There I was, trying to share some piece of what I’m sure was riveting, vital information with my husband and I could tell he wasn’t listening. His gaze and attention were firmly fixed on his phone.
“You’re not even listening to me,” I barked. “What in the world are you looking at?”
So he told me. You want to know what was so much more captivating to my hubby than what I, his beloved, was saying? A Facebook post about some Russian guys who walked across a bridge wearing a big yellow cardboard bus to protest a law prohibiting pedestrians on the bridge.
I’ll admit the photo of these guys wearing a bus was kind of funny, but Joe’s distractedness was nevertheless a clear violation of the Blissful Marriage Act. It also served to remind me—hence, this column—that listening is truly becoming a lost art.
I’m not casting stones here. I’m not always a good listener, either. In fact, thanks to social media, overly packed schedules and constant stimuli, it seems like the majority of us now have the attention span of a gnat.
So how can we improve our listening skills? An article in the Harvard Business Review (July 2016) titled, “What Great Listeners Really Do,” says good listeners aren’t “sponges,” passively absorbing words and ideas, but are “trampolines” who listen but also amplify, energize and clarify the thinking of the speaker.
In this era of abundant distractions, it’s hard enough to find “sponges.” “Trampolines” shine like supernovas in our relational universes. What an opportunity we have to bless others by simply listening well.
Since “trampoline” listening runs so contrary to our cultural norm and grates against our inherently selfish natures, I’ll offer up some listening tips gleaned from the Harvard article and from years of both good and bad conversational experiences:
- Put phones and electronic devices away and make appropriate eye contact.
- Decide that understanding what the other person is saying is a relational responsibility given to you by God.
- Keep your brain turned on to capture ideas, ask questions, and restate issues to confirm that your understanding is correct.
- Pay attention to nonverbal cues like facial expressions, gestures, and posture.
- Identify and acknowledge the other person’s emotions about the topic at hand.
- As you’re listening, never hijack the conversation so that your issues become the focus.
A friend of mine, Lisa, said she recently had a conversation with a relative who had some unique theological views. It was like he’d taken bits of Christianity, other religions, and New Age beliefs, tossed them in a Ninja blender, and then swallowed that strange concoction. Lisa thought what her relative was saying was pretty cray cray, but she patiently let him express his views without attacking them. She gently asked him some probing questions, but not with an argumentative spirit.
My friend said she didn’t become defensive or fire back using all her theological guns because she sensed it was much more important at that moment to leave the door open for future conversations. And because she didn’t shut him down or make him defensive, her relative actually did ask her opinion several times.
How different our country would look right now if we all learned to listen that way. We certainly aren’t going to agree on everything, but wouldn’t it be nice if we better understood how others came to hold their convictions and stopped burning relational bridges?
Truth is truth, right is right, and not everything is a “gray area” or a matter of one’s personal interpretation, but we might help each other arrive at the truth more effectively and quickly if we would, as the Bible says, be “quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger (James 1:19).”