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Have you ever said to someone, “You’re not listening.”? You probably
have, and I bet their response was, “Oh yes I am. I heard every word
you said.” And they did hear every word you said. But, hearing and
listening are two different things. When we think of learning how to communicate, we think only of learning various ways to send a message, not realizing that the ability to receive a message is equally as important. If I cannot accurately receive the message, no matter how effective a sender you are, communication will not occur. We just assume that we know how to listen. We don’t realize that it is a skill that must be learned just like any other communication skill. |
Importance of Listening
Building Trust
We are able to share ourselves with
another person only to the extent that we
know we can trust them with our thoughts,
feelings and our precious self. Often when
we share ourselves with someone, they
judge us, ridicule us or try to change us.
However, if they just listened instead, think
how free we would be to share our whole
selves with them.
Unfortunately parents think their job is
to judge, fix, give advice and lecture.
Children learn very quickly that they cannot
trust their parents with their real
thoughts and feelings, so they share only
what they know will bring approval.
Problem Solving
One of the most important characteristics of a healthy family is their ability to solve problems. When a family member brings up a problem, often the response is to judge, deny, blame or tell the person they shouldn’t feel like that. If we were willing to listen to each other’s concerns, we could do something about them, instead of driving them underground, only to get bigger.
Dealing with Anger
I believe that the number one cause of relationships breaking up is our inability to deal with anger. And I am not talking about the big things. I am talking about the little, everyday things that erode our relationships. To effectively deal with anger, you have to be willing to listen when someone needs to tell you that they are angry.
You
can literally see a person’s anger come down
about 10 decibels when you simply say, “You’re really angry at me.” But we usually
say something that makes the situation
worse, adds fuel to the fire. Then whatever
precipitated the anger of the moment goes
unresolved, and we now have another reason
to be mad at each other—the way in
which we just talked to each other.
Have you ever been in a situation where
you did not feel listened to? If you have,
then you know that nothing makes you feel
more unimportant. You can give a person,
especially a child, no better gift than to
make them feel good about themselves, and
the best way to accomplish this is to listen.
Children are so aware of whether or not
their parents pay attention to them.
Probably a great deal of a child’s inappropriate
behavior comes from trying to get
their parent’s attention. If we stopped and
listened to them, they would be sustained
and would not need our attention again for
a while. It takes a great deal of half listening
to make up for a little quality listening.
We do not automatically just know how
to listen. Think about it for a minute. What
is a wife’s number one complaint about her
husband? A husband’s number one complaint
about his wife? Parents’ number one
complaint about children? And, children’s
number one complaint about parents? You
got it. THEY DON’T LISTEN.
There are three steps to being a good listener.
The steps are easy to understand, but
difficult to employ because they take practice,
time and effort. Listening must become
a priority. However, the rewards are
immeasurable. I promise you will see your
relationships improve when you start listening
to your family members.
Listen With Your Whole Body
There are two reasons for this. First,
being listened to is like being loved. It is
never enough for someone to just tell you
they love you. They must behave in ways
that make you feel loved. The same holds
true of being listened to. It is not enough for
a person to just listen with their ears and
hear every word you say. They must listen
with their whole body and make you feel listened
to. Otherwise, we just give up and
stop trying to communicate with them.
Second, it is important to listen with your
whole body because a great deal of communication
is nonverbal. In the book Teaching
Stress Management and Relaxation Skills,
the authors J.D. Curtis, R.A. Detert, J. Schindler and K. Zerkel say that research
has revealed that words make up only
seven percent of a message, the voice
38 percent and nonverbal signals 55 percent.
Furthermore, the younger the child is,
the more nonverbal their communication,
due to a lack of verbal skills.
Additionally, I believe that the essence of
all communication is nonverbal. The way
we really feel about what we are saying and
how important it is to us is not in our words.
It is in our eyes, our face, our body posture
and our gestures. So if I am only listening
with my ears, I am missing at least 55 percent
of your communication, and that 55
percent just possibly contains the essence of
what you are trying to tell me.
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We cannot not communicate and most communication takes place at a covert
level. Eighty percent of communication in a family is nonverbal. What is said,
what is left out or how it’s said, all communicate. The feelings and attitudes
behind what is said say more than the words. We speak with our feelings,
gestures, body posture, eyes, behaviors and attitudes. The nuances can speak
louder than the words. ~
Family Matters by Terry Kellogg
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Listen with your whole body. Make eye
contact and face the person. It is almost
impossible for a person to feel listened to if
you do not look at them. Also, if you look
elsewhere and only listen with your ears,
you miss all the speaker’s nonverbal behavior.
We have to stop and look at the person.
Stop unloading the dishwasher, put down
the newspaper, quit looking at the computer.
With young children, we may also
need to sit down so we can be at eye level
with them.
Give encouragers. While the person is
talking, periodically nod your head or say, “Uh hum.”
Give supportive facial expressions. Your
facial expressions must match the emotional
tone of the conversation. If a child is excitedly telling a parent something, and the
parent looks angry, the child will not feel listened
to. Or, if a wife is concerned about
something and the husband is smiling, she
feels he is not taking her seriously. In both
examples, the face tells the person that you
are not listening for the meaning of their
message. Instead your face is reflecting your
reaction to their message.
Get rid of distractions. Turn off the television,
turn down the music and turn off
your cell phone. We have so many things
that interfere with our being able to listen
to each other. Getting rid of distractions
sends the message that communication and
relationships are a priority in your family.
Listen With Your Mind
Listening with your mind does not come
naturally. It is more natural for our mind to
race and think about other things while
someone is trying to tell us something. Ever
have that sinking feeling when the person
stops talking, waits for you to say something
back, and you realize that you don’t know a
word they have said? Part of the reason for
this is that people are capable of speaking approximately 160 words
per minute, but we are capable of listening to three times that.
Also, we are capable of thinking 10 times faster than people can talk.
So we have to slow our minds down and really concentrate on
what someone is trying to tell us.
Once we have our mind under control, we have to go a step
further and discipline it to listen for one thing. When people tell us
something, they need to know that we understood what they said,
but seldom do we listen to understand. Usually when we think we
are listening to the other person, we are listening to ourselves
react to them or judge them, listening to what we like about them,
how we disagree, how we can argue, and if it is our children, we
are listening for how we can lecture or correct them. Even when we
are not listening to ourselves react to the other person, we are usually
off in our own little reverie, thinking about what we did last
night, what we need to do next or what we forgot to do.
So, part of disciplining our minds to listen involves learning to
turn off our mind chatter and really listening to what is being said
to us. What does this person want me to know about them? How
do they feel about what they are saying?
Make a Response
After we attentively listened to what the person wanted us to
hear, we need to say something in return that proves we got their
message. This is also an opportunity for us to check ourselves and
make sure that we are hearing accurately. Our response needs to be
in our own words, concise and need only include the essence of what
was said to us.
For example, your child says to you, “You make me so mad. All
you do is criticize me. I try to help out, but I can never please you.”
If we respond to the child with something like, “Don’t talk to me
like that, I am your parent,” or “Just do as I say,” we shut down
communication. And we let the child know that we are not interested
in how they feel about things, that we are not willing to look at our
behavior to see if maybe we are always criticizing the child. And
thus, an opportunity to solve a problem is lost.
A more appropriate response might be, “You feel like nothing you
ever do is good enough, that I am impossible to please.” A response
like this lets the child know you got their message and that you
care enough about them to listen to them, to try to understand how
they feel about things.
In Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Traveled, he states, “Love is
work and the principal form that the work of love takes is attention.
When we love a person, we give him or her our attention and, by
far, the most important way in which we can give people attention is
by listening. Truly listening is always a manifestation of love.”
I would add that listening to children is especially a manifestation
of our love. Children often talk about things that are not important
or interesting to adults. So it becomes very necessary to see things
through the eyes of the child, to understand that, to the child, what
they are talking about means the world. And having you listen to
them means even more.
