The Lost Art of Listening (28 page)

him feel understood and taken into account. Here are a couple of exam-

ples:

A few years ago a colleague who was editing a book on psychoanalytic

therapy changed jobs and asked me to take over for him. I was delighted—

until I saw that most of the chapters weren’t very good. It was hard for me,

a young and relatively unknown psychologist, to convince the authors,

who were big shots, to do the necessary work. One of the authors, however,

was very solicitous. He called every week to ask how the book was com-

ing and even offered to be my coeditor. Then I read his chapter. It wasn’t

the worst, but it was close. Trying to be diplomatic, I returned the manu-

script, praising its strong points and asking for a few minor changes. Three

months went by. Then I received a letter thanking me for my “suggestions”

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but saying that a couple of his friends had read over his chapter and agreed

with him that it was just fine the way it was. Arghh!

After counting to ten (about twenty times), I wrote saying that he

seemed upset about something and I was interested in hearing about it. He

called the day he received my letter and told me with a lot of feeling how

hard he’d worked on his chapter and how much rewriting the previous

editor had already put him through. I didn’t really have to say anything.

He was so appreciative of my listening to him that as soon as he finished

complaining he thanked me for being understanding and said he’d be glad

to make the changes I’d asked for.

Frankly, I hadn’t really been interested in this man’s feelings, but to be

able to negotiate with him, I had to hear him out first, or he never would

have been receptive.

With someone you do care about, empathic openness is more than a

useful strategy. It’s the essential means of discovering what things look like

from inside that person’s world.

Linda knew Andrew didn’t like to spend time with her. He was mar-

ried to his career. That’s why she’d developed so many outside interests

over the years. Now that the children had gone off into the wide world,

Linda began to sense the marriage entering its second death. Maybe it was

time to turn off the life supports. She dreamed of freedom. What had she

expected when she married? Attention, shared interests, affection, con-

versation. What she had was what she did on her own.

And Andrew? After years of professional success, he was becoming a

failure at loneliness. He longed to be closer to Linda, to share something

more than domestic arrangements. He dreamed of love. Unfortunately,

they’d gotten out of the habit of talking. He went about his business wear-

ing the armor of indifference.

When Linda came to see me—maybe a therapist would tell her what

she wanted to hear—I tried to point out one reason she felt stuck: she

wasn’t open to the possibility of trying to talk to her husband, trying to

rekindle some basis for staying together other than sharing children.

Linda had assumed that nothing would change and so it would be a

waste of time talking to Andrew. When Linda tried to open up and talk

to Andrew, she found out that he had assumed she no longer wanted to be

involved with him, so he didn’t say anything.

Such assumptions are protective. They keep us from getting our hopes

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up and our feelings hurt. But they also keep us from getting through to

each other.

Most of our assumptions about why communication

breaks down are about the other guy. We take our own

input for granted.

After their talk Linda and Andrew did get a little closer. Not a lot, but

enough to make a difference. Shared understanding was the first step.

Openness may be the key to listening, but not total openness, as in

a blank screen. Real receptivity must be informed by sensitivity to other

people.

Sensitivity: Expectations at Their Best

One of the things we learn after a while— sometimes a long while—is

that different people have different emotional needs. If, for example, you

need time alone when you’re upset, it might be hard to remember that in

the same circumstances the first thing your partner wants is to talk. Peo-

ple also have different ways of communicating. To be a good listener you

have to be sensitive to other people’s conversational styles. The automatic

rhythms and nuances of a person’s conversational style include such things

as whether descriptions are detailed or abbreviated, whether the pace of

speaking is fast or slow, and whether who-said-what-to-whom or what-I’m-

working-on-now is the preferred topic.

To Naomi, loud, overlapping talk was an indication of enthusiasm

and mutual involvement. To Wardell, it was a sign of rudeness and not

listening.

Hannah wants details; Ivan feels interrogated.

Rick wants Sherry to get to the point. To her it feels like he isn’t inter-

ested in what she has to say.

Veronica likes to talk things over. She complains that Chet is always

leaving the room. Chet replies that Veronica says something and he

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responds, then when he goes to finish what he was about to do, she gets

mad.

Listening between intimates often erodes over time because the only

way they know to solve problems is to talk things out. But when commu-

nication styles clash, talking doesn’t help. Trying harder, if it means doing

more of the same, only makes matters worse.

People who communicate indirectly feel that people close to them

should understand how they feel. Direct communicators think, “We should

be able to tell each other what we want.”

Being sensitive to other people’s conversational ways doesn’t mean

you have to have them all figured out. It means you should be receptive.

If you’re used to a New York City pace and you’re listening to a languid

southern speaker whose conversation is like an old hound dog that stops at

every tree, relax. Be patient. You might even get to enjoy the differences.

Unfortunately, when conversational styles differ, misunderstandings

multiply. It’s difficult to straighten out such differences if you’re convinced

of the rightness of your position and the wrongness of the other’s.

Belinda was with her husband at a New Year’s Eve party at his parents’

house. Halfway through the evening, Belinda’s mother-in-law came over

and whispered, “Loosen up, have some fun. Don’t be so formal!”

Belinda was annoyed. She had been having fun. She’d had several

enjoyable conversations with her husband’s cousins. She wasn’t being for-

mal; she was being herself.

Belinda was pissed.
Who does that woman think she is? Did I say anything

to her about cackling hysterically whenever anybody said something?
In fact,

Belinda found the mother-in-law’s loud show of emotion and high- pitched

chatter jarring. It wasn’t her style.

Both of these people were behaving in self- evidently appropriate

ways, the ways they were brought up to behave.

Some people consider their restrained style of speaking “polite.” They

find people with a more expressive style “crude,” “loud,” “histrionic,” “vul-

gar.” More emotive speakers think of themselves as “open and honest,”

“warm,” “friendly,” while they think of more restrained speakers as “aloof,”

“standoffish,” “distant.”

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(Notice, incidentally, how Belinda and her mother-in-law each

addressed their differences in character. The mother-in-law was “honest”

or “rude,” depending on your point of view. Belinda was “polite” or “aloof,”

as you see it.)

Sensitivity means being responsive to other people’s feelings. It

doesn’t mean assuming you know what they’re going to say; it means being

interested enough to find out. On the other hand, sensitivity does mean

using your knowledge of other people to understand their perspective and

respect their individuality.

Some of the ways you can show sensitivity are:

• Paying attention to what the other person is saying

• Acknowledging the other person’s feelings

• Listening before giving an opinion

• Listening without offering advice

• Listening without immediately agreeing or disagreeing

• Noticing how the other person appears to be feeling—and then

asking

• Asking about his or her day, both before and after

• Respecting a person’s need for quiet times

• Respecting a person’s need to address problems

• Listening to but not pushing too hard for feelings

Maybe you won’t get through to some people as long as you

keep approaching them the same way you always do.

We’re Most Insensitive to Those We Love

What makes someone insensitive to what others are saying? To figure out

why a listener becomes reactive instead of listening, consider where the

person’s anxiety might be coming from. Sometimes anxiety comes from

stress—real or imagined. People resist both actual and threatened change.

We think of powerful people as dominating relationships and perhaps

therefore not willing to listen, but in fact it’s often the powerless who have

trouble listening. A man who feels that his opinions about the children

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aren’t respected may resist his wife’s efforts to talk about them. A woman

who doesn’t feel entitled to say what she wants (and doesn’t want) may

resist her husband’s attempts to discuss sex. Most people begin to listen

better once they realize what power they do have in a relationship.

On the other hand, sometimes a person who clearly seems to have

power in a relationship—a parent, say, or a dominating spouse—still

doesn’t listen. When a dominant person doesn’t listen, it’s usually because

some hidden emotional issue is present, making him or her anxious.

One afternoon Tommy came home from school with so much rest-

less energy that he decided to mow the lawn. The machine plowed into

the deep grass, releasing its familiar sweet smell. But Tommy hadn’t gone

ten feet when the mower stalled, its blade clogged with wet grass. After

several frustrating starts and stops, he shoved the insubordinate machine

back into the garage, stomped into the house cursing and banging, went

upstairs, and slammed his door.

By this time Tommy’s parents were home. When his father asked what

was the matter, Tommy told him about his lousy day at school, then com-

ing home and the lawn mower not working. He was frustrated and angry.

Instead of empathizing, his father gave him a lecture. “When you

have a problem, it doesn’t do anybody any good to lose control and start

yelling. You have to stop and be calm. Nothing is accomplished when you

get upset.” As his father went on, Tommy’s head sank slowly to his chest.

“You can’t cut grass when it’s a foot high and be in a hurry. You’ve

got to go through it very, very slow. You can’t bull your way through

anything— including life.”

Tommy tried to explain. “Yeah, but when you’ve had a bad day at

school and you come home and everything goes wrong, your anger keeps

building. You’ve got to let it out somehow.”

“Remember what we talked about last night? About problems? What

did I say?”

“You said you’ve got to swallow your tongue.” Tommy had stopped look-

ing for sympathy and was now just trying to hang on to some of his pride.

But his father wasn’t finished. “I also told you that problems when

they’re compounded make bigger problems. But if you take that problem

and break it down, and make individual problems out of it, you can usually

solve them very easily. Remember we talked about that?”

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Tommy gave up trying to explain himself, and the conversation was

finished.

This is a story of a father’s failure to listen. The father asks his son why

he’s upset and then, when the boy tries to tell him, instead of listening,

gives him a speech on the futility of anger, a lecture for a course the boy

didn’t sign up for. Tommy attempted to explain his feelings because he was

looking for understanding. Instead he became a captive audience forced to

listen to an account of his own inadequacies.

What’s so hurtful in this encounter (and others like it) isn’t that the

father has a different perspective from his son; it’s that, because of the feel-

ings his son’s behavior arouses in him, he tries to allay his own anxieties

by pushing his perspective on the boy. In this scenario, Father knows best;

Tommy’s perspective carries no weight. It’s never even acknowledged. The

real impact of Father’s lessons for living may be that Tommy grows up to

be one of those people, like his father, with didactic views on everything—

and unable to listen.

But
why
was Tommy’s father so unable to listen to him explain why he

was upset? What was so threatening? Anger.