by Kate Murphy
“People want the sense you get why they are telling you the story, what it means to them, not so much that you know the details of the story,” Bodie told me. Trouble is, he and his colleagues have consistently found that most people are really bad at this. Their data suggests that listeners’ responses are emotionally attuned to what speakers are saying less than 5 percent of the time, making your dog look pretty good by comparison.
So it’s not that your friend lost his job that’s significant but how it’s impacting him emotionally. Sleuthing that out is the art of listening, particularly when people tend to bombard you with a lot of ancillary information (the commute, the fishing trip, and the detail about his wife). You are the detective, always asking, “Why is this person telling me this?” understanding that speakers sometimes may not know the answer themselves. Good listeners help speakers figure that out by asking questions and encouraging elaboration. You know you’ve succeeded as a listener when, after you respond, the other person says something like “Yes, exactly!” or “You totally get it!”
Carl Rogers, one of the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century, called this active listening. Perhaps because active listening sounds so appealingly dynamic, the term has been widely adopted in the business world but without much understanding of its meaning. Indeed, the definition of active listening in the employee handbook of a Fortune 500 consumer products company (given to me by a management trainee who was told during his performance review that he needed to work on his active listening) said nothing about interpreting feelings but focused instead on things like not appearing arrogant and keeping your lips pressed together while someone else is talking so you don’t give the impression that you’re about to cut in. The emphasis was on what an active listener looks like rather than what an active listener actually does.
Rogers described himself while active listening this way: “I hear the words, the thoughts, the feeling tones, the personal meaning, even the meaning that is below the conscious intent of the speaker.” For him, active listening was more about being in a receptive mode than outward mannerisms. The idea is to go beyond “just the facts, ma’am,” which is usually only a fraction of what’s being conveyed. In conversation, people rarely tell you something unless it means something to them. It comes to mind and out of their mouths because it has valence, begging for a reaction. And it’s in understanding the intent and meaning beneath the words that you relate to that person.
What if a coworker tells you her office is moving to another floor? The facts are her office will no longer be down the hall but on another floor. But did she say it with a subtle sigh or breathy excitement? Did she massage her temples, roll her eyes, or raise her eyebrows? Did she say she was moving to another “damn floor”? What does moving to another floor mean to her? Why is she letting you know?
Depending on how she said it, she could be aggravated that she has to pack up her things on top of all the other work she has to do, or she could be excited because she thinks the new office is in recognition of her importance to the organization. She might be anxious that the new office is on a higher floor because she’s afraid of heights, or she could be sad that she’ll be farther from your office because she has a mad crush on you. If you aren’t actively listening as Rogers described, you’ll miss the meaning beneath the message and be compromised, or clueless, in your future dealings with her.
When someone says something to you, it’s as if they are tossing you a ball. Not listening or half listening is like keeping your arms pinned to your sides or looking away so the ball sails right past or bounces clumsily off you. In any of the possible scenarios suggested above, saying to your colleague, “Oh, okay,” or “I’ve got some boxes if you want them,” would be missing the ball. A good listener, by picking up on tonal and nonverbal cues and asking a clarifying question or two, can respond more sensitively and specifically, such as offering to reschedule a meeting you had planned if she’s stressed or, picking up on her romantic interest, telling her you’re bummed you won’t see her as much—or not, if the feeling isn’t mutual.
The world is easier to navigate if you remember that people are governed by emotions, acting more often out of jealousy, pride, shame, desire, fear, or vanity than dispassionate logic. We act and react because we feel something. To discount this and listen superficially—or not at all—is to operate at a serious disadvantage. If people seem simple and devoid of feeling, that only means you don’t know them well enough. J. Pierpont Morgan said, “A man always has two reasons for what he does—a good one, and the real one.” Listening helps you understand people’s mind-sets and motivations, which is essential in building cooperative and productive relationships as well as knowing which relationships you’re better off avoiding.
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Gary Noesner retired from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2003 after a thirty-year career. For ten of those years, he was the bureau’s lead hostage negotiator, which he told me really meant he was the “lead listener.” Now an international risk consultant helping clients manage overseas kidnappings, Noesner likes to think of people’s stories as two concentric circles—like a doughnut—where the facts of what happened are on the inside and surrounding that are the more important feelings and emotions. “It’s not really what happens to us in life but how we feel about it,” he said. “From television, people think hostage negotiation is Jedi mind tricks that makes the guy magically put down the gun or that you just present this really great argument that persuades him to surrender. But it’s really the negotiator listening to try to understand the guy’s point of view.”
Noesner gave the scenario of a man holding his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint. “I say, ‘Tell me what happened.’ And I listen, and then I respond to what he’s telling me like, ‘Sounds to me like what she said really hurt you,’” Noesner said. “I’m sympathetic, taking time to listen to what he has to say, which he probably wasn’t getting from his friends and family. If they were, maybe he wouldn’t be there. It’s simple stuff, but we often don’t do it enough in our everyday lives.”
When there is a mass shooting or terrorist attack, it’s not uncommon for people who knew the perpetrator to say he “kept to himself.” Family members often say they had lost touch or had no idea what the person was up to. In the documentary Bowling for Columbine, heavy metal musician Marilyn Manson was asked what he would say to the kids and to the people in the community where the school shooting took place, an act some said was inspired by his music. “I wouldn’t say a single word to them. I would listen to what they have to say,” he said. “And that’s what no one did.”
Criminologists have found that mass shooters are typically not psychotic but depressed and lonely, motivated most often by a desire for revenge. The Trace, a journalism nonprofit dedicated to tracking gun violence, found that a striking commonality among mass murderers is a profound alienation from society. This was true whether the assailant was a disgruntled employee, estranged spouse, troubled teenager, failed business owner, jihadist, or traumatized veteran. They shared a sense that no one listened to or understood them, and they in turn ceased to listen to anyone, moved only by the often warped things they told themselves.
For Noesner, listening is not just a crisis negotiation tactic but authentic to who he is. Talking to him, you get the sense that you are his only focus, that there is nowhere else he needs to be, which makes him incredibly, if not irresistibly, likable. Dozens of perpetrators who surrendered to him reported that they didn’t know what he said but they liked the way he said it. He actually said very little. But when he did respond, he was spot-on about what they were feeling.
When Noesner travels for work, he makes a habit of having dinner at the hotel bar in the evenings. “I look at others at the bar and tell myself, ‘I’m going to engage this person and find out their story,’” he said. “It’s amazing what you can learn when you are totally focused on someone.” For example, a salesman he met whose hobby was tightrope walking
. “That was a frigging fascinating conversation,” Noesner said, recalling that the guy said he practiced walking on a wire strung between two trees in his backyard and that he overcame his fear of falling by starting out with elaborate padding and harnesses.
Much like the commuters in the University of Chicago study who were not rebuffed when they tried to engage with strangers, Noesner doesn’t recall anyone who wasn’t eager to talk to him. In fact, he usually returns to his hotel room without the other person knowing they were talking to the former lead hostage negotiator for the FBI. They didn’t stop talking long enough to ask.
It brings to mind an often-told story about the late Dick Bass, son of a Texas oil baron. He was known for going on ambitious mountain-climbing expeditions and talking about them, at length, to anyone within earshot, including a man who happened to be seated next to him on an airplane. For the duration of the cross-country flight, Bass went on about the treacherous peaks of McKinley and Everest and about the time he almost died in the Himalayas and his plan to climb Everest again. As they were about to land, Bass realized he hadn’t properly introduced himself. “That’s okay,” the man said, extending his hand. “I’m Neil Armstrong. Nice to meet you.”
You miss out on opportunities (and can look like an idiot) when you don’t take a breath and listen. Talking about yourself doesn’t add anything to your knowledge base. Again, you already know about you. When you leave a conversation, ask yourself, What did I just learn about that person? What was most concerning to that person today? How did that person feel about what we were talking about? If you can’t answer those questions, you probably need to work on your listening. “If you go into every situation thinking you already know everything, it limits your ability to grow, learn, connect, and evolve,” Noesner said. “I think a good listener is someone who is open to hearing someone else’s experiences and ideas and acknowledges their point of view.”
While being open and curious about someone else is a state of mind, the ability to acknowledge someone’s point of view with a sensitive response that encourages trust and elaboration is a developed skill. Noesner is a good listener because he’s a practiced listener. It takes awareness, focus, and experience to unearth and understand what is really being communicated. Good listeners are not born that way, they become that way.
6
Talking Like a Tortoise, Thinking Like a Hare
The Speech-Thought Differential
Have you ever been talking to someone and got so distracted by your own thoughts that it was like you put the other person on mute? The other person’s lips were moving, and yet you heard nothing until a stray word or a phrase like sex, stock tip, or borrow your car snapped you back to attention—“Wait, what?”
Your brief exit from the conversation was caused by the speech-thought differential, which refers to the fact that we can think a lot faster than someone can talk. The average person talks at around 120–150 words per minute, which takes up a tiny fraction of our mental bandwidth powered by some eighty-six billion brain cells. So we wander in our excess cognitive capacity, thinking about a multitude of other things, which keeps us from focusing on the speaker’s narrative.
When someone else talks, we take mental side trips. We check out momentarily to wonder if we have spinach in our teeth. We remind ourselves to get milk on the way home or worry about how much time is left on the parking meter. We get sidetracked by things like the speaker’s hair, clothing, body type, or maybe a large mole. Of course, the biggest distraction is thinking about what urbane, witty, or, in contentious situations, devastating thing we want to say next.
Inevitably, we get too absorbed in our musings, diverting our attention just a little too long, only to return to the conversation somewhat behind. Having missed parts of the narrative, we unconsciously (and often incorrectly) fill in the gaps. In Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald captured it well: “Intermittently she caught the gist of his sentences and supplied the rest from her subconscious, as one picks up the striking of a clock in the middle with only the rhythm of the first uncounted strokes lingering in the mind.” As a result, what the person is saying makes less sense. Rather than admit we’re lost, we depart once again into our reveries.
The idea that higher intelligence makes you better able to avoid these mental side trips is false. In fact, smart people are often worse listeners because they come up with more alternative things to think about and are more likely to assume that they already know what the person is going to say. People with higher IQs also tend to be more neurotic and self-conscious, which means worry and anxiety are more likely to hijack their attention.
Introverts, because they are quieter, are often thought to be better listeners. But this, too, is false. Listening can be particularly challenging for introverts because they have so much busyness going on in their own heads that it’s hard to make room for additional input. Because they tend to be sensitive, they may also reach saturation sooner. Listening can feel like an onslaught, making it difficult to continue listening, particularly when the speech-thought differential gives their minds occasion to drift.
“The use, or misuse, of this spare thinking time holds the answer to how well a person can concentrate on the spoken word,” wrote Ralph Nichols, a professor of rhetoric at the University of Minnesota, who is regarded by many as the father of listening research. He started his career as a high school speech teacher and debate coach and noticed that students who worked on their listening skills became more persuasive debaters. The realization sparked his interest and led him to author and co-author scores of articles and books on listening before his death in 2005.
According to Nichols, to be a good listener means using your available bandwidth not to take mental side trips but rather to double down on your efforts to understand and intuit what someone is saying. He said listening well is a matter of continually asking yourself if people’s messages are valid and what their motivations are for telling you whatever they are telling you.
It seems straightforward, but lacking awareness, intent, and more than a little practice, few people are able to do it for the duration of even the briefest conversation. In studying several thousand students and businesspeople, Nichols found that immediately following a short talk, most people missed at least half of what was said, no matter how well they thought they were listening. Two months later, most people had retained only 25 percent. To beat those averages, it’s helpful to think of listening as similar to meditation. You make yourself aware of and acknowledge distractions, then return to focus. But instead of focusing on your breathing or an image, you return your attention to the speaker.
Perhaps the greatest barrier to keeping our minds on track and following someone’s narrative is the nagging concern about what we’re going to say when it’s our turn. It’s easier to dispatch more mundane thoughts (what you need to pick up at the grocery store), but it’s much harder to stop mentally preparing your rejoinder. Whether it’s a crucial or casual conversation in your professional or personal life, everyone fears fumbling for words or, worse, saying the wrong thing.
The stakes seem higher in our increasingly polarized society where people seem ready to pounce on, and perhaps post online, any perceived insensitivity or imagined slight. Thanks to the unpitying Greek chorus on social media, it’s legitimate to fear personal humiliation and professional ruin for a rhetorical slip or ill-considered opinion. Words must be chosen carefully, which leads us to weigh our options while our conversational partners are still talking.
The dancer and choreographer Monica Bill Barnes is known for her strong and confident performances. She’s a study in power onstage with her head held high and body moving with seeming ease and certainty. But she told me that listening with her “whole self” made her feel vulnerable. “I think it’s an issue of trusting that you can be imperfect in the conversation,” she said. “Listening is a matter of you deciding you don’t need to worry what to say next,” which then allows “someone else’s o
pinions and ideas to get past your border defenses.”
The irony is that by remaining defensive and not listening fully, you actually increase your chances of responding inappropriately or insensitively. The more you think about the right thing to say, the more you miss, and the more likely it is that you’ll say the wrong thing when it’s your turn. Just as Nichols’s debate students were more persuasive when they listened, a better response will come to you when you have taken in all that the other person has to say. Then, pause if you need to after the other person concludes to think about what you want to say. While we fear silences almost as much as saying the wrong thing (more about that later), a pause following someone’s comments can actually work to your advantage, as it’s a sign of attentiveness.
A career diplomat in Washington, D.C., told me he married his wife because “she actually pauses a couple of beats after I say something. I can tell she’s thinking about what I said.” He then added, “This wife is my second go-round. The first one didn’t take because there wasn’t much listening going on.” It’s also worth pointing out that it’s okay to say, “I don’t know what to say,” when you don’t. You can also say, “I’d like to think about that,” which conveys that you honor what the other person said by taking time to think about it, while, at the same time, honoring that part of you that is uncertain and needs time to process.
Always having a ready bon mot may not be the best way to connect with people anyway. In fact, according to the tenets of self-psychology, committing a faux pas creates an opportunity to fix it, which strengthens your tie to the other person. First advanced by Austrian psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut in the 1960s but more widely embraced in the past ten years, self-psychology holds that repaired rifts are the fabric of relationships rather than patches on them. Indeed, if you think about the people whom you trust and feel closest to in your life, they are undoubtedly the ones who have come back after a flub and made it right.