Most of us can spot poor listening. It may include hearing “uh-huh,” “sure,” or “right” as you are speaking, with a dawning realization that these acknowledgements of understanding feel rote, mechanical, shallow, or misplaced.
Someone may be involved in another activity as you’re talking about your day, where it quickly becomes obvious that you possess only a fraction of their attention. The giveaways can include repetitive, flat, or canned commentary like “wow,” “really,” “oh that’s terrible,” and “huh.”
We seem to be good detectors of our listeners’ lack of presence and emotional resonance in a conversation, but we likely overestimate our own listening skills. Although 96% of professionals say they listen well, researchers found that after a 10-minute oral presentation, 50% of adults could not describe the content. Distraction is a major contributing factor, a staple of the digital age. One survey found that 44% of working adults report spending three or more hours a day multitasking.
While distraction is a notable contributor to poor listening, the ingredients of good listening are often more difficult to recognize and define. We may have a general feeling that “this person gets me” without being able to pinpoint exactly why we feel so understood.
There are clear steps we can take, however, to improve the depth and quality of our listening, some of which can be found in the study and practice of motivational interviewing (MI), an evidence-based conversational style that sparks intrinsic motivation for healthy change.
In PCOM's Master of Applied Positive Psychology motivational interviewing course, our students parse out the elements of good listening so that they can learn how to have empathic conversations that facilitate growth.
One of the first, and arguably most important, elements we highlight is what’s called reflection. A reflection is a statement that mirrors back what someone says to us. A reflection can stay very close to the words that are spoken, which would make it simple, almost a parrot-like response.
Alternatively, a reflection can convey a deeper meaning or emotion inferred from what was said, adding a level of complexity. Simple reflections, as you might imagine, do not typically strengthen the sense of connection in a conversation, whereas complex reflections often produce those exclamations we all hope to hear as listeners: “Right! Exactly! You got it!”
In MI and person-centered therapy, the listener makes guesses at these unspoken meanings, hoping to reach a deeper, mutually agreed upon understanding of that person’s life. This is what Bill Miller and Steve Rollnick, MI’s developers, have called capturing “the music beneath the words.” Many MAPP students learning MI have commented on the extensive amount of concentration and mental work that complex reflection requires, and this high cognitive demand may explain why we fail to retain much of what is said to us in a conversation. We simply haven’t allocated the mental resources to process and communicate back the essence of what’s being heard.
The goal in MI is to offer at least two complex reflections for every question that you ask. Asking open-ended questions establishes curiosity and interest, but in and of itself, is not sufficient for good listening. We need to consistently articulate back the meaning of what’s been said. If you’re not used to this deeper form of listening, you can ask yourself three questions when someone is speaking:
The answers to these self-posed questions can become your complex reflections, which in turn build empathy, understanding, and connection. To accurately infer meaning and “feel with” your speaker, it can help to visualize what they are saying, whether that’s a negative life event or an accomplishment. Mental imagery has been associated with prosocial behavior and empathy.
Eliminating distractions in your conversational space is an important part of listening well. This may mean turning off your phone or TV, setting aside your to-do list, and allocating a specific amount of time just to listen rather than give an opinion or advice. In addition to creating an environment that won’t divide your attention, the practice of mindfulness can increase how present you are in the conversation.
Mindfulness in conversations includes what Steve Rollnick calls “an uncluttered mind,” a state where you are fully available to process, experience, and involve yourself actively in what someone is sharing with you. Mindful listening is also built on a compassionate nonjudgmental stance. This means you are lending yourself cognitively and emotionally to that person with kindness, ready to meet their experience with acceptance and valuing. This combination of a distraction-free external environment with an uncluttered, accepting internal environment creates the ideal conditions for generating accurate complex reflections.
The spirit is summed up by this affirmation of presence: “I am here to listen to you fully with openness, understanding, and care.”
To listen effectively, we often have to hold back the very human tendency to interject our viewpoints, beliefs, biases, opinions, corrections, and solutions. Good listening is not about solving someone’s problem or convincing them to come around to your worldview. In fact, providing our take on the situation can actually interfere with accurate empathy, connection, and understanding.
Restraining these powerful fixing and judgment reflexes takes practice, patience, and self-awareness. This can be especially difficult if you are deeply invested in the outcome of the conversation, as you might be if you are listening as a parent, co-worker, or supervisor. When MAPP students are learning motivational interviewing, the first step in restraining the fixing and judgment reflexes is noticing them when they emerge. We do this through role plays and listening to recorded samples of conversations. With practice, learners are able to intervene more quickly when they spot that “fixing itch” before it has a chance to attach itself to words in the conversation.
Thomas Gordon points out a number of additional roadblocks to good listening we want to avoid, many of which involve becoming highly directive while shifting the focus away from the speaker:
You may notice times when you’ve gotten caught in the trap of persuading or asserting control over someone in a conversation. What started out as a desire to understand can easily end up as a power struggle that leaves both participants feeling less understood and connected.
No one is born a bad listener. How we listen is a behavior shaped over time and through our experiences, which means that we can reshape that habit if we begin to see it as any other skill and commit to improving it. Here are some ways you can expand your reflective listening capacity:
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