Being a good listener is one of the most important and enchanting life skills
anyone can have yet few of us know how to do it.
Not because we are evil, but because no one has taught us how and, related point,
no one has listened to us. So we come to social life greedy to speak rather than listen,
hungry to meet others, but reluctant to hear them, friendship degenerates into a socialised egoism.
Like most things it is about education: our civilization is full of great books on how to speak,
Cicerus' 'Orator' and Aristotles' 'Rhetoric' were two of the grateast in the ancient world,
but sadly no one has ever written a book called 'The Listener'. There is a range of
things that the good listener is doing that makes it so nice to spend time in their company.
Firstly, they egg us on.
It's hard to know our own minds, often worrying in the vicinity of something, but do not quite close in on what's really
bothering or exciting us. We hugely benefit from encouragement to elaborate,
to go into greater detail, to push just a little further. We need someone who rather than
launch forth on their own will simply say those two magic words "Go on".
You mention a sibling and they want to know a bit more, what was the relationship like in childhood,
how has it changed over time. They are curious where our concerns and excitements come from.
They ask things like "Why did that particularly bother you?", "Why was that such a big thing for you?".
They keep our histories in mind, they might refer back to something we said before
and we feel they building up a deeper base of engagement.
Secondly, the good listener urges clarification.
It is fatally easy to say vague things, we simply mention that something is lovely or terrible, nice or annoying,
but we do not really explore why we feel this way. The friend who listens often has a productive,
frendly suspicion of some of our own first statements and it is after the deeper attitudes that they are
lurking in the background. They take things we say like "I am fed up with my job" or "My partner and I are having a lot of roughs" and
they help us to focus in what is really about the job we do not like or what the roughs are really about.
They are bringing to listening and ambitioning to clarify the underline issues. They do not
see conversation as the swapping of anedoctes, they are reconnecting the chat that you are having over pizza with
with the phylosophical ambitions of Socrates, whose dialogues are records of his attempts to help
fellow athenians understand their ideas and values in a better way.
Thirdly, good listeners do not moralise.
The good listener is accurately aware of how insane we all are. They know their own minds
well enough not to be surprised or frightened about this, they are skilled at making occasional
little positive sounds, strategic "MMMMMM..." that delicately signals sympathy without
intruding on what we trying to say . They give the impression that they recognise and
accept our follies, they reassuring us that they are not going to shred our dignity.
A big worrying in a competitive world is that we feel we cannot afford to be honest about how distressed we are,
saying one feels like a failure could mean being dropped. But the good listener signals early and
clearly that they do not see us in these terms. Our vulnerability is something they warm to, rather than they are appalled by.
Lastly, good listeners separate disagreement from criticism.
There is a huge tendency to feel that being disagreed with is an expression of hostility and
obviously sometimes that is right. But a good listener makes it clear that they can really like you and,
at the same time, think you are wrong. They make plain that their liking for you is not dependant on contant agreement.
They are powerfully aware that a really lovely person could end up a bit muddled and in need of some gentle untangling.
When we are in the company of people who listen well we experience a very powerful pleasure but
too often we do not really realise what it is this person is doing that so nice. By paying strategic attention to
the pleasure we can learn to magnify it and offer it to others, who will notice, hear and repay the favour in turn.
Listening deserves discovery as one of the keys to a good society.