The Lost Art of Listening (2 page)

other. To become better listeners, and to transform our relationships, we

must identify and harness the emotional triggers that generate anxiety and

cause misunderstanding and conflict.

If this seems too formidable a task, remember that most of us are more

capable than we give ourselves credit for. We concentrate pretty hard at

work, and most of us still enjoy earnest, open conversation with a few

friends. In fact, talking with friends is a model of what conversation can

4
Introduction

be: safe enough to talk about what matters, concerned enough to listen,

honest enough to tell the truth, and tactful enough to know when not to.

More relationships can be like this.

In the process of writing this book, I’ve tried to become a better lis-

tener, in my personal as well as professional life, to listen a little harder to

my wife’s complaints without getting defensive and to hear my children’s

opinions before giving my own. However, I’ve had a few conversations

that left me feeling bruised and defeated. My wife would speak sharply to

me about not helping out more around the house or not listening to her,

and I’d feel attacked; or I’d call my editor one too many times to complain

about the burdens of writing and she’d make
me
feel like a burden for

complaining; or my friend Rich would call me the part of your anatomy

you sit on for acting like I was entitled to some special consideration. Not

only didn’t I listen at these times—hear and acknowledge what the other

person was saying—but I got hurt and angry, and completely unwilling to

talk to that person,
ever again, as long as I live
.

I’m sure you know how painful such misunderstandings can be. When

my wife “yelled at me,” my editor was “mean to me,” and my friend “picked

on me,” I got hurt and withdrew. But what made these incidents especially

painful was that just when I thought I was learning to listen better, these

setbacks set me all the way back. Instead of just thinking that things hadn’t

gone well and needed repair, I felt defeated and inadequate. How could

I, who couldn’t even get along with the people in my own life, have the

temerity to write a book about listening? How could I teach anyone any-

thing about communicating?

Maybe you know how that feels. When we try to change something

in our lives, whether it’s our diet or work habits or listening skills, and

we experience a setback, we have a tendency to feel hopeless and give

up. Suddenly all the progress we thought we were making seems like an

illusion. Maybe if I were reading a book about listening and experienced

these setbacks, I would have given up. But since I was
writing
this book,

after a while of brooding in hurt silence I’d go back and try to talk to the

person I’d quarreled with—only this time with a firm resolve to listen to

his or her side before telling mine. In the process, I learned to see how my

relationships go through cycles of closeness and distance and, even more

important, how I could influence those cycles by the quality of my own

listening.

Introduction
5

This book is an invitation to think about the ways we talk and listen

to each other: why listening is such a powerful force in our lives; how to

listen deeply, with sustained immersion in another’s experience; and how

to prevent good listening from being spoiled by bad habits. Among the

secrets of successful communication I’ll describe are:

• The difference between real dialogue and just taking turns talking

• Hearing what people mean, not just what they say

• How to get through to someone who never seems to listen

• How to reduce arguments

• How to ask for support without getting unwanted advice

• How to get uncommunicative people to open up

• How to share a difference of opinion without making other people

feel criticized

• How to make sure both sides get heard in heated discussions

• How speakers undermine their own messages

• How the nature of relationships affects listening

• How to get people to listen to you

The Lost Art of Listening
is divided into four sections. Part I explains

why listening is so important in our lives—far more important than we

realize—and how, for many people, it’s a lack of sympathetic attention, not

stress or overwork, that accounts for the loss of enthusiasm and optimism in

their lives. Part II explores the hidden assumptions, unconscious needs, and

emotional reactions that are the real reasons people don’t listen. We’ll see

what makes listeners too defensive to hear what others are saying and why

you may not get heard even though you have something important to say.

After exploring the major roadblocks to listening, I’ll examine in Part

III how you can understand and control emotional reactivity to become a

better listener. And I’ll explain how you can make yourself heard, even in

the most difficult situations. Finally, in Part IV, I’ll explore how listening

breaks down in particular types of relationship, including intimate part-

nerships, family relationships, with children, between friends, and at work.

I’ll explain how listening is complicated by the dynamics of each of these

various relationships and how to use that knowledge to break through to

each other.

6
Introduction

At the end of each chapter, you’ll find a set of exercises designed

to help you become a better listener. Actually doing these exercises may

help transform the passive experience of reading into an active process of

improving your ability to listen.

Regardless of how much we take it for granted, the importance of lis-

tening cannot be overestimated. The gift of our attention and understand-

ing makes other people feel validated and valued. Our ability to listen, and

listen well, creates goodwill that comes back to us. But effective listening

is also the best way to enjoy others, to learn from them, and to make them

interesting to be with. I hope this book can help take us a step in the direc-

tion of showing more of the concern we feel for each other.

THE YEARNING TO BE UNDERSTOOD

Why Listening Is So Important

Part One

…

The Yearning

to Be Understood

1

…

“Did You Hear What I Said?”

Why Listening Is So Important

Sometimes it seems that nobody listens anymore.

“He expects me to listen to his problems, but he never asks about

mine.”

“She’s always complaining.”

“The only time I find out what’s going on in his life is when I overhear

him telling someone else. Why doesn’t he tell
me
these things?”

“I can’t talk to her because she’s so critical.”

Wives complain that their husbands take them for granted. Husbands

complain that their wives nag or take forever to get to the point.

She feels a violation of their connection. He doesn’t trust the con-

nection.

Few motives in human experience are as powerful as the yearning to

be understood. Being listened to means that we are taken seriously, that

our ideas and feelings are recognized, and, ultimately, that what we have

to say matters.

The yearning to be heard is a yearning to escape our isolation and

bridge the space that separates us. We reach out and try to overcome that

9

10
THE YEARNING TO BE UNDERSTOOD

separateness by revealing what’s on our minds and in our hearts, hoping for

understanding. Getting that understanding should be simple, but it isn’t.

Joan had seen a suit she’d like to buy for work, but wasn’t sure she

should spend the money. “Honey,” she said, “I saw a really nice suit at the

outlet store.”

“That’s nice,” Henry said, and went back to watching the news.

Justin was upset about having had a fender bender, but he was afraid

that if he said anything Denise would get on his case about it. So he kept

quiet and worried about how he was going to get it fixed. Denise felt Jus-

tin’s distance and assumed that he was angry at her for something. She

didn’t feel like having an argument, so she didn’t say anything either.

The essence of good listening is empathy, which can be achieved only

by suspending our preoccupation with ourselves and entering into the

experience of the other person. Part intuition and part effort, it’s the stuff

of human connection.

A listener’s empathy— grasping what we’re trying to say
and showing

it
—builds a bond of understanding, linking us to someone who hears us

and cares, and thus confirms that our feelings are legitimate and recogniz-

able. The power of empathic listening is the power to transform relation-

ships. When deeply felt but unexpressed feelings take shape in words that

are voiced and come back clarified, the result is a reassuring sense of being

understood and a grateful feeling of shared humanness with the one who

understands.

The art of listening is critical to successful relationships.

If listening strengthens our relationships by cementing our connec-

tion with one another, it also fortifies our sense of self. In the presence

of a receptive listener, we are able to clarify what we think and discover

what we feel. Thus, in giving an account of our experience to someone

who listens, we are better able to listen to ourselves. Our lives are defined

in dialogue.

Why Listening Is So Important
11

It Hurts Not to Be Listened To

The need to be taken seriously and responded to is frustrated every day.

Parents complain that their children don’t listen. Children complain

that their parents are too busy scolding to hear their side of things. Even

friends, usually a reliable source of shared understanding, are often too

busy to listen to one another these days. And if we sometimes feel cut off

from sympathy and understanding in the private sphere, we’ve grown not

even to expect courtesy and attention in public settings.

Our right to be heard is violated in countless ways that we don’t

always remember, by others who don’t always realize. That doesn’t make

it hurt any less.

When I told a psychiatrist friend that I was collecting experiences on

the theme “It hurts not to be listened to,” he sent me this example:

“I called a friend and left a message asking if we could meet at a par-

ticular time. He didn’t answer, and I felt a little anxious and confused.

Should I call again to remind him? After all, I know he’s busy. Should I

wait another day or two and hope he’ll answer? Should I not have asked

him in the first place? All this leaves me uneasy.”

The first thing that struck me about this example was how even a

little thing like an unanswered phone message can leave someone feeling

unresponded to—and troubled. Then I was really struck—like a slap in the

face—by the realization that my friend was talking about me! Suddenly

I was embarrassed, and then defensive. The reason I hadn’t returned his

call—doesn’t matter. (We always have reasons for not responding.) What

matters is how my failure to respond hurt and confused my friend and that

I never had any inkling of it.

If an oversight like that can hurt, how much more painful is it when

the subject is of urgent importance to the speaker?

Listening is so basic that we take it for granted.

Unfortunately, most of us think of ourselves as better

listeners than we really are.

When you come home from a business trip, eager to tell your partner

how it went, and he listens but after a minute or two something in his eyes

12
THE YEARNING TO BE UNDERSTOOD

goes to sleep, you feel hurt and betrayed. When you call your parents to

share a triumph and they don’t seem really interested, you feel deflated

and perhaps slightly foolish for having allowed yourself to even hope for

appreciation.

Just as it hurts not to be listened to when you’re excited about some-

thing special, it’s painful not to feel listened to by someone special, some-

one you expect to care about you.

Roger’s best friend in college was Derek. They were both political sci-

ence majors and shared a passion for politics. Together they followed every

detail of the Watergate investigation, relishing each new revelation as

though they were a series of deliciously wicked Charles Addams cartoons.

But as much as they took cynical delight in the exposure of corruption in

the Nixon White House, their friendship went beyond politics.

Roger remembered the wonderful feeling of talking to Derek for

hours, impelled by the momentum of some deep and inexplicable sym-

pathy. There was the pleasure of being able to say anything he wanted

and the pleasure of hearing Derek say everything he’d always thought but

never expressed. Unlike most of Roger’s other friends, Derek wasn’t a com-

petitive conversationalist. He really listened.