The Importance of Listening

Years ago, when my son was in the fifth grade, he came home with a permission slip for a class trip to a local hospital for a presentation on "The Talk", aka puberty. I asked him if he want to talk about anything to which he replied, "No mom, you talk too much and besides I know all about puberty, you just need to wear deodorant." I suppose I would have been insulted if I hadn't known what he said about me talking too much was true.

That day of the trip, he came home from school, walking slowly into the kitchen, dragging his backpack behind him. I asked him how it went and he said, "Lotta information mom, lotta information." I asked if he wanted to talk about it and he said, "Not right now, not right now" and went upstairs to his room. He came down a little later, ready to talk. And I was ready too. To listen. I put down what I was doing, sat at the kitchen table with him and listened; that he learned puberty was just a bit more than deodorant, what was funny to him, what was gross and what was a little scary. I didn't interrupt, but just let him talk. It was a valuable lesson that as a parent it is just as important to listen as it is to talk.

There are three types of listening: active, reflective and radical (Karsiel, 2022). Active listening is giving someone your complete attention both verbally and nonverbally to show you understand what they are saying. For example, nodding or making a facial expression. Reflective listening is when you repeat back what the someone has told you as a way to show you were paying attention. Radical listening is the granddaddy of them all, it is listening without judgment with the goal of understanding the other person's perspective.

There are several barriers to listening that include noise, stimuli and information overload. Two that I feel are particularly harmful to listening are the rebuttal tendency and competitive interruption. The rebuttal tendency is the inclination to debate the speaker's point and formulate an opinion while the person is still speaking. This reminds me of my families' big, loud Sunday dinners. Competitive interruption is the practice of interrupting to take control of the conversation (Floyd,2022), again, think big, loud family dinner. I must admit, I am guilty of doing both of these things and not just at the dinner table.

To say there is a lot going on in the world right now is an understatement. There is a lot of yelling and name calling and posturing and inflammatory rhetoric being used that is causing division, anger and mistrust. We seem to listen to each other less frequently, focusing more on crafting sharp responses, whether through tweets, emojis, or memes, rather than dedicating time to truly hear and comprehend someone's viewpoint.

Listening enables us to grasp another person's perspective and can reveal that we have more in common than we might think. When we realize we have things in common, it allows us to start dialoguing as a first step toward defusing the anger and mistrust we may be feeling.

Just once this week, I would encourage all of us, myself included, to reach out to a friend or family member, either in person or on the phone and ask how they are. And then just listen.

Floyd, K. (2022). Communication matters (4th ed.). McGraw Hill LLC.

Karsiel, E. (Winter 2022). Deep listening. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 32–37.