3 Common Mistakes influencing your Art of Listening

I came across a lovely article from Ted today about the lost art of listening. The stats have caught my curiosity – 1 in 3 people saying that their pets listen better than their partners! Extending this to our friends and family group, it makes me question how many of us consciously listen to the people who are close to us. In other words, are we actively improving our art of listening?

In this article, we talk about common mistakes and key tips to improve the art of listening and connect better to your loved ones.

3 Common Mistakes people do while listening

In this section, we talk about 3 common mistakes listeners do starting from jumping into conclusions to being judgemental about someone’s capabilities. This section is about being conscious about your behaviours to understand if you’re being an active listener.

1. Trying to solve a problem instead of listening to understand or empathise:

When someone is talking to you about a problem, they want you to listen and understand. Assuming that they’re asking for help sometimes disrespects the person seeking help. If you are in doubt, ask them explicitly about what they expect from the conversation instead of second-guessing and thinking for them.

2. It is not about you but about them, using it as an opportunity to talk about yourself

This is another common mistakes which listeners do. When you are a listener, your only duty is to be curious and try to understand the situation. It is not an invitation to talk about how you’ve braved your challenges or how much more challenging your life is. It is hard for someone to be vulnerable and talk to you about their problems.

It doesn’t give any particular joy for them to try and seek out your opinion or suggestions on how things should be dealt with. The last thing anyone would want is empty advice on how they should be stronger.

3. Faking sympathy and lying about understanding them

This is probably the worst of all. If you don’t understand a problem or situation – ask questions. It is better to appear stupid and ask for clarification than assuming something else. It not only conveys the message that you’re not listening but also clearly tells them that you don’t care.

Most often sympathy is not what the talker is looking for. To be honest, giving sympathy is easy which reduces its importance. Instead of that, be an active listener, watch out for how that’s making them feel. The process of listening is to try and understand what the person is going through. There is often a message beyond the words which you need to be looking out for.

3 Tips to improve the art of listening

We talked about active listening recently in a working context. The main point in the article was about creating communication channels for delicate conversations. It could be as simple as dedicated sessions or timeslots to get into the listening frame of mind.

Some practical tips to improve art of listening are:

1. Pay Dedicated Attention

Make sure that you’re fully focused on the listener. Don’t let any distractions, even your mobile phones or messages to disrespect this conversation. If you respect the person you’re listening to, show it to them by ensuring your full attention on them. The other distractions can wait

2. Don’t sympathise or try to solve the problem

If someone is sharing their problems with you, it isn’t necessary that they want you to solve them. Listen to what they have to say, be curious and ask the right questions. Keep your judgements to yourself, they don’t help the conversations in any positive way. If they need you to solve the problem, they’ll ask or if you’re unclear – ask, How can I help? There might be situations where you can’t be of any help and that’s ok.

3. Be curious and practice active listening

Forget all judgements. Everyone is different. This applies to the way they handle or perceive emotions or solve their problems. Don’t try to think for them. Instead, be curious, ask questions that enable them to talk more about what they want to talk about. Try and understand why they’re talking to you about it and not someone else. There are lots of messages in communication which isn’t always vocal.

I’d recommend listening through this lovely talk from Celeste Headlee who highlights some practical tips on improving communication.