Listening to Understand

In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey refers to listening as "the magical habit". There is nothing that has more potential to de-escalate conflict than listening to understand. Yet as a culture we are not very good at this. As someone once stated, "In the United States communication is a competitive exercise in which the first person to draw a breath is declared 'the listener'."

In the next few e-zines we will look at tools and mindsets that can improve listening, and barriers that keep us from really listening.

In The Dynamics of Conflict Resolution, Bernard Mayer differentiates listening to connect from listening to debate. The most frequent way we listen in conflict is to debate. Rather than really trying to understand what the other person is saying, we are listening to find fault with their statements. We may hear their words, but we are closed to the meaning of them.

While many books talk about techniques for improving listening skills, we believe that as long as our mindset is one of judging and debating, no techniques will help. So the first and most important thing to do is to listen to understand, not to judge or find fault. After adopting this mindset of really trying to understand, other tools that might be useful are:

• Make sure you are able to be present and truly listen before starting a conversation. If you will not be able to listen, say, "I don't think I am in a place where I can really listen to you right now. Can we have this conversation later?" Then schedule a time.
  
  
• Listen for what is most important to them
  
  
• Reflect back the content and the feelings that they are communicating
  
  
• Acknowledge the difficulty of their situation as you understand it
  
  
• Ask them what they think you still might not understand about their situation