Describe the importance of listening

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Listening is an art by which we use empathy to reach across the space between us.
Passive attention doesn’t work. Not only is listening an active process, it often takes
a deliberate effort to suspend our own needs and reactions. To listen well you must
hold back what you have to say and control the urge to interrupt or argue. The art of
listening requires a submersion of the self and immersion in the other. This is not
always easy, especially when we are interested but too concerned with controlling
or instructing or reforming the other person to be truly open to their point of view.
Anytime you demonstrate a willingness to listen with a minimum of defensiveness,
criticism, or impatience, you are giving the gift of understanding and earning the
right to have it reciprocated. Suspending your needs long enough to hear the other
person out is part of willing yourself to listen, but suspending your needs is not the
same as becoming a non self. Trying to listen when you’re really not up to it dries
up your capacity to empathize. Some listeners are so fearful of exerting their own
individuality that they become non selves, tucked into others, embedded in a safe
framework of obligations and duties. These people find it easier to accommodate
than to deal with conflict, threats of rejection, arguments, or signs of distress in others. Such compliant people may seem like good listeners but aren’t really listening
if they are nothing but a passive receptacle or reluctant sponge. Listening well is
often silent but never passive.
Effective communication is not achieved simply by taking turns talking but requires
a concerted effort at mutual understanding. A good way to promote understanding
is to take time to restate the other person’s position in your own words then ask her
to correct or affirm your understanding of her thoughts and feelings. If you work
on this process of explicit feedback and confirmation until the other person has no
doubt that you grasp her position, she will feel understood, and she will then be
more open to hearing from you. The simple failure to acknowledge what the other
person says explains much of the friction in our lives. Furthermore, you don’t have
to be responsible for someone’s feelings to be aware of them and to acknowledge
them. When two people keep restating their own positions without acknowledging
what the other is trying to say, the result is dueling points of view. Whether or
not someone is really listening only that person truly knows, but, if someone does
not feel listened to, he doesn’t feel listened to. We judge whether or not others are
listening to us by the signals we see.

Titany answered the question on November 29, 2021 at 11:30

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