Listening Powerfully: How Shifting Your Listening Can Alter Your Relationships
Many of us understand or have heard of the concept of active listening, but have you ever considered how you listen to people? Do actions like nodding our head, signaling to the other person through body language, and repeating back what is said, really mean we are listening to another person? Not necessarily. Besides, haven’t most of us mastered these inauthentic behaviors that suggest to someone that we are fully listening when, in fact, our minds are elsewhere?
Consider how you listen to others. When most people are in a conversation with someone, they are thinking about their own response to what the other person is saying. They listen from a place of agreement or disagreement; likes and dislikes. When others are speaking, we automatically run commentaries through our heads. We say things to ourselves like: Do I like what is being said? Do I agree with this? I don’t agree with that, and When is she going to stop talking so that I can say something? If we don’t listen from agreement or judgement, then we often listen to fix something. In these moments, we listen to what is being said as if there is a problem or challenge to be solved. Men certainly have a bad reputation for this type of listening, but in truth, we all do it. Most human beings tend to listen to respond. If you set all of this aside—your considerations, your judgements and your commentary— and were just present with someone while they spoke to you, with a quieted mind, you could create a space—a clearing—for the conversation to occur.
In order for listening to occur, the space for listening must first be created. Effective listening is about creating a space for people to be, a space for people to explore, and a space for people to express themselves authentically. The space in which listening occurs also offers the opportunity for connection and the expression of possibility. In the creation and the holding of this space, things that are meant to be are allowed to emerge.
How do you listen to the space in which a social interaction is occurring? Verbal and nonverbal cues in the space of listening are integral parts of social interactions in this listening space. In fact, most communication between people occurs as a nonverbal experience. That which is expressed non-verbally and that which isn’t expressed at all are both important components in understanding the listening space. Think about a time when you were conversing with someone and you knew something unexpressed was present in the space; the proverbial ‘elephant in the room.’ Whether or not it was mentioned verbally, that unsaid thing impacted the listening of the conversation.
Listening to others is not just about respect or showing someone that you are present with them. It’s not just a “nice thing’ or even a pragmatic component of human life. Our realities are created through language; through speaking and listening to others. As such, listening is a sacred act of recognition and of creation.
Why is it that you can be sitting at the same table as two other people, and you feel a completely different way than the others in the conversation? This is because people are occurring a certain way to you through your listening of them. Consider, for a moment, how you listen to the people in your life. Do you listen to them from a place of bigness; from a space of listening for possibility. Or do you listen to them from their smallness?
When you are fighting with your partner, are you listening to them as a selfish, arrogant jerk or do you listen to them as the love of your life? Your listening creates the filter through which another person occurs for you. A simple question like: “Did you do the dishes?” could be taken in many different ways based on your listening. Subsequently, your natural response to this person will be an expression of how that person is occurring for you. You’ll either respond with irritation or with love in this example.
When your boss asks you for the report you have due, are you listening from a place of a micromanaging nitpick or are you listening to them as someone who is detail oriented and committed to producing quality work? The former scenario will likely breed resentment and annoyance for most people, while the latter might make you feel like a valuable contributor to important work. Remember, the occurrence of these people in your life is a product of your listening of them. What you create in the listening space impacts how people occur for you. Learning to listen for possibility in others (from their ‘bigness’) is so important because listening from this space creates possibility and makes something available in conversation.
Not only is your experience of others created for you in your listening of people, your self-expression is a product of the listening that others hold for you in the space of a conversation. How others listen to you can constrain what you are able to express. It limits not only the effectiveness of your communication but also your ability to authentically share yourself. Others grant you the space and listening to be how you are with them.
Think about it. Do you behave the same way with your family at home, with your colleagues at work, and your friends out at a bar? More than likely, you don’t. While you might be mostly “yourself,” you likely express slightly different versions of self, based on the people you are with. Do you have some friends that you can talk about anything with and then other friends where certain topics are just off limits? Do you share your secrets and fears with your lover but wouldn’t dare to do the same with your father? This is because your self-expression is constrained, or even dictated, by the way others listen to you. This is the same as saying that your self-expression is constrained by how you occur for others in the contexts that they know you and what they grant you in their listening of you.
Think about a time when you wanted to create a new possibility in your life and share it with others. Maybe you’ve thought about becoming a ballet dancer when people have known you your whole life as a star football player. Maybe you wanted to trade your six-figure job in finance for a paint brush. Perhaps you did share these new possibilities with others openly but it is very likely that you had reservations. You might have been thinking things like: What were people going to say to me? or Will they be supportive? You are limited by how people already relate to you; their listening of you. Changing the way people listen to you is a challenge. If you’ve been one thing your whole life, people might think you’re joking and not take you seriously when you try to create something new. This is a result of their listening of you. Your self-expression is impacted by their listening. Remember, it goes that because your self-expression is a direct result of other people’s listening of you, then through the act of your listening to others, you grant the people around you their self-expression.
Through listening, you give people a space to be. When you listen from a space of possibility, commitment, and bigness, you create a space for the unmanifested. Mostly, humans don’t go through life listening for what’s possible. Listening beyond judgements, evaluations, and assessments is the key to empowering the people in your life and fostering authentic connections. Within the context of a conversation, you can change a person, you can change yourself, and you might even be able to change the world. You can contribute to someone in listening. You can honor someone in listening. Intimacy exists in listening. Presence—the act of being there for others— exists in listening. Possibility exists in listening. Love exists in listening.
How are you listening to others? Are you listening from a place of bigness and possibility or are you listening to people from a space of limitation and restriction? Are you granting people full self-expression in your listening? Are you being truly present with others to understand and experience them or are you just hearing words without full conscious attention? I encourage you to listen beyond simply hearing. Examine what is in the space with you when you are interacting with others. Something amazing that you’ve never noticed before might be created in that space.
Your listening is the greatest gift you can give someone. I encourage you to make a commitment to yourself to consider how you are creating the listening with those in your life. Listen to foster a space where people can be heard, loved, honored and respected. It is in the space of listening where you can create the greatest growth for yourself and others.
With love,
Cam
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