You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

by Kate Murphy

According to Nichols, to be a good listener means using your available bandwidth not to take mental side trips but rather to double down on your efforts to understand and intuit what someone is saying. He said listening well is a matter of continually asking yourself if people’s messages are valid and what their motivations are for telling you whatever they are telling you.

To beat those averages, it’s helpful to think of listening as similar to meditation. You make yourself aware of and acknowledge distractions, then return to focus. But instead of focusing on your breathing or an image, you return your attention to the speaker.

It’s also worth pointing out that it’s okay to say, “I don’t know what to say,” when you don’t. You can also say, “I’d like to think about that,” which conveys that you honor what the other person said by taking time to think about it, while, at the same time, honoring that part of you that is uncertain and needs time to process.

The truth is, we only become secure in our convictions by allowing them to be challenged.

Research shows there is an inverse relationship between amygdala activity and activity in areas of the brain involved in careful listening. If one of these brain regions is hot, the other is not. Amygdala activation clouds judgment, rendering us unthinking and irrational.

Interestingly, people with an overactive amygdala are more apt to suffer from anxiety and depression,

To listen does not mean, or even imply, that you agree with someone. It simply means you accept the legitimacy of the other person’s point of view and that you might have something to learn from it.

self-published book, Secrets of a Master Moderator.

Nor did Naomi simply ask why they shopped late at night because, she told me, “Why?” tends to make people defensive—like they have to justify themselves. Instead, Naomi turned her question into an invitation: “Tell me about the last time you went to the store after 11:00 p.m.”

Naomi’s mantra is: “What matters in life cannot be counted.”

Naomi has what I have come to recognize as the listener’s demeanor. By that, I mean she’s exceptionally calm and has an expression that transmits interest and acceptance. Her eyes don’t dart, her fingers don’t

fidget, and her body seems always relaxed and open. I spent several hours interviewing her and observing her interactions with others, and not once did I see her cross her legs or arms. When she was with someone, she never gave the slightest indication she was on a schedule or there was somewhere else she’d rather be.

What they found was that the most productive teams were the ones where members spoke in roughly the same proportion, known as “equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking.” The best teams also had higher “average social sensitivity,” which means they were good at intuiting one another’s feelings based on things like tone of voice, facial expressions, and other nonverbal cues.

She first took improv classes as a de-stressor but soon realized that part of what was making her job stressful was she was more reactive than active in her listening. “At work, it was like I was this boulder on some shore and stormy water was crashing down on me,” she said. “I didn’t see trouble before it started because I wasn’t present. I was always thinking about the next thing.”

“I’m beginning to think my need to show what I can do is keeping me from finding out what other people can do and what we can do together.”

Moreover, listening is essential to being funny. A vast body of evidence indicates humor is an asset in forming and maintaining relationships both professionally and personally. In work environments, successful attempts at humor lead to perceptions of competence and confidence. In romantic relationships, successful humor is a gauge of intimacy and security. But the operative word here is successful. Unsuccessful humor has the opposite effect. Taking an improv class taught me that people don’t so much have a fixed sense of humor as a variable ability to sense humor, depending on how well they listen.

Making a joke also involves being vulnerable. You’re putting yourself out there, hoping your humor will be appreciated. You are more likely to take that risk if the other person has proven an attentive and responsive listener and vice versa. Indeed, shared humor is a primary indicator of feelings of connectedness. People who fear intimacy tend to use divisive, put-down, or mean humor, which discourages listening by making people defensive.

Funny is a by-product of honesty, intimacy, and familiarity.

People who have conversational sensitivity not only pay attention to spoken words, they also have a knack for picking up hidden meanings and nuances in tone.

It is said that intuition, often called the sixth sense, is nothing more than recognition. The more people you listen to, the more aspects of humanity you will recognize, and the better your gut instinct will be.

You can only be as intimate with another person as you are with yourself.

“If you say you can’t do nothin’, you’re killin’ his hope. Everybody has to have hope. That’s why most people don’t turn us in to the cops.

Listening to others, then, determines the tone and quality of our inner dialogues. Our previous interactions teach us how to question, answer, and comment so we can do the same with ourselves when we need to solve problems, manage ethical dilemmas, and think creatively. This will work. Oh no, this way is better … I’m going to ask for a raise. But they only hired you two months ago … I want some ice cream. It’ll spoil your dinner … I’m really attracted to her. Move on, man, she’s married.

This is significant because how you talk to yourself affects how you hear other people. For example, someone who has a critical inner voice will hear someone else’s words very differently than someone whose inner voice tends to blame others. It’s all your fault versus It’s all their fault. In other words, our inner dialogue influences and distorts what other people say and thus how we behave in relationships.

voices that get replayed in one’s head echo those heard in childhood.

We all have guilt and wrestle with ourselves, Steele told me, but an inner voice that says, Are you sure you want to do that? Why don’t you put yourself in their shoes? and Yeah, that was hurtful, but maybe they didn’t intend to hurt you, is a very different voice from the one that says, They are all out to get me and I’m no good. The latter voice is the one that makes you react in ways that are not to your benefit.

Who does your inner voice remind you of? What does it tell you? Does your inner voice sound different 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 judgments, and solve problems.

influences how you are in the world; whether you see the best or worst in people and whether you see the best or worst in yourself.

go. Our fixation on what needs to be fixed is why some people can’t abide downtime and always have to have something to do so they won’t think about what’s wrong.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is all about learning how to talk to yourself differently. An unhelpful inner voice that sounds like a belittling parent or negative friend is replaced by a voice that sounds more like your therapist, suggesting kinder or more open ways of thinking, which in turn has proven effective at fostering a greater sense of well-being.

support response, which encourages elaboration from the

Good listeners are all about the support response, which is critical to providing the kind of acknowledgment and evaluative feedback

Minnesota and University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign found that employees were five times more upset by negative interactions at work as they were made happy by positive interactions. This dovetails with the findings of marriage

decades of observational studies indicate good interactions must outnumber negative ones by at least five to one for a relationship to succeed.

The authors advise squelching the impulses to: suggest you know how someone feels identify the cause of the problem tell someone what to do about the problem minimize their concerns bring perspective to a situation with forced positivity and platitudes admire the person’s strength

clearness committees moved Palmer to develop a curriculum to teach the process to people outside the Quaker community. It is now taught at retreats sponsored by the Center for Courage & Renewal, a Seattle-based nonprofit Palmer founded twenty-five years ago to support people in the helping professions, such as doctors, teachers, and social workers. The idea is not so much to teach people how to hold formal clearness committees but rather to teach them the listening techniques

It’s hard to ask open and honest questions because most people ask questions that are really recommendations or judgments in disguise.

Try instead, “Have you always felt this way?” or “What would quitting mean?” Look at it as an invitation to have a conversation, not as something to be fixed or get upset about.

Whether it’s your child, romantic partner, friend, colleague, or employee who comes to you with a personal problem, if you ask open and honest questions and listen attentively to the answers, it communicates, “I’m interested in hearing more from you,” and “Your feelings are valid.” If you jump in to fix, advise, correct, or distract, you are communicating that the other person doesn’t have the ability to handle the situation: “You’re not going to get this without me.” And you’re also telling them, “There’s no room for honest emotion in our relationship.

“What did you learn today?” Another good one is: “What was the best part and what was the worst part of your day?”

Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why? What would constitute a “perfect” day for you? When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else? If you were able to live to the age of ninety and retain either the mind or body of a thirty-year-old for the last sixty years of your life, which would you want?

“The 36 Questions That Lead to Love,”

Good listeners are good questioners. Inquiry reinforces listening and vice versa because you have to listen to ask an appropriate and relevant question, and then, as a consequence of posing the question, you are invested in listening to the answer.

You can’t have meaningful exchanges with people, much less establish relationships, if you aren’t willing to listen to people’s stories, whether it’s where they come from, what their dreams are, what led them to do the work they do, or how they came to fear polka dots. What is love but listening to and wanting to be a part of another person’s evolving story? It’s true of all relationships—romantic and platonic. And listening to a stranger is possibly one of the kindest, most generous things you can do.

Another interesting aspect of how we process auditory information is the right-ear advantage. Our language comprehension is generally better and faster when heard in the right ear versus the left. It has to do with the lateralization of the brain so that what one hears in the right ear is routed first to the left side of the brain, where Wernicke’s area is located. There’s a left-ear advantage when it comes to the recognition of emotional aspects of speech as well as the perception and appreciation of music and sounds in nature. The opposite may be true for left-handed people whose brain wiring may be reversed.

You can also have earplugs custom made to fit your ears’ unique pinnae for $40–$200. The higher-priced versions have noise-filtering systems built in, which allow you to hear clearly but at reduced volume.

Fifteen percent of Americans, around 48 million people, have hearing loss. Sixty-five percent of them are under age sixty-five. As a result, hearing loss is viewed as a major public health issue, ranking as the third most common chronic physical condition after high blood pressure and arthritis.

The lesson in all this is that many people may be poor listeners because they truly can’t hear well and their brains are working in strange ways to make up for it.

Earwax buildup all by itself can cause hearing loss. You’d be surprised how a good ear cleaning once or twice a year by an otolaryngologist can improve your hearing.

Moreover, it’s widely thought that at least 55 percent of the emotional content of a spoken message is, in fact, transmitted nonverbally. So, even if you’ve had your ears checked and your hearing is perfect, if you are looking at your phone or out the window while someone is talking to you, you’re not getting the whole story.