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Listen up!
It always strikes me as funny when Free Listening Day rolls around in April. Free Listening Day? Shouldn’t we be listening freely every day?
Maybe. And yet …
Urban Confessional literally has people standing around in parks, plazas, and on street corners holding signs that offer “Free Listening.”
A group of actors launched this project in 2014. The way they see it: “We listen for others, believing that people need to be seen, heard, and understood. We listen for ourselves, having found the exercise of engaging strangers with open ears and open hearts to be life-giving.”
Their experiment in Los Angeles has grown to include people around the world who share their mission: To provide compassionate, non-judgmental listening to anyone who needs to be heard.
Those listeners follow some specific guidelines.
They’re out to create imbalanced conversations, which means most of the talking is coming from the person they’re listening to. An 80/20 split is about right.
They drop any barriers. Put their sign down, set their phone aside, stand with their arms uncrossed. The idea is to be open to the person who needs to be heard.
They respect moments of silence that may happen. As Urban Confessional explains, “It is often in these moments that the person will say what they have been scared to say, the thing weighing heaviest on their hearts.”
I don’t often feel any kinship with actors. But I can certainly relate to the group that launched Free Listening Day.
Like them, I’ve done a lot of talking professionally. In my previous life on the radio, they literally called me a talk show host. And I went on to become a coach, consultant, and professional speaker.
Here’s the thing. Whether in a radio studio, a conference room, or on a virtual platform, all that talking made a couple of things very clear to me.
Communication is always two-way.
And, people have a deep need to be heard.
I’m convinced many people go through their day uncertain whether anyone ever really listens to them. That means when you do listen, you become an oasis in a desert of indifference.
That’s good for your business. And your friendships. And your home life. And as those listening actors pointed out, it’s good for you, too.
So here are my own suggestions for listening better and developing that two-way communication.
Set an intention to listen. It won’t happen by accident; giving your full attention to another person takes effort. And it’s worth every bit of that effort.
Let go of the idea that you can multitask. Neuroscience says we can’t really focus on two things at once; in reality, we flip back and forth between them. And they both suffer as a result.
This may sound obvious, but if you want to listen, you’ll need to stop talking. Yes, I know, duh. But don’t you know someone who never seems to zip it?
It can happen that we talk too much. We’re enthusiastic about our work, about what we can do for our clients. It’s easy to just run off at the mouth. So, if I want to be a better listener, I need to express myself more economically. Still with enthusiasm. But not with so many words.
It helps to face the person full-on. And think about listening with your entire body. Of course we hear with our ears. But imagine yourself listening with the whole of you, as if you’re a satellite dish receiving the signal. It’s much more powerful.
And of course, comfortable, steady eye contact makes a huge difference. It conveys your attention; they feel seen as well as heard. And you can see their physical cues as well as hearing their words.
Make it a point to listen all the way to the end of their sentence, even when you’re very sure you know exactly what they’re going to say.
Because we’re in a hurry, because we want to move on already, or maybe because we want to talk, we might be inclined to just cut them off and start talking before they’ve finished their thought. Resist that temptation!
After you’ve listened all the way to the end of their sentence, pause for a beat before you jump in.
That breathing space is so welcome. It can also be a valuable information-gathering tool. Most people aren’t all that comfortable with silence. So, if they pause, and you don’t jump in to fill the gap, they may very well fill it themselves.
You get information you wouldn’t even have known to ask for. In a sales conversation, that extra bit of intel can make the difference between coming up with a proposal that gets you the business and one that falls flat.
Free Listening Day is a reminder that listening well is critical to our business success. And just as critical to our humanity.
Make sense? I’m all ears …
