... would someone please listen to me?!?

I had someone in my office the other day that was helping a friend through a crisis. They wanted to know what to do. I told them to listen. They weren’t quite satisfied with that answer; they wanted me to give them some helpful information that they could share with their friend. I repeated myself and added this: Listening is underrated, underappreciated, and under-used. Well, then I had to explain what I am trying to explain with rest of today’s blog.

Listening is underrated, underappreciated, and under-used. I know this from experience. One of the first things you learn in any counseling or therapy graduate degree program is how to listen. If you do not learn that, you will not do well helping people. Wait, you say, isn’t a counselor or therapist supposed to be the great purveyor of helpful information for people? Well, yes, possibly. That MAY end up being helpful at some point in the whole therapy experience, BUT it does not begin there. Where it all begins is with the ability to listen and convey that you are listening. It builds a therapeutic environment that in turn allows you to help. Listening sets the stage for everything else. Why am I telling everyone all of this? I truly believe that:

1. We all need to listen more and talk less (especially talk about ourselves). See James 1:19 for a reference.


2. We all could improve our listening skills (yes it is a skill and ability).


3. Being a better listener will improve every relationship we have – marriage, parent-child, friend, co-worker, church…


4. To listen well is cherish a relationship enough to value what another is saying.


5. We need to listen to God more (just a plug for some future writings about how God speaks).

OK, now that we’ve established these things, what do we do? Practice. Yes, practice. You only improve at something in our world by practice. I have spent years doing that on driving ranges and golf courses (with relatively small improvements), even taking lessons last year. At the conclusion of my last lesson, the last thing my golf teacher told me was: practice these things.

Listening is no different and there are many ways to practice. I am going to share one today. The first week of my grad program we had to gather up our tape recorders (this was 1986 – no video training in every room yet), and pair off with someone in our class every week and practice. We usually role-played some problem about why would be coming to someone for help. The main goal though was not to help, but to listen. Here’s the how-to part. Person #1 would begin talking and go through a pretty lengthy description of something, and then Person #2 would do this:

“______________ (insert person’s name), I hear you saying you are feeling _______________ (insert feeling word) because ______________ (insert quick synopsis of the event that happened, the descriptive stuff from what the other person was saying)”.

Do you get this? If Person #2 is not properly listening to Person #1 here, the feedback will be way off. And is there anything more frustrating than not being heard? This is called a number of things in the counseling world: reflective listening, empathic listening… What it does though, is convey back to the person that shared themselves a sense that they were valued because someone listened to them. After that, whatever you offer that may or may not helpful will at least be received more openly because you listened.

“You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.”
- M. Scott Peck