How to Listen — Book Review

Kind of…

This is less of a book review and more of a learning journal for my journey to improve my communication skills, emotional intelligence, and social and self awareness.

I recently read this book called How to Listen — Katie Columbus, which is based on the Samaritans approach to listening and helping others through their challenges. A rough way of saying it is this book teaches people how to be good helpline listeners, to make themselves into good listeners to help folks ventilate and open themselves up to get things off their chest and work through their emotions. This book’s approach is to have people become better listeners to allow the speaker (the one in need) feel comfortable to open up, to feel they are in control of the conversation, and that they can express themselves without judgment.

Encourage opening up:

• Create Trust
• Create a safe space
• Put yourself to one side
• Pick appropriate time and place
• Ask open questions (where, when, how, what — avoid the yes or no questions)
• Don’t be afraid of silence
• Reflect on what you’ve noticed
• Don’t be hard on yourself
• You can’t force someone to accept help

Tricky Conversation Starting

• ‘how are things? I’ve noticed you don’t seem yourself’
• ‘last week you mentioned you were having a hard time dealing with…’
• ‘I might have said something insensitive, I wanted to say I’m sorry, I didnt realise things were hard for you in the moment’
• ‘It seems things are hard right now. I just wanted you to know that I’m here for you’

How to have a hard conversation

• let the other person take the lead
• avoid directing the conversation unnecessarily
• use facial expressions, verbal sounds, and words to help listener know you are listening and interested
• use their own words, repeat back to them to help them feel understood
• use encouraging phrases, ‘can you tell me more about this’
• ask them to describe their epxeriences and physical sensations that they feel associated with emotions theyre dealing with
• Be open to being corrected
• Do not feel you need to understand all aspects of what they’re saying: its often more helpful to allow them to keep talking
• Offer empathy, if you agree then sympathy. Try to put yourself in their position and imagine what they may be feeling.

How to show compassion

• Be kind, show you care
• Ask how they are, demonstrate listening by focus and care
• Use words of encouragement, open body language
• Encourage elaboration, nod
• Repeat back to someone what you’ve heard

S — Show you care

H — Have patience

U — Use open questions

S — Say it back

H — Have Courage

Barriers to Listening

• Our need to ‘help’
• The need to be in control
• Conditional regard (subject matter difficult/boring to hear, may need to change subject)
• Unconscious bias (specific group bias)
• Making assumptions
• Forgetting that every person’s story is unique
• Being distracted by our own lived experiences (avoid trying to find parallels of your life to theirs, resulting in you wanting to share your story overwriting theirs)

Don’t make it about you

• Don’t project your experience onto someone else
• Avoid talking about yourself too much
• Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens ~ Jimi Hendrix

Signs you have stopped actively listening

• ‘So, dont you think you should…’
• ‘What about if you…’
• ‘Perhaps you could try…’
• ‘Why dont you…’
• ‘If you could just…’
• ‘I knew you were going to do/say that…’

Asking to be heard and asking for help are two different things.

The things I’ve learned about conducting conversations, understanding my own emotional state and that of the other has really gotten me into a new realm of existence. I feel I have been reborn into a world I’ve never knew existed! :)

Questions I overthink about now:

• When could a better listening session have happened that may have made for a better experience for my friends — so that I was a better listener/friend to them?
• When was a time a negotiation could have helped me?