The Problem with Listening
Listening plus anything … isn’t listening.
—James Patterson in Why Don’t We Listen Better?
Hitting the Brick Wall
There aren’t many moments that bring more destruction than a miscommunication.
Good friends turn to enemies. Marriages break into pieces because hope runs out. Children despise their parents because they aren’t heard. Companies go bankrupt while the executive board ignores the voice of their employees or customers. Partnerships fragment since no one can agree on a clear direction. The list of catastrophic failures that result from miscommunication and misinterpretation is unmatched.
You’ve been there … angry and hurt because some part of what you’ve said was taken in the wrong manner and now the intent has caught fire. It turns into a shouting match. There’s frustration and pain in being misheard and misunderstood.
You say an important idea multiple times, yet the person you are talking to doesn’t get it.
You watch a door slam to separate the tension of an argument.
You feel the temperature of your blood rise.
You feel the anxiety of anticipating another conversation that won’t end well.
Why bother anymore? It will never change.
It makes a ton of sense to lose hope. You have every right to feel beaten up by the impact of poor communication. No one will blame you for wanting to give up on someone when it always ends in conflict or frustration. Hitting a brick wall brings no joy to anyone. There are only so many times you can extend peace and have it rejected.
But what if there’s another way? What if there’s a lost secret that could map out a new approach to flip the course of communication? Instead of getting stuck in a destructive cycle with no real way out, there can exist connection and relief in communication.
Would you take it? Would you give that relationship another shot?
I’ve watched too many people lose a big part of themselves because they didn’t have an answer for how they could make a change to make communication better. I’ve been the problem and lost friends because I didn’t follow what I’m about to tell you. I’m tired of these ruptures. That’s why this book exists. So that you can come away with a better perspective and approach, especially in communication exchanges with those who are the most important to you.
Miscommunication comes when one or all parties fail to provide the necessary space and intention to create understanding and clarity. Listening is the key that you and I can lean on to bridge the divide to high-functioning communication.
Please know, it’s not all listening, all the time. I’m not proposing that it is your responsibility to always be the listener in every communication, quietly taking in all the other party has to say and never voicing your own wants and needs. That’s not what I’m proposing, as it is unfeasible. There will be opportunities for conversations in which you voice your own needs and wants. There are times you will need to give advice or opinions. Most people are well qualified and experienced to speak up and interject, and especially after you take in the central insight of this book and truly hear someone, you’ll become a clearer speaker yourself.
Even with this said, this book is about those conversations where you determine that it’s the time for you to predominantly be the listener. That’s what this book is about—why and how to listen simply in those types of communications.
There is no predictor on when you should or should not listen simply. If you are looking for a hard line to follow or an indicator of when to listen simply versus when not to, it doesn’t exist. It will defeat the point of simple listening if you are trying to find a rule around when to do it or not, rather than always being prepared to give your attention fully. Strangers, friends, children, spouses, business partners, customer service representatives, and passersby will all show up to a conversation, whether it is planned or random, differently. By the end of this book, you’ll understand that you don’t need answers to all the uncomfortable feelings and logical questions you might wish you could sort out before you can listen simply. Through consistently simple listening, over time you’ll learn to trust yourself and your simple listening to know when it makes sense to interject and interrupt, and when it doesn’t. In order to get to this place of trusting and knowing, you must first listen simply. So we’ll start there—what that does not mean, what it does mean, and how to do it.
For several years now, I’ve been acting as a personal coach, supporting a variety of individuals to help them achieve their personal and professional goals. Simple listening—both my own simple listening to my clients and my teaching them how to listen simply to others in their lives—lies at the heart of the success of my coaching practice. Even more than that, simple listening lies at the heart of my life. It’s the driving feature in all my relationships. While our marriage is not perfect, my wife and I are coming up on our twentieth anniversary. That’s not due to me being a superstar. It has to do with us sorting out our communication and avoiding a lot of the destruction that results from not being on the same page. We engage in simple listening to each other.
In running a small business for over 15 years, I’ve learned the power of simple listening to clients in order to understand many unsaid or too-quickly-glossed-over expectations. Even in communication with pure strangers—waiting in line at the airport, getting a haircut, etc.—numerous times the other person shares something incredibly deep and personal with me, and my simple listening allows me to receive them. As you’ll come to see, simple listening benefits both you, the simple listener, and the speaker in most every scenario.
I point this out in order to say that if you are looking for a rule of thumb on when to listen simply versus when to cut someone off or look to them to be the listener while you do the majority of the talking, consider this: I’ve never listened too much or regretted choosing to listen simply over trying to speak. By default, I’ll listen simply, and if there is an opportunity because I am invited to speak, then I will.
However, this book’s goal isn’t to have you follow in my footsteps. If there is a goal, it’s to increase the effectiveness of communication and, therefore, the strength and trust present in your relationships.
When you start simple listening, you’ll notice two main things change for you. First, your normal communication will look very different. What used to look like playing a game of checkers will begin to look like a game of chess. A conversation that seemed irrelevant and whimsical is now a new way of clearing out the frustration of miscommunication. It’s remarkably exciting to see another layer of opportunity being added to what used to be predictable. Second, you, the simple listener, will gain clarity around what exactly is causing the broken communication between you and the other party, and that will allow you to make positive changes to increase the connection and trust in the relationship.
This book is intentionally crafted. I want you to understand quickly what it means to listen simply. Simple listening is not complex … yet it’s going to cost you something. It’s simple listening, but it’s not easy.
And it will work.
You’ll laugh at how simple it is, but you’ll suffer because of how hard it will be. Hard for your ego, that is. I’ll show you what simple listening is and how to change yourself to be the listener you have to be to achieve the connection that you so long have been seeking.
Dealing with Disconnect
The nature of this book is to give you a clearer perspective on listening—what I call “simple listening”—and encourage you to consider your intentions behind communication. Specifically, the expectations of listening. Before landing in the swamp of the problems from our lousy listening, it makes sense to start with the value and benefit to expect from investing your time in “simple listening.” Since listening is extremely common, it’s almost always looked past as something that needs attention. Listening is assumed, and that is the biggest block to becoming a simple listener.
Being a simple listener will produce stronger and healthier relationships with those that greatly matter to you, as well as with the strangers that you’ll interact with in some capacity. Through simple listening, you’ll create a healthier community, family, and business. While listening, on the outside, may seem a minor part of most people’s lives, it plays a major role in the quality of our lives.
Consider a parent-child relationship that is a snarky comment away from blowing up yet again. There is tension created from being misunderstood. Both on the side of the child and on the side of the parent. Each side has an intention and outcome they are trying to get to. When those expectations are neglected—and even ignored—the overall relationship decays.
The destructive pattern of the relationship can be traced to the disconnect of each speaker and listener in transferring not just information but, less directly, the essence of their desire to be heard and known.
Have you considered that there is an invisible motivation behind everything we do and say? Because each of us and the person we are speaking with typically bring some kind of agenda or invisible motivation to a conversation, this then creates disconnect from the start, which often leads to a miscommunication.
No one speaks just to make noise. There is a deeper intent and a purpose, some kind of personal longing, tied to the words that come from our mouth, whether we say it out loud or not. When the person that we’re talking to, for whatever reason, ignores, rejects, denies, or just doesn’t really seem to listen to us (though they hear us), it creates a disconnect. If this happens repeatedly, it destroys the relationship.
Whether you are a parent or not, like the example previously mentioned, you’ve at least seen a TV show where a teenager argues with a parent about, say, curfew. The argument turns to verbal attacks, yelling follows, and this climactic scene builds to the peak where the teen blurts out, “You’re not listening!”
Obviously, this isn’t all true. The parent might chime back in, confirming that the statement was “heard.” The teen’s point is not explored and taken into account, and words become fireworks whizzing around in a room of china.
What “You’re not listening!” means—but is typically never said—is you aren’t understanding me. Those of us watching the TV show can see it and feel it. The disconnect. Even less obvious is what the teenager experiences, which is that “you show no concern for the things that matter to me.” That’s what ends up breaking relationships: when one party is never truly heard—right, wrong, or indifferent.
In what ways is listening—simple listening—missed in your own conversations? Either when you are speaking or when you’re on the other side, listening?
Wasting What Little Resources There Are
Money, time, and relational credit are a few items that we have a limited amount of. Missing the point or greater essence of what someone is trying to communicate to you—by not really paying attention—will end up consuming more of these resources than simple listening will. While there is not a direct means of mapping out a universal way to realize tangible outcomes that can result from simple listening—like saving a marriage, healing a relationship, or negotiating a huge contract— by choosing to listen simply, you do have the opportunity to keep yourself from wasting what resources you have and being stuck in worthless frustration that costs you time to resolve.
Here are a few examples to show you what I mean.
In business—a team works tirelessly to add a necessary feature to support a customer request. Weeks of designing and meeting. Models built, solutions validated, testing, and more testing. After the team presents the customer the final project, the customer, with a puzzled face, explains, “This is all great and looks amazing … but it’s not what I was looking for.”
All the money invested to complete this project will not return what was expected. Recovering from the loss of a revenue sets a company back. It could have been avoided by getting clear on the request and not excitedly running to get the job done and on time.
In a family—a daughter graduates and takes off to make a life on her own. She wants to get away from the rules and limits her parents set. There is no reason to check in. They’ll just state they are disappointed and have different expectations. It’s time to live life on her terms, and those days turn into months that turn into years.
Now Dad is 65 and lying in a bed with who knows how many moments left to live. Time was lost, and so was the relationship. Not because there was a huge breakdown, but because a new relationship never grew. There is no time to gain back. It’s gone now. Trying to get back what would have taken years to accumulate is impossible. The daughter will never be known by her father, and she will never know a part of herself because the effort wasn’t made to communicate and listen.
In a marriage—it’s been a few days since this couple talked. It’s been seven years of difficulties in communication, and no one is talking after another argument. Rather than being able to work together to discuss the problem, time keeps passing, and what used to be something worth coming home to is now a source of anxiety and chaos. There is no rest, and even attempts to make amends are a disaster in waiting. “I just want to be happy” is in the minds of both people. But there is no real connection, and most everything is taken out of context. There is no patience between each spouse in the marriage. There is no listening to the experience, pain, wants, and needs of the other. Love is being lost. There is little peace.
What about those conversations with yourself? You have ideas. You’ll get to those dreams someday. Right now, it’s about working hard and building success. Once there is a big enough nest egg, that’s when you’ll get to what you’ve always wanted to do. There’s always time to hike the Appalachian Trail, visit Scotland, drive out to Montana, find someone to mentor, open a coffee shop, but by retirement your health and desire are gone. By retirement, it’s going to cost you too much to change who you’ve become. You should have taken the chance to add something meaningful when you had a chance. How do you listen to your own tension and your own dreams and make decisions now?
There are endless examples of where simple listening from the beginning (or even the middle) could have saved invaluable resources. It’s important to clearly identify the causes of why communication fails and be able to resolve the causes—not simply Band-Aid the issues.
This is the hope—that you will close the last page of this book with a clear way forward from the issues caused from lack of listening. It is the intent of this book that you will clearly understand simple listening, its effects and impact on conversations, why communication breaks, how to fix it, and gain the mindset to create your own approach to become a better listener, a simple listener.
Let’s get started in the next chapter by articulating what can and should not be lumped into as listening because it is not actual listening. By identifying what listening is not, you begin to create the space for simple listening.
