The fine art of listening

‘Remember this, be quick to listen and slow to speak” (James 1:19). How much easier is this said than being done? I recently facilitated a couple of workshops on listening skills to six different groups of people. And what was common among all the groups was the fact that for them listening is difficult.

"Understanding is psychological oxygen. When we are understood we feel free."

Listening is difficult for a simple reason: we are not taught and trained how to listen in the same way as we are taught and trained how to read, write and speak.

As we grow up we are always told to listen, or begged to listen, or even instructed to listen. You probably can still hear your parents saying: “You must listen when I speak to you”, or “Please listen! Those ears are meant for listening”, or “It’s because you never listen”, and so on. I’m sure this sounds familiar.

But as we grew up, no one sat us down and taught us the skill of listening. That is why as adults we struggle so much to listen and we have to attend workshops and training courses to acquire this skill.

Listening is different from hearing. That we can hear does not mean that we are listening. Hearing is just one of our senses, like tasting, smelling or seeing. We can hear sounds.

But listening means that we understand the sounds that we hear. There are other things we have to do, such as being quiet and focus on the person speaking, as well as other processes within us that help us to understand—our intellect, our memory, our experience, our heart and our faith. We do not use just our ears when we listen.

Think of Samuel who first heard the sound of his name being called. He  heard only his name being called; that is why he went to Eli because he thought Eli called him. He did not yet understand what this calling of his name meant.

Eli told Samuel to answer next time he heard his name being called: “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.” And for Samuel to listen he then first had to be quiet and prepare himself to listen and to engage other processes within himself so that he could be able to understand why his name was being called.

When we truly listen to other people, their stories, their ideas and their feelings, we come to understand their point of view. And the person being listened to can feel this. This is a great gift we can give to someone. It is life-giving and a blessing. Understanding is psychological oxygen. When we are understood we feel free.

We can also listen to someone, attentively, not to truly understand but with the intention to store, recall and use the information against the person at a later stage. This is not true listening and it is not a blessing; rather it is a curse on someone and a very hurtful thing that can suffocate someone’s spirit. Listen to give life, and not to break it down.

To enable us to really understand someone, we must listen to more than just the words the person is speaking. Communication experts tell us that words account for only 7% of what is being communicated. Thirty eight percent of the message is communicated through our tone (how we say things) and 55% is communicated through body language.

So to truly listen to someone, we should remember to listen not only to their words, but also to their tone and their body language. By doing this, we will get a real understanding of what they are trying to communicate to us.

Many people would also say that we must also listen to what is not being said. When we have listened to someone we will know what the person is saying and how they feel about what they are saying; then we are in the best position to respond to them, and such a position would be a position of love.

In this Year of Faith, let us remember that God listens to all of us every single day and he truly listens, as Rachel reminds us when she states with gladness: “God has vindicated me; he has listened to my plea and given me a son” (Genesis 30:6).