“The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it. We have talked enough; but we have not listened. And by not listening we have failed to concede the immense complexity of our society—and thus the great gaps between ourselves and those with whom we seek understanding" - William Whyte.
As I mentioned last month, this semester my plan is to explore the topic of listening and how improving our listening mindset, heartset and skills can foster better communication and collaboration among our co-workers, colleagues, team members, friends and family. In today’s article I will begin to discuss William Miller’s concept of empathic listening. He discusses his approach to listening in his superb, short book entitled, Listening Well: The Art of Empathic Understanding. I encourage you to read this book since it includes a lot of wisdom that I cannot fully summarize in these articles, and the practice exercises at the end of each chapter will significantly enhance your listening capabilities.
At the risk of being pedantic, I think it will be helpful to begin by clarifying what we mean by listening. Listening is not simply being silent, and it is most certainly not a passive act. Deep, authentic and effective listening can be very difficult—especially if the person is saying something that we disagree with or we don’t really care about. Consequently, it is also crucial to remember that listening intently does not mean agreeing with what the other person is saying. It is not verbal sparring or the silent periods in a debate when we are just waiting to respond. Instead, effective and authentic listening comes from a place of genuine curiosity, a desire to learn and understand the other person’s perspective, regardless of our own perspective. It is being attuned to and fully available to the other person.
As Grant writes in Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, “Listening is a way of offering others our scarcest, most precious gift: our attention. Once we’ve demonstrated that we care about them and their goals, they’re more willing to listen to us.” Ultimately, listening is a self-sacrificial act that can be incredibly powerful for the speaker and the listener.
Mary Lou Casey points out, “What most people really need is a good listening to” (Miller, 12). Sure, there are times when we need to engage in respectful disagreements or even civil arguments, but let’s not confuse those times as the equivalent of active listening. I believe that if we improved the effectiveness of our listening and then listened more, we would be rewarded with needing to spend less time in those confrontational interactions. So, I guess you can think of active listening as a preventative measure to mitigate the need to manage conflict in our teams and other relationships.
For Miller, the deepest and most effective form of listening is what he refers to as “empathic understanding.” Truax and Carkhuff define this form of listening as “the ability to perceive and communicate, accurately and with sensitivity, the feelings of the [person] and the meaning of those feelings” (Truax and Carkhuff). In other words, we should not simply listen to what is being said. Instead, listening should include “...paying attention to demeanor, tone of voice, setting, body language, and any other cues that would signal degree of anxiety and/or trust” (Schein, 2009). Good listening frequently includes listening for the meaning, purpose, and values behind what is spoken (Miller, 70-72). To accomplish this challenging task, we need to value understanding the other person’s perspective and respect the wisdom in others, especially when they are different (Miller 12-13). This requires humility and being less self-centered.
Miller writes that good, empathic listening is a mindset and a “heartset” that lead to a set of productive behaviors (Miller, 12-13). I frequently reflect on Miller’s use of the word “heartset” in this context. In other words, empathic understanding requires a new way of framing the work of listening (“mindset”) while simultaneously emphasizing a compassionate way of being with those whom we are listening to (“heartset”). My goal in the next few articles will be to summarize how we can foster the mindset and the heart set of empathic understanding so our behaviors during listening are most productive.
When we listen empathically, Miller contends that the speaker and the listener experience an exchange of gifts. The gifts provided to the speaker are being cared for and respected, feeling heard and understood, and being helped to explore and more clearly understand their own experiences. The gifts to the listener include mitigating misunderstanding, a deepening relationship with the speaker, and being transformed through learning and growth (Miller, 11). I want to urge you to try this approach. After all, who doesn’t like giving and receiving gifts?
In my next article, we will review the three components of empathic listening: nonverbal communication, asking questions and making reflective statements. This review will provide specific behaviors and skills that you can integrate into your approach to listening. For now, I encourage you to be more aware of how you listen to your colleagues, co-workers and family members. When you communicate with others, do you prioritize listening or speaking? Are you listening to understand or listening to respond? Are you coming to offer and receive gifts of understanding or to engage in repartee?
References:
Grant A. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. Penguin Random House, 2021: 159-160.
Miller WR. Listening Well: The Art of Empathic Understanding. WIPF and Stock, 2018
Schein E. Helping: How to Offer, Give and Receive Help. Berrett-Koehler, 2009.
Truax CB and Carkhuff RR. Toward effective counseling and psychotherapy. Chicago, 1967: 285.
Whyte WH. Is Anybody Listening? Fortune, September 1950: 174.