Listening to the speaker is the wrong place to start

It’s a beautiful autumn day in April, and Tina is a busy working mum and in her car on the way to picking up her three-year-old daughter from child care. It’s a 25-minute drive from Tina’s work to the child care centre, and Tina’s is finalising a work call while driving.

Tina expects the call will take 10 minutes. Unfortunately, it’s taken the entire distance as the conversation takes longer than expected. She parks her car and continues the call until she arrives at the front gate of the child care centre. There she takes another 10 minutes to finish the call, she hangs up the phone and makes her way to collect her daughter.

 She is excited to see her mum, and Tina asks what she enjoyed about today. Her daughter launches into a fantastic story. Tina wants to show her daughter how interested she is with a range of questions.

 After the 5 minute walk from the child-care centre to Tina’s car, she carefully straps her daughter into her car seat, and her daughter announcement to her mum,

“Mummy, why are you bumping my words?”

Tina’s enthusiasm for her daughter story is what every mum would want to do.

 Show interest, ask relevant questions and pay attention.

 This is the difference between hearing and listening.

Tina’s daughter wanted to tell her story – fully completely and without interruption. Tina thought she was listening.

 Listening is about the speaker, not the listener and this is the first myth (dirty secret) of listening.

The speaker, not you, defines the value of your listening.

Tina’s enthusiasm for listening to her daughter is essential. It’s what makes Tina a great mother. At this moment, Tina was paying attention rather than giving attention.

Tina thought it was her duty to pay attention rather than give attention. Listening from a sense of duty and responsibility rather than generosity and curiosity makes listening more about you than a shared experience between the speaker and the listener.

 For you, listening seems self-evident and straightforward. Yet you don’t know the basics of what is holding you back. You stumble through conversations because you have a framework to listen.

 You know more about cheese, maths and wine than you do about how to explain listening.

 The first thing that is holding you back is your lack of understanding of good listening.

 Also, holding Tina back is that she missed the first step in listening.

Listening starts by listening to yourself rather than the speaker.

You turn up to a conversation with a radio station playing in your mind. Unfortunately, you’re tuning in to a radio frequency that’s all about your last discussion, the next discussion or your next meal.

 Start by listening to yourself – first.