DEEP LISTENING by R. Manandhar in The Himalayan Times (16 June) KATHMANDU: When I ask, “What makes an effective communicator?” in my training programmes, most people’s response are related to oratory skills. It is no wonder because we are taught to speak by our parents, school and society. But rarely are we taught to listen. That is why when people say, “I need to be a good communicator,” indeed they mean they want to be good speakers. Speaking is only one aspect of communication. Listening, at many times, becomes a more important skill in communication. As Stephen Covey puts it, “Seek first to understand and then to be understood.” To understand a person, we need to first listen to them. In trainer’s training, we often say, “Telling is not teaching. Knowing is not learning.” In sales, it is said, “To sell is not to tell. To sell is to ask.” You ask so that your client can speak and you can listen to them. ‘Understanding’ asks us to stand under the speaker. When we speak without fully understanding, we often stand over the person. Listening has much deeper meaning in our life. Organisations express the need for building teams, managing conflicts and diversity. All these are not possible without inviting ‘listening’ into our life. Listening has deeper meaning in life. People say they want peace. They want to experience silence. Listening practice is an easy way to lead the mind to peace and silence. In fact, the anagram for the ‘listen’ is ‘silent’. When we listen to a speaker with attention, we develop silence inside. When we listen to the silence and pauses between the words of a speaker, we connect to the silence in us. Listening has three levels and serves three different purposes. The first is ‘active listening’. It means listening with undivided attention to the speaker. Then you can confirm what the speaker intends to express by reflecting back the facts and ideas through paraphrasing what speaker has said. This is also called ‘listening for accuracy’. The second level of listening is ‘empathetic listening’. You listen to the feelings of the speaker. To understand the feeling is very important to understand the person. Feeling resides much deeper than ideas and facts. Our actions are more influenced by our feelings than our thoughts, though at the surface it seems the opposite. The third level of listening is ‘co-creative listening’. You listen for mutual creativity. As per Neuro-linguistic presupposition, ‘Behind every action, there is a positive intention.’ So, co-creative listening is listening to the positive intention of speaker in the communication. Through it, both can explore what new actions can be planned and committed together. Deep listening works beyond communication. It heals both the speaker and the listener. As Tom Lutes says, “Deep listening is like dying. It’s a relinquishing of control...a giving over into the art of what comes. Without such an opening, conditioning stays intact, and natural innocence disappears into an arrogance which knows it has an answer for everything.” (The author is a leadership and management trainer, psychological counsellor, executive coach and among few certified NLP trainers from Nepal associated with ‘Kabule — The Wise Leader’. He can be contacted through [email protected])
Posted on: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 14:37:55 +0000
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