#45 Good Listening is an Art
and a learnable skill
Listen First has focused on many different ways of learning to listen well to each other, to your heart and to the world. The Archive includes over forty posts and stories about listening. Here I have reworked a popular post from May 2024.
There is a famous story about Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone, leaders of their parties during Queen Victoria’s reign, but the punch line belongs to Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill’s mother. It also is an example of the power of being a good listener.
Lady Randolph was indispensable in social and political circles and had dined with both men shortly before the election. Gladstone was brilliant but tended toward preaching. In contrast, Disraeli, an elegant speaker himself, spent the evening asking the Lady questions and listening intently to her responses. He wanted to know everything about her, and steered the conversation toward her.
When a journalist asked the influential Lady Randolph her impression of the two men, she replied:
”When I left the dining room after sitting next to Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England.
But when I sat next to Disraeli, I left feeling that I was the cleverest woman.”
David Augsburger, offered this more tender view of our longing to be understood and valued.
“Being listened to is so close to being loved that most people cannot tell the difference.
When was the last time someone really listened to you?
A group of Hospice Volunteers were asked to recall a time someone really listened to them and to share how they felt. Some experiences were 20-30 years old and still vivid:
A feeling of space, stillness, or relaxed and settling into myself, safe
Being able to delve more deeply into my thoughts
Feeling confident, empowered, joyful, uplifted
Feeling embraced by the other person’s whole being, completely understood without judgement
Being moved to tears and feeling loved
Feeling a sadness that this type of listening had been missing in my life.
Another common response to the experience of being listened to by someone with their full attention is a commitment to change one’s own listening habits. After learning listening skills and practicing, these hospice listeners begin to be aware that the good listener deeply shares the same sense of connection.
Being in 'sync' is more than a feeling
In her book, You’re Not Listening, journalist Kate Murphy notes the neural science that describes the ‘sync’ of this connection.
“This congruence happens in varying degrees between any two people who ‘click’, whether friends, lovers, business associates, or even between stand up comedians and their audiences. When you listen and really '“get” what another person is saying, your brain waves and those of the speaker are literally in sync.
Neuroscientist Uri Hasson looked a fMRI scans and found that the greater the overlap between the speaker’s brain activity and the listener’s brain activity, the better the communication.” (1)
This brain wave synchronization, refers to a process called neural entrainment. Brain activity waxes and wanes in an oscillating pattern and can synchronize itself with external stimuli, such as the rhythm of a song.
Research has connected the synchronization with attention, the more closely someone listens to a song, the more their brainwaves will sync with the sound. This also happens when people listen to each other with greater attention.
And likely unrelated to neural entrainment a similar sync seems to happen when related cats watch a fly. (I was going to use this video at the beginning of the post, but I was afraid some readers might avoid the whole post in rejection of ‘cat videos’. Imagine! ) Think of this as my own scientific observation of neural science.
Language and listening are what connect us to one another and plug us into life. I know what you are thinking, '“ …the world around us is so crazy and full of disagreeable people the last thing I want to do is risk listening to people I don’t know and won’t like.” But honestly, on the side of your humanity, the larger risk is to disconnect and stop listening because that cuts you off from learning about yourself in those interactions.
Myth: Introverts are automatically better listeners
At the core of good listening is attention, an undivided, fully present attention. Like any effort of awareness it takes time and practice. I have a quiet, introverted personality and I thought I was a pretty good listener. I rarely interrupted, I naturally nodded and followed along. But as I began mediation training with its strong focus on good listening, I realized that my temperament only assured that I looked like a good listener, but I had a lot more to learn and practice to be one.
It turns out that introverts are not always good listeners. To listen well, I had to tame a lot of internal dialogue and the common social anxiety of ‘what to say next’ or I would lose focus on the conversation. I looked attentive, but was easily lost in my own thoughts. I had to learn to quiet my mind and make space inside my head for the concerns and needs of the other person.
Neither are extroverts
There is also news for the sociable extroverts who shouldn’t assume that they will be seen as good listeners. A recent study surprised the business world by finding that people often assume their extroverted colleagues are poor listeners. “They may be gregarious, they may be outgoing, there may be other sociable signs that are positive, but they may also be seen as not paying as much attention,” explains Harvard Professor Julian Zlatev. Extroverts may be seen as putting on an act and not being themselves.
Introvert or extrovert, good listening takes more than looking like you are paying attention. True listening is a form of selflessness, a hospitality of the mind.
Footnote:
1. Murphy, Kate, You’re not Listening (2019) p. 25-26. This is a great book about listening and why it is so important to how we connect to others and the world.
This is fascinating, Leslie. As an introvert, I particularly resonated with the 'looking attentive' and noticed how often I can drift off on an inner tangent. I'll need to pay more attention to actually listening.
Leslie, your post spoke to me today. I am moved to take the time to be a better listener. To quiet myself and become open to what another is saying. I have started with my 2 year old cat today. We often listen to classical music together because he has always been comforted by such music. But, I am often doing the dishes, or scrolling on my phone as the music plays. Today we listened to the music together, and he purred his delight! Thank you for waking me to my need to be a better listener!