We don’t listen. Really, we don’t.
Listening requires full presence, and if there is one thing that seems to have become increasingly difficult to do, it is to be fully present - and therefore to fully listen.
The increased pressures of life as well as all the distractions of social media and tech generally appear to have shortened our attention spans to the point of incapacitating our ability to focus on any one thing at a time. If someone who is speaking to us doesn’t get ‘straight-to-the-point’ we lose interest and pull out our phone ‘just to check’; if the film we’re watching has a lull in it, we check our devices for social media updates or emails, and while we’re giving our child instructions on their schedule or otherwise communicating the need for a task, we’re simultaneously checking our device - all the while convincing ourselves that we are really good at multitasking! In reality, what we are really getting good at, is doing nothing very well.
Add to that our tendency to listen through the lens of our own reference frame – to listen within the limits of our own experiences and without discernment for those limits – and our human propensity for jumping to conclusions or assuming (usually mistakenly) that we know what the speaker is really thinking, exponentially increases and is compounded by our dopamine-driven need to ‘short-cut’ the conversation so we can move to the next thing.
While we have gained convenience and an ease of connecting that we couldn’t even dream of a generation ago, we seem to be losing the ability for being fully present with someone, for giving our attention to listening and understanding so that the person feels heard and felt. Empathy is plummeting and it's erosion is taking its toll on all relationships, and especially our relationships with our children. In her book Alone Together, researcher and psychologist Sherry Turkle shared her findings that children are complaining more about parents not listening to them than they have ever done (and that study was more than a decade ago!)
The breakdown of listening as an ability or skill is also evident inside our own minds where we are ‘multitasking’ while supposedly listening to someone. Although we hear what is being said, we are simultaneously assessing the part that resonated most, even judging it, and framing our own reply while a multitude of other thoughts that have nothing at all to do with the conversation are running rampant in our head; what we’re having for dinner,, the shopping list we forgot, the missed phone calls and all the emails or messages we have to write as soon as we can get back to our devices. I certainly cannot listen successfully in this way, nor can anyone else I have ever met, yet we all continue to attempt to listen and multitask simultaneously as if it were actually possible, then wonder why we have so many challenges in our communications and capacity to understand each other.
To truly listen requires willingness to place our own issues aside for a short while so we can tune in to the other person.. It requires that we give the speaker (even if she is just a toddler) our full and focused attentiveness, that we are willing to untether ourselves from our devices and any agenda we might have while we listen, and that we respect the speaker enough to consider his or her expressions seriously and tune into their experience, regardless of whether we agree or not.
In families, corporations, organisations, groups, and relationships of every kind, listening well necessitates full presence. It is the human brain's way of tuning in - to ourselves and to others. Healthy relationships cannot happen without it.
Such tuning in and listening well requires learning to manage our own emotions and impulses, just as we manage the external elements of our lives, families, work and organisations. The more we are masters of our own emotional state –in other words, the better we can understand and manage our own feelings and stress– the better equipped we are to listen and understand others, especially our children well.
This is the very key to what can be termed 'Relational Intelligence' and that Applied Emotional Mastery™ facilitates. Happily, learning to listen well and to 'tune in' is very possible for all of us!