Column:
Reclaim listening in communication
Published Sept. 18, 2009
A music teacher once explained that we have one ear to listen to ourselves and one ear to listen to the band.
You would have thought this was a radical concept by how some people responded. But just imagine a room of musicians, all playing at once but each only listening for their own instrument. How would this end up sounding?
The audience would quickly head toward the exits; I personally wouldn't want to stick around that noise too long. Even the musicians would soon grow tired of the uncoordinated — and lack of — effort. Each would have played their piece, though all the pieces would have been piled on top of one another. I suppose it would be about as fruitless as trying to finish a puzzle by stacking all the pieces horizontally.
If this sounds so foolish for musicians, why is it so common in our conversations? Listening has become a lost art. Think back over the course of your life. From the beginning, we are taught to make sounds. We start with simple words, then sentences, questions, responses perhaps culminating in Communication 1200 or even greater venues.
But who can remember being taught to listen? It might have been assumed that we could listen and certainly we can all attest to it being expected that we should listen, recounting all the times we've been disciplined for not paying attention. But was listening ever taught, ever even talked about?
But truly, listening is one of the most important skills you can develop, in spite of how much it is neglected. So often we save our hearing only for ourselves, as if our earlobes were folded over forward and stitched down in some horrible self-centered surgery. We put all this emphasis on our own speech, as if our mind needed to diligently guard over a mouth that would just as soon run away with our words, or discard them altogether and start speaking independently. Or we let our preconceived ideas build up barriers and obstruct pathways before we hear what we will seal away on the other side of our thoughts.
But why would we listen only to ourselves? I mean, it's not like I'm expecting to surprise myself with my own words. In fact, I'd probably get bored pretty quickly, like the uncooperative musicians mentioned above. And why do we make so much noise ourselves? I can hear my voice and my own ideas anytime, why do I need to hear them so much around other people?
People talk about the need to become effective communicators, but communicating is about much more than just speaking. But speaking is just one part of communication. The most important part of effective communication is listening. If this seems like a contradictory phrase, just think back to that noisy room of musicians. How far did they get when they were all "speaking," but beautiful collaboration would be the result if they could just open their ears and listen to one another.
It's easy to lose touch and get surrounded by your own thoughts and opinions when you stop listening. It's also dangerous. We might not all be musicians, but we still put out vibrations and if we don't pay attention to the vibrations of others, harmony will never be the result. When we stop listening, we stop growing and start building borders. But these borders end up like high walls, doing just as much to repress our own thoughts as to exclude the thoughts of others. We could all benefit ourselves and our society if we reclaimed the most overlooked part of communication — listening.
