We’ve Raised a Generation of People Who Can’t Wait for Their Turn to Speak
Or, all of us want to be heard, but nobody wants to listen
👋 Hey there! My name is Abhishek. Welcome to a new edition of The Sunday Wisdom! This is the best way to learn new things with the least amount of effort.
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Q: What are the traits of a good listener?
All of us want to be heard, but nobody wants to listen. Really listen. That’s why spouses fight, friendships fall apart, and employees leave companies.
We are so busy mastering the art of speaking that we never focus on learning the art of listening. But if you wish to be a good partner, a good friend, a good manager, a good human being, learning how to listen with purpose is indispensable.
The primary purpose of listening is to understand, not to respond.
Most people aren’t the best communicators. Many times they don’t really mean what they are saying. What they actually want to say is different from what they are saying. Unless you are listening with a purpose to understand their point of view, the communication will break down.
There are obvious signs when there’s a breakdown in communication. Especially when both parties charge angrily or storm out frustrated. But this doesn’t happen abruptly. It starts with a small crack that slowly builds with time.
Simran: You never help me around in the house.
Raj: But I helped you just the day before yesterday.
Here Simran is expressing how she feels about the whole thing—that she’s the one who has to do all the work, but Raj isn’t listening. Instead, Raj is countering her emotional state of mind with logic. This will never work. This is a classic example of failing to understand the difference between what is said and what is meant.
When an employee comes to you and says, “I don’t feel appreciated,” your first job is to “acknowledge” their state of mind instead of disputing it with a set of counter examples. “What about the time we celebrated your birthday in office, didn’t you feel appreciated?”
Peter: I had the most hectic day. I’m dead tired.
MJ: Tell me about it. I had back-to-back meetings all day. Tell you what, meetings are the most exhausting. You feel like you are working, but you are not.
Here MJ is trying to equate Peter’s problem with her own. It sounds like MJ understands Peter and is trying to help, but she isn’t. She is behaving like a narcissist thereby hijacking the whole conversation. It’s not about Peter anymore.
Sally: My boss shouted at me in front of everyone. It was so humiliating. I almost cried.
Harry: Who is this boss? Is she the new one who’s got an MBA from Harvard?
Harry may be hearing Sally, but he sure as hell isn’t listening. Apart from hearing we need to comprehend what’s being said and why it’s being said to understand it completely.
But what Harry is asking has nothing to do with what Sally is trying to say. His question serves the conversation that Harry is having with himself. “Who is this boss? Is she the new one? Yes, the new one was supposed to join a month back. Let me ask and confirm.” Instead of supporting Sally, Harry is shifting the conversation to another direction.
We praise the great orators and speakers, but never the listeners. That’s why we’ve raised a generation of people who can’t wait for their turn to speak. Instead of listening and trying to understand what the other person is trying to say, we jump at our turn to make our case — like a litigator.
While a bad listener can’t wait to say their line, a purposeful listener listens with intent, clarifies uncertain points, often paraphrases what is said, and asks the speaker to expand on certain points. Their primary purpose is to understand, not to respond.
Purposeful listeners look for cues in the body language and the emotional state of the speaker. They try to calibrate their response accordingly. If the speaker is heavy with rage, frustration, or sadness, being logical won’t help. If the speaker is looking for a solution then just being emotionally supportive won’t help. Purposeful listeners know the difference.
Listening with purpose is not trying to bring about a change in behaviour of the speaker. People don’t change so easily. Even if they change under the sway of strong emotions, this change isn’t permanent.
In a conversation, you may have easy answers to the speaker’s struggles. Listening with purpose means understanding their point of view, their logic, and their story without being judgemental and without getting enraged or frustrated.
If you listen to people without judgement they put their guards down and open up like a flower. They become more considerate and open to reason and change. This is how you help them.
Listening is one of the foundations of society. It’s how we form meaningful relationships and connections with other folks. And yet, we rarely treat listening — like reading and talking — as a skill that requires knowledge and practice.
Interesting Finds
I.
This is one of the reasons why I love science and the scientific community so much. Whenever a law, theory, hypothesis, or opinion is challenged, the community welcomes it with open hands. Because truth takes precedence over all establishments.
“For the time being, though, our laws of the universe are safe, even when placed under the greatest scrutiny. What has changed is our understanding of information in the universe, and with it our appreciation of Maxwell’s demon, first a troublesome paradox, and now an invaluable concept — one that has helped to illuminate the remarkable link between the physical world and information.”
— How Maxwell’s Demon Continues to Startle Scientists
II.
Following a recipe is like redoing an experiment. The purpose is not to reconfirm the inference but to rediscover and learn something new in the process. Above all, the purpose is also to have some fun!
“It is worth it because every recipe has its own language and its own starting and stopping points and its own intersections and intentions. Because there are measurements, temperatures, and cooking times—i.e., numbers—we often treat recipes like they’re math, which they decidedly are not. They’re small worlds or small stories, and one has to learn their geography and topography to navigate them.”
III.
While going through some old emails I found this animated video on music. My college prof had shared this with me years ago. I loved it then. I loved it now.
“Music is a good thing. But what we did not know until we started with the research for this piece: Music is also a pretty damn complex thing. This experimental animation is about the attempt to understand all the parts and bits of it. Have a look. You might agree with our conclusion!”
What I’m Reading
See the person, not the myth. Imagine him or her as a child, as someone riddled with insecurities. Cutting the other person down to size will help you to keep your mental balance.
— Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies of War
Timeless Wisdom
Deep contrarianism isn’t always necessary. You can benefit from a world that generally agrees with you. Especially if your edge is found in being more patient than the crowd instead of trying to outsmart it.
Too much effort is spent attempting to be contrarian for contrarian’s sake when there’s plenty of room to get ahead being patient in a world where most people most of the time are in a huge hurry.
Before You Go…
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I’ll see you next Sunday,
Abhishek 👋