You’re Not Listening
You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy.
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
We don't realise how important listening is to our lives. We gloss over it, deemphasising the impact it could have, focusing on improving our speaking instead.
There is more value to listening than what we may originally perceive. Listening gives us the deep, meaningful connection we are after in life.
Modern life seems designed to down play the role of listening, instead it is all about 'shaping your narrative'. It is also easier than ever before to pick up our phones, become distracted and over exert our opinions.
🎨 Impressions
I was initially unsure of how there could be over 200 pages worth of things to say about listening - how wrong I was. The book, beautifully put together, is a story of anecdotes from Kate's journalism, scientific studies, and stories about why we should do some more listening.
The book, in a gentle fashion, explores why we are not that great at listening and teaches how to become better at it.
How I Discovered It
This was on the JP Morgan Summer 2020 reading list. Having only recently been published, it had received excellent reviews and interest.
Who Should Read It?
Anyone that wants more meaningful human connections. Also, if you rely on listening for your job, such as an investigator, salesman, journalist, podcast host etc this is a must read. Outcomes will be a lot better if we spend the time to listen.
✍️ My Top 3 Quotes
Online and in person, it’s all about defining yourself, shaping your narrative, and staying on message. Value is placed on what you project, not what you absorb.
Listening is not about teaching, shaping, critiquing, appraising, or showing how it should be done. Listening is about the experience of being experienced.
Listening is how we stay connected to one another as the pages turn in our lives.
📒 Summary + Notes
Are you listened to?
When was the last time you listened to someone? Really listened? Without thinking about what you wanted to say next, glancing down at your phone, or jumping in to offer your opinion? When was the last time someone really listened to you? Was so attentive to what you were saying and their response was so spot on that you felt truly understood?
In modern life, we are encouraged to listen to our hearts, listen to our inner voices, and listen to our guts but rarely are we encouraged to listen carefully and with intent to other people. Instead, we are engaged in a dialogue of the deaf, often talking over one another a cocktail parties, work meetings, or even family dinners; groomed as we are to lead the conversation rather than follow it. Online and in person, it’s all about defining yourself, shaping your narrative, and staying on message. Value is placed on what you project, not what you absorb. And yet, listening is arguably more valuable than speaking. Wars have been fought, friendships wrecked for a lack of listening. Calvin Coolidge famously said “no man ever listened himself out of a job.“ It is only by listening that we engage, understand, connect, empathise, and develop as human beings. It is fundamental to any successful relationship – personal, professional, and political.
We value talking over listening
It is striking then that high schools and colleges have the debating teams and courses in rhetoric and persuasion but they seldom, if ever, have classes or activities that teach careful listening. We can get a doctorate in speech communication enjoying clubs like Toastmasters to perfect your public speaking, but there is no comparable degree or training emphasising or encouraging the practice of listening. The very image of success and power today is someone miked up, prowling around a stage or orating from behind a podium. Giving a TED Talk or commencement speech is living the dream.
Social media has given everyone a virtual megaphone to broadcast every thought, along with the means to filter out any contrary view. People find phone calls intrusive and ignore voicemail, preferring text or wordless emoji. If people are listening to anything, it’s likely through headphones or earbuds, where they are safe inside their own sound bubble.
The result is a creeping sense of isolation and emptiness, which leads people to swipe, tap, and click all the more. Digital distraction keeps the mind occupied but does little to nurture it, much less cultivate the depth of feeling, which requires the resonance of another’s voice within our very bones and psyches. To really listen is to be moved physically, chemically, emotionally, intellectually by another person’s narrative.
Where in the past, we caught up with friends and family individually and in person, now we are more likely to text, tweet, or post on social media. Today you can simultaneously ping tens, hundreds, thousands, and even millions of people and yet how often do you have the time or inclination to delve into a deep, extended, in-person conversation with any one of them? In social situations, we pass about a phone to look at pictures instead of describing what we've seen or experienced. Rather than finding shared humour in conversation, we show one another Internet memes and YouTube videos. And if there is a difference of opinion, Google is the arbiter. If someone tells you a story that takes longer than 30 seconds, heads bow, not in contemplation but to read texts, check sport scores, or to see what is trending online. The ability to listen to anyone has been replaced by the capacity to shut everyone out, particularly those who disagree with us or who don’t get to the point fast enough.
How a lack of listening impacts loneliness
“I am lonely will anyone speak to me” was posted in 2004 on an online chat room. His cry to help went viral, with many messages similar being posted today. Reading the posts, you’ll notice that many other people are lonely not because they are alone. Lonely people have no one to share their thoughts and feelings to and equally important, they have no one who shares thoughts and feelings with them. Note that the original post asked to be spoken to. He didn’t want to talk to someone; he longed to listen to someone. Connectedness is necessarily a two way street, each participant in the conversation listening and latching onto all the ideas said.
The virtues of listening are not reinforced by the media or in popular culture. News on Sunday talk shows are more often shouting matches or exercises in “gotcha” than respectful forums for exploring desperate views. Late night talk shows are more about monologues and gags than listening to what guests have to say, than encouraging elaboration to get beyond the trite and superficial. And on the morning and daytime shows, the interviews are typically so managed and choreographed by publicists and public relation consultants that host and guest are essentially speaking prepared lines rather than having an authentic exchange
Listening has become a burden
Kate notes how extraordinary it was that so many people told her they considered it burdensome to ask family or friends to listen to them – not just about their problems but anything more meaningful than the usual social niceties or jokey banter. An energy trader in Dallas told her it was 'rude' not to keep the conversation light; otherwise you are demanding too much from the listener. A surgeon in Chicago said 'the more you’re a role model, or the more you lead, the less permission you have to unload or talk about your concerns.'
Subtleties
It’s important to figure out the subtleties in conversation. It is what listening is all about. Everybody has something going on in their heads, whether it’s your child, your romantic partner, your co-worker, a client, or whoever. To listen well is to figure out what’s on someone’s mind and demonstrate that you care enough to want to know. It’s what we all crave; to be understood as a person with thoughts, emotions, and intentions that are unique and valuable and deserving of attention.
Listening is not about teaching, shaping, critiquing, appraising, or showing how it should be done. Listening is about the experience of being experienced. It’s when someone takes an interest in who you are and what you were doing. The lack of being known and accepted in this way leads to feelings of inadequacy and emptiness. What makes most of us are lonely and isolated in our life, is less often the result of devastating traumatic events than the accumulation of occasions when nothing happened but something profitably could have. It’s a missed opportunity to connect when you weren't listening or when someone wasn’t really listening to you.
Spontaneous listening
We love our daily routines in detail calendars that tell us exactly what to expect. Occasionally we might insert a little novelty into our lives, but more typically, we walk or jog the same routes, sit in the same seats in class or during work meetings, shop aisles in the same order at the grocery store, stake out the same spots in a yoga class, return to the same vacation places, go to dinner with the same people, and have pretty much the same conversations.
The paradox is that uncertainty is what makes us feel more alive. Think of events that take you out of your usual existence: it may be attending a family wedding, making a big presentation, or going somewhere you’ve never been. It’s on those occasions the time seems to slow down a little and feel more fully engaged. The same holds true if the experience is risky, like mountain climbing or parasailing, your senses are sharper. You notice more. Thanks to the release of a feel good chemical in the brain called dopamine, you get a great surge of pleasure from chance encounters with people compared to planned meetings. Good news, financial rewards, and random gifts are more enjoyable if they are surprise. It’s why the most popular television shows and movies are the ones with an unexpected plot twist and astonishing endings.
Listening connects us whilst we change
Relying on the past to understand something in the present is deemed to fail. A happy marriage is a long conversation always seemingly too short. How long would you want to stay with someone who insisted on treating you as if you were the same person you were the day you met. This is true not just of romantic relationships but in all relationships. Even toddlers object to being treated like the infant they were just months earlier. Offer to give them a helping hand with something they’ve already learned how to do and you’re likely get an exasperated 'I do it!' response.
Listening is how we stay connected to one another as the pages turn in our lives.
Staying in touch or keeping up with someone is nothing more than listening to what’s on that person’s mind – the frequency with which you check in determining the strength and longevity of that relationship. It’s all too easy to get complacent about how well you know those closest to you, just as hard not to make assumptions about strangers based on stereotypes, particularly when reinforced by the persons own advert. But listening keeps you from falling into those traps, listening is to overturn your expectations.
Social media
Social media is custom-made for signalling. Showing that you follow certain individuals or organisations or retweeting all, like in messages or images signal value and cool factor. Why do you need to listen to people you can just google them? A Facebook page, and Instagram feed, or a LinkedIn profile, the thinking goes, tells you all you need to know. And yet this is precisely why people may be reluctant to give her surname is upon meeting someone new, fearing that that person will do the digital equivalent of going through their dresser drawers instead of getting to know them organically. In these situations, providing your last name is now seen as a significant turning point in the relationship. The delay reflects a yearning to be known more deeply and individually first; to not be judged.
The reason behind the story
People are more likely to feel understood if a listeners response is not parroted, or paraphrased but by giving descriptive and evaluative information. Contrary to the idea that effective listening is some sort of passive exercise, it has been shown that it requires interpretation and interplay. Your dog 'listens' to you. Siri or Alexa can 'listen' to you. But ultimately talking to your dog, Siri or Alexa will prove unsatisfying because they won’t respond in a thoughtful, feeling way, which is the measure of a good listener. People want to sense you get why they are telling you the story, what it means to them, not so much that you know the details of the story. Trouble is, we are consistently really bad at this. Data suggests that listeners responses are emotionally attuned to what speakers are saying less than 5% of the time.
The world is easier to navigate if you remember that people are governed by emotions, acting more often out of jealousy, pride, shame, desire, fear, or vanity than dispassionate logic. We act and react because we feel something. To discount this and listen superficially, or not at all, is to operate at a serious disadvantage. A man always has two reasons for what he does – a good one, and the real one. Listening helps you understand peoples mindset and motivations, which is essential in building cooperative and productive relationships.
Missed opportunities
You miss out on opportunities when you don’t take a breath and listen. Talking about yourself doesn’t add anything to your knowledge base. Again, you already know about you. When you leave the conversation, ask yourself, what did I just learned about that person? What was most concerning that person today? How did that person feel about what we were talking about? If you can’t answer these questions, you probably need to work on your listening.
Data vs understanding
Companies that rely on social media listening use algorithms that monitor and analyse data from sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to gauge customers inclinations and attitudes. Using social media data to learn about human behaviour is like learning about human behaviour by watching people on a casino floor. They are both highly engineered environments that tell you something about the human behaviour, but it’s not typical human behaviour. Listening is the opposite of algorithmic approaches. Algorithms aspire to guess as accurately as possible. They don’t aspire to understand.
Listening and humour
To be successful at improvisational comedy and also the improvisation that is your real life, listening is critical. Controlling the narrative and grabbing for attention makes for a one-sided conversation and kills collaboration. Rather than advancing your agenda, it really just holds you back. Enjoyment and the benefits of human interaction comes from a reciprocal focusing on one another’s words and actions, and being ready and willing to respond and expand on every contribution. The result is a mutual understanding and even appreciation. As fun as it is to watch talented improv performers effortlessly riff off each other, it’s even more satisfying to be in a good conversation where you are both listening and helping develop each other’s thoughts.
Moreover, listening is essential to be funny. A vast body of evidence indicates humour is an asset in forming and maintaining relationships both professionally and personally. In work environments, successful attempt at humour leads to perceptions of competence and confidence. In romantic relationships, successful humour is a gauge of intimacy and security. But the operative word here is successful. Unsuccessful humour has the opposite effect. It won’t be funny unless you accurately read your audience.
Breakdowns in communication
We hear about disasters resulting from the failure to clear up confusion at the time: the Challenger explosion, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and medical errors that cause around 250,000 deaths in the US each year. But what about all the micro miscommunications that fill our days? While the repercussions may not be as catastrophic, they are nonetheless consequential. But all the time we have a moment of “oooh, now I get it!" there are many more misunderstanding that we fail to catch.
We are oblivious to all the hurt feelings, missed opportunities, and botched jobs. All because we couldn’t be bothered to make sure we understand. Misunderstanding is, like differences of opinion, a valuable reminder that others are not like us, or even remotely like us. Because we only really know ourselves, it’s natural tendency to have a view of the world. We incorrectly assume other peoples logic and motivations resemble our own. But of course, they have different back stories and baggage.
Intellectually, we know this, but nonetheless it’s always a rude awakening when someone thinks he behaves in ways that are beyond our expectations and imaginations. Misunderstanding, then, could be seen as an opportunity. It is an inspiration or perhaps an aggravation, to listen more closely and enquire more deeply.
"If you understood everything; you’d be me."
Our inner dialogue
Listening to others, then, determines the tone and quality of our inner dialogue. Our previous interactions teaches us how to question, answer, and comment so we can do the same with ourselves when we need to solve problems, manage ethical dilemmas or think creatively.
This kind of private or inner speech is associated with high-performance on cognitive tasks by children as well as adults. The research suggests that the more people you listen to in the course of your life, the more sides to an issue you can argue in your head, and the more solutions you can imagine. Inner dialogue fosters and supports cognitive complexity, the valuable ability to tolerate a range of views, make associations, and come up with new ideas.
The tenor of our inner voices does not only come from listening to the actual people in our lives but it is also likely influenced by the voices we hear through regular media. The tone and dialogue of Oprah Winfrey or Judge Judy might begin begin to reverberate in your head, depending on how avid a follower you are.
Who does your inner voice remind you of? What does it tell you? Does your inner voice change in different situations? Is it friendly? Is it critical?
These are all important things to ask yourself because your inner voice influences how you ponder things, interpret situations, make moral judgements, and solve problems. This in turn, influences how you are in the world; whether you see the best or worst in people and whether you see the best or worst of yourself.
Stories and hearing familiarity
The stories we collect in life define us and are the scaffolding of our realities. Families, friends, and co-workers have stories that bind them together. Rivals and enemies have narratives to keep them apart. All around us people's legends and anecdotes, myths and stark realities, depreciations and aggrandizements. Listening helps us sort fact from fiction and deepens our understanding of the complex situations and personalities we encounter in life.
Familiar voices have unique properties that catches our attention. It can trigger a cascade of physical, emotional, and cognitive reactions resulting in them taking notice and responding. It’s easy to take for granted an ability to receive and process auditory information in this way. We do it all day, every day. Nevertheless, it’s a feat that is outstanding due to it’s specificity and complexity. There’s been extensive research over the years where the brain and how the brain makes sense of auditory information and processing what someone says. It turns out it is one of the most intricate and involved things we ask our brains to do.
Hearing, not reading
If you have to listen to someone remotely, phone is better than text or email because as much as 38% of someone’s feelings and attitudes are conveyed by tone of voice. This means that during many conversations, you just get 7% of the meaning from actual words, which could be typed.
Silence
Somehow lost in our self promoting culture is the fact that you can’t talk your way into a relationship. We can feel silence directs the kind of word wall that separates you from others. Silence is what allows people in. There is a generosity in silence but also a definitive advantage. People who are comfortable with silence elicit more information and don’t say too much out of discomfort. Resisting the urge to jump in makes it more likely you will leave conversations with additional insight in greater understanding.
Regret of not listening
Regret came up repeatedly when people were interviewed for the book. So many of them expressed profound regret that they didn’t listen at critical points in their lives. They were too distracted or maybe they had to speak the truth and neglected to take into account the potential impact. They reflected on a person who died, a relationship that ended, a job they lost, or a fight they had wished they could go back and ask more questions and listen more carefully to the answers.
The best friendships are those when you’re able to immediately pick up the conversation where you left off because the person’s words have remained with you. Indeed, one of the most gratifying things that you can say to another person is: “I’ve been thinking about what you said.” Likewise, friends can help connect what you were saying in the moment to things you’ve said in the past to help you work through problems or clarify your thinking, or in some cases, just make you laugh with the association. But in an age where listening is seen as a burden, people often feel ashamed, embarrassed, or guilty when someone listens to them, much less reflect on what they said. They might empty their souls into the digital black hole that is the Internet, but revealing themselves to someone in the same room, who was giving them full attention, is another thing entirely.
Good listeners, because they expose themselves to a range of thoughts and opinions, are more resilient when they criticise. They know one persons word is not necessarily definitive or entirely accurate. A good exercise is to think about people in your life who you have had a hard time listening to and ask yourself why that is. Are they judging? Giving too much detail? Exaggerating?
Conclusions
Listening is like playing a sport or musical instrument - you can get better and better with practice and persistence, but you will never achieve total mastery. Some may have more natural ability and some may have to try harder, but everyone can benefit from making the effort. When something wonderful or terrible happens to you, what’s your first instinct? It’s probably to tell someone. We will tell our troubles and triumphs to strangers, pets, and even potted plants if no one else is around. But listening is a flip side of that impulse and is arguably no less critical to our well-being.
We long to receive as much as we long to transmit. We are too busy to listen, we look to our phones, jump in to soon with our opinions, will make assumptions, we prevent others thoughts and emotions from being genuinely expressed. And we end up hollower and emptier than we would be otherwise.
Listening heightens your awareness. It makes you feel. As you become more attuned to the thoughts and emotions of others, you become more alive to the world and it becomes more alive to you. Life otherwise can become a muted existence with days spent cocooned in unquestioned beliefs, fixed concepts, where, even though the world and people in it are always changing, nothing is ventured beyond the borders of what you already know or accept as true. It feels safe, but it’s really just stifling.
But listening is no easy task. Our magnificent brains race along faster than others can speak, making us easily distracted. We overestimate what we already know and mired in our arrogance, remain unaware of who we misunderstand. We also feel that if you listen too carefully, we might discover that our thinking is flawed or that another persons emotions might be too much to bear. And only retreat into our own heads, talk over one another, or reach for our phones.
Technology does not so much interfere with listening as make it seem unnecessary. Our devices indulge your fear of intimacy by fooling us into thinking that we are socially connected even when we are arcanely alone. We avoid the messiness and imperfections of others, retreating into the relative safety of our devices, swiping and deleting with abundance. The result is a loss of richness and nuance in our social interactions, and we suffer from a general creeping sense of dissatisfaction.
Not listening reduces the level of discourse. We experience and evaluate our words differently when sat with an attentive listener versus when they are in our heads or tapped out in 140 characters. A listener has a reactive affect on the speaker. As a result, careful listening elevates the conversation because speakers become more responsible and aware of what they’re saying.
Listening is often regarded as talking's meek counterpart, but it is actually the more powerful position in communication. You learn when you listen. It’s how you divine truth and detect deception. And though listening requires that you let people have their say, it does doesn’t mean you remain forever silent. In fact, how one responds is the measure of a good listener, and arguably the measure of a good person.
In a fast paced frantic culture, listening is seen as a drag. Conversations unfold slowly and may need to be revisited. Listening takes effort. Understanding and intimacy must be earned. While people often say “I can’t talk right now “what they really mean is “I can’t listen right now“ and for many it seems they never get round to it. This, despite what we want most in life, to understand and be understood, only happens when we slow down and take the time to listen.
