The Silent Secret: How to Be a Good Listener

Listening builds trust and common ground. Biba Kayewich

We live in an avalanche of sound. Words fly at us from all directions—the radio, TV, podcasts, blogs—and everyone is eager to share their opinion. We wrestle with interior noise, the constant static of our own thoughts, plans, worries, hopes, and regrets buzzing in our ears. Amid all this sound, it can be hard to listen. It can be hard to really hear what another human being is trying to say to us. So often, we give others only one ear, half-absorbing their words as our attention is carried away on the stream of our own thoughts or the tide of information from our cell phone.

Yet true listening carries within it a potent power for good. Strong listening abilities have the potential to improve almost every area of our life, from work to family to politics. Good listening reduces misunderstandings, increases connection, shows respect to others, and builds trust. Writer and speaker Simon Sinek went so far as to say that listening is the best way to build trust and common ground with someone, and that has implications for the de-escalation of conflicts at all levels, from the personal to the international. Sinek observed, “Listening is the way to build trust with someone … it is the way to find common ground in oppositions in simple cases of business but in more complicated cases in national politics or in global politics or in war.”

Sinek also points out that listening is rarely, if ever, taught as a skill. Most of us have taken a speech class, but you won’t find “Listening 101” in any college’s course catalogue. “As a culture, we treat listening as an automatic process about which there is not a lot to say,” wrote M.M. Owen. “When the concept of listening is addressed at any length, it is in the context of professional communication; something to be honed by leaders and mentors, but a specialization that everyone else can happily ignore.” Yet, like any skill, listening doesn’t come naturally to most of us—we might need guidance and practice to become a better listener and reap the rewards it promises. Those promises are nothing to sniff at. “Listening well, it took me too long to discover,” Owen continued, “is a sort of magic trick: both parties soften, blossom, they are less alone.”

Surely, all of us could afford to be a little less alone.

This article offers a few pointers for becoming a better listener.

Practice Active Listening

M.M. Owens noticed the joy of speaking with someone who gave others their full attention, and wanted to be more like that himself. On his journey to becoming a better listener, Owens turned to the work of 20th-century psychologist Carl Rogers, who coined the term “active listening.”

Rogers believed that being carefully, deeply, and compassionately listened to could transform people, and he used the technique in his therapy practice, although he also thought it equally applicable in everyday life. Owens said that, for Rogers, active listening was “one of the key ingredients in making another person feel less alone, less stuck, and more capable of self-insight.”

According to The Harvard Business Review, there are three parts to active listening.

• Cognitive. This aspect requires that you mentally focus all your attention on the information, both explicit and implicit, that your conversation partner is trying to convey.
• Emotional. A good listener must maintain an emotional equilibrium, even when the information he or she is receiving might be upsetting. The key emotion to cultivate here is compassion.
• Behavioral. It’s not enough for you to listen; the other person needs to know that you are listening. You show this through verbal and nonverbal cues (like making eye-contact, nodding, and facing toward the speaker).

When you open yourself up cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally to what the other person is trying to communicate, it makes possible a real meeting of minds and hearts. It’s possible to discover things that neither party even knew were there.

Reflect Back the Other’s Words

When you reflect another’s words, you try to repeat back to them what they told you and ask whether you’ve got it correct or not. This has many benefits. Clinical psychologist Ali Mattu describes a few of them: “It shows the other person that you’re actually listening. You really care about what they’re saying. Number two, it forces you to turn down the part of your brain that wants to interrupt or offer advice and it forces you to turn up the part of your brain that is about empathy, and understanding and compassion.”

Mattu noted that this process can clear up misunderstandings. In his own therapy practice, he discovered that his reflection of the client’s words and experience is occasionally wrong. He’s misunderstood something or missed an important detail, and stating his understanding out loud allows for immediate clarification.

Naturally, when reflecting, it’s important to be as fair and accurate as possible. Don’t spin others’ words according to your own agenda. That only creates frustration.

Psychologist Jordan Peterson calls this technique “summarizing to their satisfaction.” That is, you need to make sure that you can restate your conversational partner’s expression in a way that they find accurate and satisfactory.

Avoid the ‘Shift Response’

Under the surface of poor listening skills often lurks the subtle monster of ego. We often fail to listen because we’re too preoccupied with ourselves. With brutal honesty, Owens related, “The younger me enjoyed conversation. But a low, steady egoism meant that what I really enjoyed was talking. When it was someone else’s turn to talk, the listening could often feel like a chore. I might be passively absorbing whatever was being said—but a greater part of me would be daydreaming, reminiscing, making plans. I had a habit of interrupting.”

As we work to subdue our own ego and be genuinely present with others when they speak, we learn to stop daydreaming and start paying attention to what they’re actually saying. But the ego-monster has subtler tricks. One such trick is the “shift response,” whereby we listen to what the other says but find a way to relate it—or shift it—back to ourselves.

“I had a really big plumbing bill I had to pay today,” your friend says.

“Really? I once had to pay $3,000 just to get my kitchen sink to drain right. You wouldn’t believe it! The guy was out all day and just seemed to be fiddling around, but when he finally…”

It’s clear in this case that I only listened in order to be able to talk again—and only about myself.

Aim for the Total Meaning

In the plumbing example, an attentive listener would probably realize that their friend was looking for some sympathy over the exorbitant bill. The plain words—“I had a really big plumbing bill”—only tell part of the story. The speaker is trying to communicate something more than a fact, quite likely an emotion and a need for commiseration.

Carl Rogers understood the importance of trying to grasp not just what’s being said, but why. He called it “total meaning.” Owens summarized as follows: “This means registering both the content of what they are saying, and (more subtly) the ‘feeling or attitude underlying this content’. Often, the feeling is the real thing being expressed, and the content a sort of ventriloquist’s dummy. Capturing this feeling involves real concentration, especially as nonverbal cues—hesitation, mumbling, changes in posture—are crucial. Zone out, half-listen, and the ‘total meaning’ will entirely elude us.”

When we half-listen, and the other person’s outreach is met with misunderstanding and indifference, they may retreat into themselves, and the opportunity for connection vanishes as quickly as a snuffed candle. To grasp the words and not the total meaning is often worse than grasping nothing at all.

This list of listening techniques is far from exhaustive, and trying them out won’t instantly make you a better listener. But any contribution we make toward a world of deeper listening bears fruit in due season. Psychologist Jordan Peterson has observed about listening, “There is nothing that people won’t tell you if you listen.” This can be a great gift, allowing us to connect deeply with others and discover a wider world if we will only unlock our ears. Peterson recalled, “I had people in my clinical practice who were extraordinarily impaired intellectually and suffering from all sorts of pathologies in addition to that and if I was listening to them properly they were as fascinating as anybody I had on the say more able and competent end of the spectrum.”

Patiently listening to others with full attention won’t only reveal the world to us in a more complete way, it may also help us heal the divisions afflicting it.