Listening to Children

Why exert effort to focus totally on the boring prattlings of a six-year-old? First, you willingness to do so is the best possible concrete evidence of your esteem you can give your child. If you give your child the same esteem you would give a great lecturer, then the child will know him or herself to be valued and therefore feel valuable. Second, the more children feel valuable, the more they will begin to say things of value.

They will rise to your expectation of them. Third, the more you listen to your child, the more you will realize that in amoungst the pauses, the stutterings, the seemingly innocent chatter, your child does indeed have valuable things to say. Listen to your child enough and you'll come to realize that he or she is quite an extraordinary individual. And the more extraordinary you realize your child to be, the more you'll will be willing to listen. And the more you will learn.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

How To Make Someone Truly Feel Heard

Be intentional about learning what the other person wants to communicate and respond to their feelings.

Listen to what they’re telling you and suppress the urge to fix the issue, problem solve, or change the way they are feeling about the situation.

Put your own feelings aside to create a space where another person can speak his or her mind—which requires staying calm.  

Suspending judgment and simply taking in what is being said can go a long way towards helping someone feel heard or diffusing an argument.

Show that you are actively listening and are truly understanding what the other person is saying by mirroring back what someone has said. Include phrases like ‘it sounds like’ or ‘it seems like.’

Take the time for silence in a discussion, showing that you’re processing what is being talked about and giving it the space that it needs to sink in properly. 

Edited from Jeremy Brown writing in Fatherly

The Steps to Influencing Behavior

There are five stages in what’s known as the “behavioural change stairway model” that take anyone from “listening to influencing behaviour”. The first stage is active listening – namely, being able to show the other person that you have taken in what they’ve said and, more importantly, have a sense of what it means to them.

Rather than focusing on what you want to say, listen to what the other person is telling you, then try to repeat it back to them. Start with, “It seems like what you’re saying is” or “Can I just check, it sounds like what you’re saying is”. If that feels too contrived, it often works simply to repeat the last sentence or thought someone has expressed (known in counselling practice as “reflecting”).

Try, “It seems like you’re feeling frustrated with this situation – is that right?” Always give the other person the opportunity to comment on or correct your assessment. 

Rosie Ifould writing in The Guardian

Playing Patty-cake

With younger children the communication is more and more nonverbal but still ideally requires periods of total concentration.

You can't play patty-cake very well when your mind is elsewhere. And if you can only play patty-cake halfheartedly, you are running the risk of having a halfhearted child. Adolescent children require less total listening time from their parents than a six-year-old but even more true listening time.

They are much less likely to chatter aimlessly, but when they do talk, they want their parents' full attention even more than do the younger children.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Feedback

Some professors argue that they don’t want to hear their students talk about a subject because they don’t know enough… But I always think of piano teachers; they would never keep their students away from the keyboard simply because those pupils couldn’t yet play Mozart. Sure they have to endure a lot of bad notes, but they would never push someone off the bench and refuse to let them play until they somehow became better.

Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do

True Listening in action

Since true listening is love in action, nowhere is it more appropriate than in marriage. Yet most couples never truly listen to each other. Couples are often surprised, even horrified, when we suggest to them that among the things they should do is talk to each other by appointment. It seems rigid and unromantic and unspontaneous to them. Yet true listening can occur only when time is set aside for it and conditions are supportive of it. It cannot occur when people are driving, or cooking or tired and anxious to sleep or easily interrupted or in a hurry. Romantic “love” is effortless, and couples are frequently reluctant to shoulder the effort and discipline of true love and listening. But when and if they finally do, the results are superbly gratifying.

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

The Prose and Poetry of Change

The principal prose skill is finding your own voice. It is discovering how to be present in the experience of listening. It is listening deeply and experiencing just as deeply. There are prose elements to leading and living.

But similarly, there are poetry elements. Poetry is what illuminates your life. Poetry is what fills the small silences. Poetry is what brings you to meaning. Poetry is what touches the small fibers of who you are.

If you live a life of pure prose, you will live a linear and an effective but not an illuminus life. But if you can some how merge poetry and prose, you have the potential as a person and as a professional to be remarkable.

Roger Fransecky