Good listeners are hard to find

Having someone’s full attention these days is rare. It’s so rare that when researcher Caroline Webb demonstrated to a group of business executives what she calls “extreme listening,” they said that the way she was listening felt to them like she was flirting with them. Other than flirting, they had no comparable experience of having someone really listen to them and take such an interest in what they had to say.[1]I wonder if you can recall a particular time in your life when you were in the company of a really good listener—someone who let you speak and who listened to you patiently with their full attention for as long as you needed to talk.

Maybe this listener was your spouse. Or maybe your listener was a close friend, a special teacher or mentor, a counsellor or psychotherapist, or a spiritual director. Maybe it was your mother or father, or a grandparent when you were a child.

What did that kind of listening feel like for you?

What feeling heard feels like

It feels good to be heard. Receiving listening helps us feel understood, validated, affirmed, valued, relieved, connected emotionally, and maybe even honored to have someone listen to so deeply.

Perhaps the attentive listening you received allowed you to think out loud about a particular challenge you were facing at the time, which helped you think more clearly and decisively about it.

What a gift!

In whatever way your listener affected you, I hope that you felt special and unique. That is the real power of listening. And once you have experienced it yourself, you can then help create those positive feelings in others.

Learning about listening from parents

As a child I remember how my mother would ask me questions to help me describe all the details in my day-to-day stories after I came home from school.

“What happened next?” she would ask. “You left the house this morning, went down the driveway, turned the corner, and then . . . ?”

And then I would tell her all about my day as she continued to ask me for more details.

Recalling this memory of how my mother listened to me helps me listen to my patients today.

One of my patients was an elderly man I came to know in my role as a palliative care chaplain. As he was telling me stories from his life a nurse tried to interrupt us. She was ready to do her morning care with my patient, but he wasn’t ready for her.  He turned towards her and said, very graciously,

Excuse me nurse, I’m trying to tell my life story to this gentleman here, and he’s letting me tell it—the long way.

Body language

At home my father had an unusual habit of sitting at the kitchen table and eating with his eyes closed. In my family, we never knew for sure if he was paying attention to us and our dinnertime conversation or not because his eyes were closed. In this way, I learned from my father about the importance of eye contact and other forms of nonverbal communication when listening to others.

Research

In my research for my book How to Be an Even Better, I interviewed a sample of hospice volunteers to explore their experiences of when someone listened to them, both the good and the not so good experiences.

In turn, I wanted to learn more about how they draw on such formative experiences in order to listen to others in a healing way.

Sometimes nothing is more important than having someone really listen to you, especially for those facing the end of life in hospice and palliative care, and some listeners are better than others.

Please feel free to share your comments about your own formative experiences of listening.

Podcast

Listen to my podcast about my research project here.

Book

Purchase a copy of my book here.

You can read about my book and other books about listening here.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours,

Robert

[1] C. Webb, How to have a good day: Harness the power of behavioral science to transform your working life. New York: Crown Business, 2016.