Tips for Being Heard

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The most useful tool for communicating as a good listener is patience. Without patience, less is heard, more is missed, and potential is diminished. When someone speaks to you, that person manages the space that solicits your attention.  If you allow this person that space, then one critical element involved is your patience with the speaker.

Interrupting, not paying close attention, and allowing your own opinions to cloud what is being said are all functions of an impatient mind.  Not only does the impatient mind affect the experience of listening and being heard, but the mind dominated by emotional responses--anger, embarrassment, sadness, etc. can make the difference between communication and no communication.  With impatient listening communication is limited and each person moves more in the direction of monologue than towards true dialogue.

Dialogue happens when patience rules, when the listener gives the speaker the time to speak, to contribute to the experience of conversation.  If you have any doubts about this, then spend some time this week observing each time you tune out the speaker with your own thoughts on the topic or with what you plan to say next, with distractions like clock watching, with unnecessary and even unfocused interruptions. 

When you begin to notice how you listen and how much patience you have, then you can change your listening habits dramatically.. We do not always have the time to listen to every word a dialogue partner says, but we can sort through such constraints with a general demeanor of patience.  We can even, for instance, support a speaker with encouraging prompts signaling the limits of patience, affecting a speaker’s tendency to idle and/or self indulgent chatter.  The way we do this skillfully is byusing yet another useful tool for good listening--respect. 

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