Empathetic Listening
Listen up! Let’s take a few minutes to think about listening, an often-overlooked communication skill that’s just as important, if not more so, than speaking and writing.
Listening is not a passive act that happens automatically when other people are talking. The way we listen influences how messages get sent, and sometimes it affects whether messages get sent at all. Think about it: knowing someone who “won’t take things well,” often makes you less likely to share tough messages with them candidly, or at all, right? You may not want to share uncomfortable truths with them because that person doesn’t listen with empathy – they likely listen with their own interests in mind and tend to get defensive when their reality is challenged. Sound familiar?
Read on for some reasons and tips for being someone who can take any message well and who can listen to anyone with empathy and an open mind.
Many of us think we’re listening when we’re just waiting for our conversation partner to finish talking so we can tell them about our own experiences. Or we think we're listening while we let our minds wander during other people’s comments. As a life-long Chatty Kathy and person with ADHD, I'm guilty of both non-listening activities. Through a few enlightening personal experiences and some research, I’ve learned how much we can improve our relationships and increase our impact by putting more energy into listening - more specifically, Empathetic Listening.
You may wonder how empathetic listening compares to "active listening." Active listening means showing someone that you are listening: nodding your head, making eye contact, or perhaps offering, "mmhmms" and an, "I hear you." Empathetic listening involves listening AND watching for all of the communication signals the speaker sends so we can better understand the emotions and needs behind their words.
When we put more energy into empathetic listening, we can:
Improve our awareness. When we listen for the meaning and emotion behind someone’s words, we unlock additional levels of understanding. Listening to someone complain can feel like a poor use of everyone’s time. Empathetically listening to someone helps us realize they’re not just complaining... they may be expressing worry over job stability or showing concern about a colleague’s practices or wellbeing. When we pair our observation of body language, tone, and context with the words being said, we have a better chance of understanding more about the situation and how to act on it than if we had only paid attention to the words.
Increase our leadership impact. When we better understand the input from those around us, we have a better vantage point of our environment and can make decisions that are more informed. There’s no way one leader can get first-hand experience with everything going on with their team members. Their best chance of making decisions that consider the experiences of their team members is to listen to them, and listen for the whole experience. When we become known for being receptive to information whether positive or not, we become someone with whom people feel comfortable bringing their issues, concerns, and ideas. With that position, we become leaders who can make decisions based on larger sets of information and perspectives.
Strengthen the trust and culture in our teams. Leadership teams who listen empathetically create environments with high levels of trust and understanding. When people feel heard, seen, and understood by someone, they naturally trust them and feel safer to express themselves around them. Theodore Roosevelt is attributed to saying, “people don’t care what you know until they know that you care.” Empathetic listening is a great way to show people you care and develop more trust-based relationships that provide psychological safety.
Here are some tips on how to be a more empathetic listener:
Get grateful. It's hard to listen to something or someone if you're annoyed, threatened by, or resentful toward the speaker or their message. Step back and recognize reasons to be grateful for the information literally being given to you. Even if that information is someone's skewed perspective, it can still be valuable intel when paired with other perspectives and/or your own understanding. Being grateful for the information or for the person sharing with you is the fastest way to mentally switch from defensiveness or dismissiveness to open-minded listening.
Get curious. Find something about the situation that you can pique your interest - or even that could benefit you. If needed, get selfish! Think: What's in it for me? If you're being asked to listen to a colleague complain about their project, consider if the situation could also benefit you: does their description give you better insight into how a new tool or process actually works? If you helped the person with the tough situation, would it be a good teamwork opportunity? If you simply listened, would it be a good mentorship opportunity?
Get out of the way. Put your own experiences to the side when you're aiming to listen empathetically. Rather, give your conversation partner time to elaborate, or ask open-ended questions to keep them talking. Now is not the time to share how much “you get it” by sharing your own similar experience. Rather, do what you can to give your conversation partner the floor to talk more about what's on their mind.
Looking for support with empathetic listening on your team? Contact Gordeaux Consulting today to learn about training opportunities to develop empathic listening skills.