SEANESSAY.COM
And that person you’re with,
In that moment you share,
Give them all of your focus,
Be totally there.
By Pat A. Fleming, from each moment is precious
Listening skills have been captured on paper by a scientist, with things like ‘don’t fold your arms.’ There is even some silly acronym, for ease of remembering, taught to social work students.
But that scientist, in his business book Management of the Absurd, said he wishes he had never published those skills. I agree… One needs no acronym to follow the advice in Sex and the Single Girl, from 1962, something like: ‘listen hard with both eyes focused on your date.’
To listen fully is to fully respect. People notice.
I would have expected my classmates in my two-day class in Facilitating to have advanced listening skills. As a warm up, we paired off to do the “What I hear you saying is” exercise. I was right, all but one had done the drill before. In a nutshell, the exercise means you say back what you hear, not as a parrot, but paraphrased into your own words. If you have ever practised the drill, then you know why you never hear social workers at parties, or students at a campus cafeteria, going, “What I hear you saying is…”
Why? Partly because it is so exhausting, but also because it is so humiliating: What we commonly assume we are hearing, we are in fact misinterpreting. Commonly! We encode our thoughts as words, send them out like semaphore by flapping our jaws, and then our listener gets it wrong.
If I am forever mishearing, then I would rather not know. Ignorance is bliss.
Today in Silicon Valley a small group of expert computer millionaires are trying to help people become “founders” of “startup” companies such as the next Airbnb. The experts have office hours. Paul Graham, a successful founder, is one of the mentor-investors, and on his essay website he describes the quality of listening during his office encounters. Note: The nerds must endure long hard hours, hoping to head off competing founders, striving to launch their product before they run out of money. Surely, in an office-meeting they would listen with both eyes intent. Not so.
Graham found that some have a subtle glazed look, as though they are passing everything they hear through a filter, as if they have already decided in advance what to do, as if they don’t want to hear any advice to the contrary. Graham said the ones who go on to found things like Airbnb would listen bright eyed. The ones who would later crash and burn, not so much.
Nerds might imagine their brain as being a desktop computer tower, a Central Processing Unit. (CPU) I think of my listening brain as an old radio transceiver, with vacuum tubes, kept running on “standby mode.” Only after a speaker has come to a full stop do I snap the switch to power up to “active mode.” Only then do I engage my brain to consider what I just heard, and then consider a reply. My boss noticed how I think for a second before I answer him—because his other staff don’t! I told him I mostly pause to get grounded and think, but also because I have learned from some indigenous folks: They show respect for a speaker by not tripping over themselves to speak right away.
The opposite of good listening is to have not just a problem of words, from thinking of what one is going to reply while one is hearing, but also having a wordless subconscious filter, a filter from arrogance, ego or an ideology that one is trying to defend. Easy to be narrow eyed and defensive, hard to be wide eyed and vulnerable, taking it all in.
Suppose I speak to a person about expensive man-hours lost for the recounting of votes, and the resulting lack of evidence that a federal vote was “stolen.” Suppose my listener heard with clear eyes, paused with respect, and then replied “That sounds like good concrete evidence, however, my cult leader said, “The election was stolen.” Then I would respect him more than if he had listened to me with impatience, or a filter, or while half thinking about what Trump said on social media.
If the folks with red hats for Make America Great Again are poor listeners, then that is a reason for dismay. At least I can expect my colleagues to be basic listeners; and using advanced skills is a bonus, and great listeners are rare.
Great listening requires great respect.
I do my best to have respect for any advice I don’t have to follow, and for any truths I don’t have to adopt. I respect my ability, and my willingness, to change inside myself as needed. To risk letting go of the familiar old me.
I’m still learning.
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
Calgary
July
2024
Breaking news: Today fellow media types on CBC are reacting to the news that the husband of writer Alice Monroe was sexually abusing her daughter. They say Monroe had not listened, was in denial. To me that’s a stupid excuse, because I knew socially (I’m no therapist) a daughter whose mother told her the abuse had to continue. No denial.
My campus editor told me my review of the movie Loyalties, on this theme, was my best so far because I had seen the movie twice before writing.
Paul Graham has an essay this month that touches on listening, although the topic is understanding people who are obstinate versus persistent. He compares trying to talk to both sorts of people.
Vocabulary notes:
In Boy Scouts, we sent messages a great distance, say from a mountain to a creek, by semaphore, holding flags on rods in two arms to signal letters of the alphabet. (Like a clock face) When the Scout movement was founded, boys couldn’t afford, nor easily carry, the army heliograph then in use. I don’t suppose modern Boy Scout manuals still include semaphore, the way mine did, I think it was called Tenderfoot to Queens Scout, because now folks can use satellite phones.
Facilitating does NOT mean teaching, as the latter role means arriving with one’s knowledge to give the group. If I arrive with a chunk of knowledge then why not simply teach it? A facilitator’s role, like a firm selfless host, serves whatever agenda the group wishes. (To be arranged in advance and subject to change during the meeting)
I needed four different TEACHERS, for four two-day classes, with to get my Continuing Education certificate in Master of Facilitating. The most mentally tiring for us was learning consensus building: I went to bed at 7:30 after that one!
