hear), here are the listening sins we are committing:

• We miss whole chunks of what is said.  If they were words on a page, it would be like we ran a black marker through big portions of the words.  It’s like Larson’s cartoon of a person talking to a dog (above).  The person says “ok, Ginger! I’ve had it! You stay out of the garbage, Ginger!”.  What the dog hears is “blah Ginger, blah blah blah blah, Ginger, blah blah, Ginger”.  We’re the dog in this scenario.
• Our verbs (action words) are sweeping and unspecified.  “My partner is neglecting me”.   Well, maybe they are and maybe they aren’t.  What if their behaviour was not about you?  As crazy as it seems, and as abhorrent as this thought may be, sometimes we are not the centre of somebody else’s universe all the time.  Maybe they have other things on their mind.  Like shoe sales, or football scores.
• We don’t hear the specifics of what is being said – we hear all verbs as being sweeping.  When someone says “I’m having trouble with this presentation I’m doing next Wednesday”, we translate that into “you don’t like presenting”.  Which may or may not be true.

When we listen only for part of the message, we risk missing important content that we may need.  We also dishonour those we are listening to, causing untold damage to the relationship.  In the next week, pay attention to how you are listening.  Are you listening only for part of the message?  What are you “deleting” in the messages you hear?  And what can you do to listen more fully to the messages you are receiving?