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How to Be a Good Listener

March 17th, 2024 (11 months ago) • 3 minutes

Apart from the usual don't look at your phones, don't interrupt, don't judge, etc. here are some of my notes on becoming a good listener from Tom's blog:

1. Let people feel their feels

  • Allow people to own their emotion. Accept that they are feeling that way and don't try to change it. It's okay to feel sad, angry, or happy. It's okay to feel.

  • Don’t tell the person she isn’t feeling it, or worse, make her feel ashamed of having the feeling. Some simple and powerful phrases to use when someone is feeling feels: "I hear you." "I bet it is hard." "That makes sense."

2. Check your own emotions

  • Replace all of the shocking, mean, hateful, incorrect, ignorant, offensive, cruel things coming out of this person’s mouth with "I’m hurt! I’m hurt! I’m hurt! I’m hurt. I’m hurrrrt."

  • Don't engage or differ to later if you know that you are not in the right state of mind to listen to someone.

  • End this moment with "I’ll be up for talking another time about this if you want."

3. Talk to children as if they are people

  • Ask what a child is interested in now instead of always about their ambition. What they think now is still important rather than always waiting to ask good questions only when they had grown up.

    What’s on your mind today, buddy?

4. Don't give advice

  • If a person is debating a decision, there’s no need to stress out about what advice to give him or her. The person already knows the answer or the best solution—or at least, has a preference. All you have to do here is just repeat what he’s saying back to him.

  • Just let the person listen to, and digest, what he himself is saying about his choices.

5. Don't relate

  • When someone is telling you a story, don’t jump in with your own story. Just listen to theirs. It’s not about you. It’s about them. Empathy forms when you turn away from ego and really image what being in their shoes is like.

6. Ask questions

  • Ask about something that you think the person might like to answer. Anything, even, unrelated to the issue at hand.

  • Ask "What happened?" "What kind of place was that?" "When did you first…?" or other non yes-or-no questions. And, this sounds a little counterintuitive, but don’t ask a lot of "why" questions.

  • Whys often lead to shallow justification and may end up getting 'I don't knows' and no real outcome.