by Brian Tracy
The second part of active listening is to listen without interrupting. Most people don’t really listen when another is speaking. They are so busy thinking about what they are going to say when the other person takes a breath that they seldom hear what the other person is really saying.
Whenever a speaker senses that the listener is just waiting for a chance to jump in, or that the other person’s thoughts are somewhere else, perhaps busily preparing a response, the speaker feels irritated, uncomfortable and often insulted. But when the speaker feels that the other person is tuned to him or her and to what he or she is saying, the speaker feels more valuable. So listen patiently, listen calmly, listen as if there was nothing else in the world that you would rather hear than what this person is saying, for as long as this person takes to say it.
The third part of active listening is to pause before replying. When a speaker finishes speaking, pause for three to five seconds before saying anything. In this pause, three things will happen.
First, you will actually hear the other person better. When you allow a few seconds for the other person’s remarks to sink in, you actually understand the other person more completely.
Second, when you pause, you avoid interrupting the other person if he or she has just paused to collect his or her thoughts. When you pause for three to five seconds, you give the other person an opportunity to continue rather than cutting him or her off. There are few things more irritating or insulting than being interrupted in the middle of a thought or in the middle of a sentence.
Third, when you pause before replying, you make it clear, with your silence, that you consider what has just been said to be important. You are giving it careful consideration. It is a great compliment to the speaker to have the listener sit quietly and think about his or her remarks before responding, whatever the response may be.
The fourth part of good listening is to question for clarification. Ask questions to ensure that you fully understand what the other person has said. There is an old saying, “Errant assumptions lie at the root of every failure.” When you assume you understand, without checking, you very often don’t understand what the other person has said at all. This is especially true in conversations between men and women.
One of the best questions you can use to “perception check,” to ensure that what you heard and what the person said are the same thing, is to ask simply, “How do you mean?” or “How do you mean, exactly?”
My experience in sales, marketing, consulting and training has been that, if you have any doubt at all about what the person really means, you have probably not understood. It’s essential to good communications and good listening that you ask questions to ensure clarity. And you can never ask the question, “How do you mean?” without getting greater clarity.
Perhaps the best way to expand a conversation, increase your opportunities to listen and improve your understanding is by the use of open-ended questions.
An open-ended question is one that cannot be answered with a “yes” or a “no.” Open-ended questions begin with, in the words of Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “. . . six honest serving men/(They taught me all I knew);/Their names are What and Why and When/And How and Where and Who.”
The additional benefit of asking open-ended questions is that you get more opportunity to listen, more opportunity to build trust, and more opportunity to fully understand what the other person is thinking and feeling. Remember, you never learn anything while your mouth is open. When you are speaking, all you can say is what you already know. But when you are listening, it’s possible for you to learn something new.
The fifth part of active listening is to feed back the person’s words to him or her. Paraphrase what he or she has said in your own words. When you paraphrase and feed it back, you compliment the speaker. You show how closely you have been paying attention. In fact, until you can feed back a speaker’s meaning correctly, you haven’t really understood.
Try this when another person finishes speaking. Pause for three to five seconds and then say, “Let me make sure that I understand you. What you’re saying is this.” And then go on to feed it back in your own words.
Whenever you make the effort to listen so attentively that you are able to feed a person’s words back to him or her, you increase your ability to communicate. You build greater trust between the two of you. You build higher self-esteem in the other person, and you develop self-discipline in yourself.
EMPATHIC LISTENING
Empathic listening involves genuinely caring and acting as a sounding board for the other person, rather than trying to solve the other person’s problems yourself.
Therapists use this technique of empathic listening by feeding the person’s words back to him or her in a different form. If the person says, for example, “I am really frustrated with my job,” you might say, “You sound as though you are feeling overwhelmed with the way things are going at work.”
When you reflect a person’s words back to him or her, you often help that person not only to come to a better understanding of the problem but also to gain insights into the solution.
There are two types of empathie listening, simple reflection and interpretive reflection. In “simple” reflection, you rephrase what the speaker has explicitly stated without adding anything to it, and without digging at hidden meanings or implied messages. You simply put into your own words what you just heard and feed it back.
If a person says, “I’m really worried,” you simply say, “You seem to be really worried.”
In “interpretive” reflection you go beyond simply restating what the speaker has said. Instead you reflect what appears to you to be the underlying message. “Something really seems to be bothering you about your work; could it be that your boss is putting too much pressure on you?”
With interpretive reflection, you can do one of two things. First, you can summarize what the other person has been saying and then identify themes in these messages. For instance, you may identify a theme such as anger, or frustration. You could say, “I sense that you are really angry or frustrated in this situation.” You do not add a deeper meaning yourself.
The second type of interpretive reflection is trying to paraphrase the thoughts or feelings that the speaker hasn’t stated but that you suspect are the real message. You attempt to deal with the core issue rather than with the symptom.
For example, one day when my son Michael was eighteen months old, my oldest child, Christina, who was almost five, came into the kitchen crying and said, “I hate my brother.”
Before I understood interpretive listening, I would have said something like, “Oh, no you don’t, you love your brother, and you know it.” Instead, reacting to the message that was not being said, and understanding sibling rivalry, I said to her, “You feel that we are paying too much attention to your little brother and that we’re not paying enough attention to you, don’t you?”
At this, Christina broke into tears and said, “Yes, I sometimes feel that you love him more than you love me.” She didn’t really hate Michael; she simply needed to be reassured that we still loved her very much.
This form of interpretive reflection or empathic listening is very helpful. It requires you to go beneath the speaker’s words and look for the real reasons the speaker feels the way he or she does.
By practicing reflective listening, you can be very helpful, not only to the members of your own family, but also to your friends and the people you work with. Sometimes, all a person requires is an insight, reflected back by a sincere friend, to be able to understand what he or she needs to do to solve his or her own problems. You can provide these insights by being a sensitive and skilled listener.
THE BOOMERANG PRINCIPLE
The seventh way to raise the self-esteem of others is to use the principle of the boomerang. This principle is that “whatever genuine emotion you express toward any other person will boomerang back on you, sooner or later.”
Shakespeare wrote, “T
he fragrance of the rose lingers on the hand that casts it.” Whenever you express a positive sentiment to or about someone else, it will eventually come back to you, like a boomerang. If you express a negative thought or idea, the same principle holds true, so make sure that what you say about others is what you want to have come back.
Resist the temptation to criticize, condemn or complain. Practice being agreeable and accepting. Express appreciation, approval and admiration. Listen attentively to others when they speak, and remember the boomerang. If you do all these things you’ll make others feel terrific about themselves and you’ll be welcome wherever you go.
THE ART OF CONVERSATION
So far, everything that we have talked about in this chapter shines forth at its very best in the art of conversation. It is in conversing with other people, the easy give and take, the exchange of ideas, information and opinions, that a person demonstrates the quality of his or her personality. Here are some ideas that will help you be a better conversationalist in any work or social situation.
JUST FOLLOW THE RULES
The first rule of good conversation is to cue the subject to your listener. Talk to people about subjects that interest them. Any subjects, including the subjects that used to be taboo in conversation, are okay if they are of interest to the person you are speaking with. You can discuss politics and religion if the other people you are talking with want to do it. But if you see that you are getting no response to a particular subject, back off quickly and talk about something else.
One of the best ways to open a conversation is simply to ask the person, “What sort of work do you do?” If you know what the person does in general, the person’s position or industry, ask a question like, “What exactly do you do there?” or, “How are things going at work?”
No matter what answer you get with regard to the person’s specific occupation or activities, one of the most interesting questions you can ask another person is, “How did you get into that business (or line of work), anyway?”
Most people consider their personal career path to be one of the most fascinating stories ever told. Whenever the speaker stops, you can keep the conversation or momentum going by asking, “And then what did you do?”
Asking people, “How did you get into that business, anyway?” and “And then what did you do?” will enable you to keep a conversation going almost indefinitely.
Perhaps the most important part of cuing your conversation to your listener is to be sensitive to the amount of interest shown by the other person. If he or she becomes fidgety, begins looking around or off into the distance, it’s a sign that you need to change the subject to something of greater interest.
When this happens, simply pause for a moment, then ask a question starting with one of the words, What? Where? When? How? Why? or Who? “How long have you lived here?” “Where did you go to school?” “When did you start at that company?”
A second rule for good conversation is to take your turn. This means, of course, no monologue. If ever you find that you have talked for three minutes straight, without question or comment from your listeners, you can be pretty sure that you are talking on a subject of interest only to yourself. We all make this mistake. Remember, if other people are not contributing, what you are doing is making a speech, not holding a conversation.
Taking your turn also means not interrupting when people are talking. And when you are interrupted, as when someone else joins the group, the most polite thing to do is also the hardest: shut up. Don’t go back and finish a story unless you are asked to do so.
Good conversation has an easy ebb and flow, like the tide, rolling in and out. Each person has an opportunity both to speak and to listen. If either party is deprived of the opportunity to speak, the conversation becomes one-sided and the person talking will be thought of as a bore.
The third rule for good conversation is to think before you speak. Avoid saying anything that would make someone uncomfortable, unhappy or self-conscious. Be tactful and aware of the feelings and sensitivities of other people.
The opposite of tact is just plain thoughtlessness. A good way to avoid being tactless is not to be adamant about anything. Benjamin Franklin, in his autobiography, tells about how he totally changed his personality and his effectiveness with others, by preceding each of his opinions with the words, “It seems to me that” or “Some people say that,” and so on. If you present your opinions in a tentative way, to indicate that you are open to the possibility that you could be wrong, you will find it much easier for others to listen to you and to appreciate your ideas.
Be sure to indicate that you believe other viewpoints and other tastes are as valid as your own. There is nothing black or white in areas that are highly subject to individual opinions or tastes. Your views on politics, religion, sex, nutrition or any other subject on which there are many different viewpoints, are just that: your views. If you make it clear that you are open to other opinions and other interpretations, people will be much more open to yours.
For good conversation, respect other people’s privacy and reserve a little privacy for yourself. Some people get into the habit of interviewing other people, and asking them a lot of questions whose answers are really none of their business. Keep your questions general and impersonal and give the other person the opportunity to decide whether or not he or she wants to open up to you.
Don’t burden casual acquaintances with your troubles. There’s something about social gatherings and cocktail parties that generates confessions or long discussions about all the troubles a person is having. Never criticize, condemn or complain. Be positive and cheerful. Keep your problems to yourself.
It’s helpful to remember that everything you say can be used against you. Burnham’s Law says “Everybody knows everything.” Anything that you tell anyone under any circumstances is eventually going to be known to everyone, and especially to the worst possible person you would want to hear it. Be careful what you say; there are no secrets in social or business life. A “secret” has been well defined as “something that you only tell one person at a time.” Secrets have no value unless they can be shared.
Finally, to be an excellent conversationalist, be natural. Be yourself. Let your personality flow. Only say what you feel comfortable saying. If, for any reason, something inside you tells you not to speak up, listen to your inner voice. Speak easily and spontaneously, without trying to impress or be impressed by anyone. Just say what comes naturally to your mind.
The very best conversationalists and the most enjoyable people to be around are those who are relaxed, positive and completely natural.
THE PLAYING FIELD IS YOURS
The art of conversation and social interaction is the playing field where you can develop all of your personality skills to their highest degree. You can practice each of the recommendations for making other people feel important that we have discussed in this chapter. You can avoid criticizing, condemning, or complaining when you are conversing with others. You can practice being agreeable, even when you disagree with the other person’s point of view. You can do it as a discipline, as an exercise in personal development.
You can practice acceptance by smiling at the people you meet and looking into their faces and eyes. You can practice appreciation by saying “thank you” for everything that everyone does for you. You can practice approval and recognition by praising other people for their accomplishments. You can practice admiration by asking people about themselves and then admiring their traits, qualities and achievements.
Above all you can practice attention, the “white magic” of active listening. This, as much as any other habit, will make you the kind of person that other people want to be around.
There is a famous story told about Dale Carnegie. The story goes that he was once invited to a party in New York being held in honor of a wealthy woman who had just returned from a trip to Africa.
When Dale Carnegie arrived at the party, he was introduced to this
woman, and the woman immediately said, “Oh, Mr. Carnegie, I have heard that you are one of the finest conversationalists in New York. Is that true?”
Dale Carnegie replied, “Thank you very much, madam. And I have heard that you have just returned from a trip to Africa. Why did you decide to go to Africa?”
When she told him why she had gone to Africa, Carnegie then asked, “And who did you take to Africa with you?” “And when did you go to Africa?” “When did you return?” “Where did you go when you were in Africa?” “How did you get there?” “And what exactly did you do when you were there?”
The two conversed for about twenty minutes. During this time she spoke about 95 percent of the time in answer to Carnegie’s questions. The next day, in the social pages of a New York newspaper, she was quoted as saying, “Mr. Dale Carnegie is surely one of the finest conversationalists in New York.”
You too can become a brilliant conversationalist by learning how to speak and, especially, by learning how to listen.
Getting along well with others is perhaps the most important thing you ever learn to do. When I was growing up, I was very unpopular. I had few friends, and those I did have were, for the most part, social misfits like myself. My inability to behave so that people wanted to be around me cast a shadow over my early years. It held me back right up until I learned the great secret of relationships.
The secret is that you can become popular and likable by doing two things. First, get out of yourself and get into the lives and concerns of others. Become genuinely interested in them. Ask them questions and listen to them. Think of ways that you can help them. Practice the law of sowing and reaping. Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.