Listen Carefully

Are you a good listener? Most of us would probably say “Sure!” After all, when we talk we also listen, right? Well, not always. If fact, if you really think about it, there are probably many times when you are speaking with someone and your mind wanders into left field. You might start thinking about your to do list, what you’re going to pick up for diner, or a conversation you had with someone else. As your brain meanders, the speaker becomes a background drone0then they stop talking, and you have to play catch up, trying to figure out where they left off and perhaps saying something noncommittal and banal in the hopes that they won’t realize you were mentally absent. When we are speaking with difficult people, it can be especially tempting to drift off. Blocking them out can even seem like a reasonable defense; if we are effective enough, we’ll reduce their speech to a meaningless blah blah blah. Another thing we often do when we have a conversation with a difficult person is to plan out our response while they’re talking. For example, while they’re critiquing a plan we’ve proposed, we’re busy organizing a slew of evidence to show we’re 100% right. If they’re explaining why they should be in charge of something, we’re busy preparing an argument about why they shouldn’t. To someone watching, it might look as though we’re taking turns talking and listening. But in fact it’s more of an act than an action. Make no mistake, in some situations it will be in your best interest to tune out what a difficult person is saying, or to employ strategies that discourage them from talking quite so much. But the problem with never listening is that you won’t gain any useful insights into the person you’re dealing with, nor any clues about how to deal with them in a more productive way. To gain such insights, you need to listen actively.