Just as the other realisations from inherent failures in life, listening sits on the top of my personal goals tree. While the uber umbrella is an effective communication between stakeholders in both personal and professional life, listening forms the first step to closing the bi-directional loop. Without this step, the key essence to the entire conversation gets lost in the first 30 seconds of a friendly fireside chat or a formal office discussion. For the GEN Y/GEN Z, who are more about creating content and sharing them on various social media channels, this dying art may be pivotal in unlocking long term 360 degrees growth stories.
As in the pyramid above, there are various stages to listening depending on a person’s attention span and will to understand the overall context behind the conversation. The bottom baseline to start with is Ignoring- a flippant attitude, where one through actions maligns the other person’s viewpoints by not listening at all before presenting suggestions. Pretending seems slightly better since it gives the presenter a feel good fallacy that the audience is listening, however outcome wise its equally a detrimental approach to any communication. Selective Listening is when one hears parts of a story based on his/her interest and often loses the touch with the base theme of conversation. All these three primitive forms of listening ethos often result in a one sided monologue which is contradictory to any form of continuous dialogue needed to boost an effective two way communication. Although Attentive Listening has a keen focus on the words being spoken with an equally amicable energy towards the speaker, it often downplays the other person’s context of reference, which only is multiplexed by top of the pyramid as Empathetic Listening.
Empathy unlocks a key paradigm shift in which one overpowers personal biases and henceforth understanding how the other person feels. And this single key, when amplified across all conversations in both personal and professional spaces, acts as a force multiplier since it creates magnified opportunities not limited by a single person’s myopic viewpoint. Also, Empathy flirts closely with Sympathy and Flattery, however it’s not always pleasing like the other two forms and has its own share of constructive feedback-loop attached to the overall process too. Continuous forms of Empathetic Listening creates a synergy space where the both the parties, subconsciously sign a mutual trust agreement to effectively contribute to each other’s overall growth in the long term. No longer one tries to superimpose his value, belief system, feelings when dealing with reality and its interpretation which may be diametrically opposite in the other person’s head. Empathy adds to a psychological vibe of being heard and often ends up influencing one’s thoughts towards the final problem solving outcome, hence creating a Win-Win scenario for everyone involved in the communication exercise.
And as often anything on the top of personality pyramids, Empathetic Listening is a difficult trait to practice in day to day life given the odds of a reciprocate empathy is very low. However with a hit and miss attitude with the closed circles of friends and family, self-practice without an expectation of an immediate outcome may heighten long term benefits.
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