How to Listen Well
How do you support someone when there are no good solutions and everything just, well… sucks?
When I open up to someone, sometimes I end up feeling unheard. I feel much safer and more competent in “holding space” for others, and have much less trust in their ability to hold space for me — or even in their desire to do so.
This is not the case with everyone, mind you. Some of the people I’m closest to are great at the kind of mutual support I seek. And oftentimes, a person sharing their struggles with me and allowing me to support them is exactly what I need, as it gets me out of my head and focused on someone else’s challenges other than my own. Several of my friends and acquaintances want to provide support and want me to open up to them, but when I do, their response is advice and problem-solving.
It’s unfortunate, because not everyone has access to the kind of education that a graduate counseling program and post-graduate therapist trainings get you. Active listening and good communication are all skills, ones that most people rarely get taught. I teach this to my clients all the time, and I might as well do my part by writing about it.
Want to be better at supporting people and listening well? Here are some basic strategies.
Don’t fix it.
Your first instinct when someone comes to you with a challenge, struggle, or hurt may be the “righting reflex”, the urge to fix or problem-solve, to make it better. That’s a compassionate response! There’s nothing wrong with it. At the same time, it’s not actually helpful.
See, when you give advice, you place yourself above the other person in power and competence. You are speaking from a place of authority and judgment rather than a place of connection. Advice, unskillfully given, disconnects. What helps the most when someone is hurting is connection. Look for ways to connect rather than ways to fix. When you have the impulse to “fix it”, remind yourself: listening and supporting the person in their autonomy is the most helpful thing I can do. Fixing it for them or telling them what to do is actually unhelpful and can even be harmful.
When someone defaults immediately to advice or problem solving when I’ve just opened myself up to them and shared a struggle I’m having, some part of me shrivels and deflates. I can practically feel the connection shutting down, the walls coming up. I feel sad, missed, judged, and a little hurt.
Empathy is much harder than problem-solving. Problem-solving and giving advice is safe; it is cerebral, distant, and then you can pat yourself on the back for “helping”, or get upset at the other person for not following your advice or not wanting help if they shut down or object.
If you absolutely must give advice, there are some better options.
- Listen first. Try to make sure you have really heard the person’s story. Try to help them feel heard and seen. We’ll cover this in the next section.
- Speak from your own experience. Rather than saying “you should do this, I know how to fix your problem, take my advice”, go for connection and vulnerability. (Are you seeing a pattern yet?) Say, “When I was in a similar situation, here’s what happened and what helped me.” Tell your story. It’s amazing how much more effective this is. When you give advice, people often get defensive; when you speak from your experience, they often stay receptive and can consider and hear it.
When I told a client this recently, they considered it and reflected on how they’d done this inadvertently in the past, and how it did indeed go much better than when they gave advice. They said, then, “but it’s really vulnerable to do it that way”. YES! Yes, it so is, and that’s the point. That’s why it’s connective rather than disconnective; sharing from your experience means going to the place where you can relate to what the other person is going through, where you’ve experienced something similar, the painful memories you hold, and opening back up to them in return. It means joining them in their vulnerability. - Ask permission. If, after steps 1 and 2, you still feel the need to share advice, or have advice you think might be valuable, ask their permission to give advice. “Would you be open to some suggestions?” or “Are you interested in advice?” or “Do you want me to listen or do you help in finding solutions?”
DO NOT LEAD WITH THIS QUESTION. Do steps 1 and 2 first. If you lead with this in immediate response to their sharing of their challenge, they may say yes just because they are feeling vulnerable and want to seem stronger or open to the kind of help that is valued in our society, or because they think of themselves as intellectual, reasonable people and deny their own vulnerability. (I’ve seen this happen multiple times.) If they say “no,” “not right now”, “thanks but no thanks”, then respect that. Don’t give advice.
If they say “yes”, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should charge straight in. Start with one piece of advice. (Again, it’s still always best if you frame it by speaking from your own experience. Also, avoid the words “should” or “shouldn’t”; those are red-flag judgment words. Be as nonjudgmental and compassionate as possible in how you speak.)
If they respond with consideration, you’re doing well! They actually wanted advice! If they respond with rejection or explain how it won’t work, and continue to do that with your next suggestions or pieces of advice, abort immediately: they don’t actually want problem solving, they probably don’t feel heard or listened to, and they are not in a place where they can receive suggestions.
Listen first.
I’m going to link you to one of the most useful fundamental skillsets in active listening. It’s from an intervention style called Motivational Interviewing, and if you ever get a chance to take a training on it, I highly recommend it. It was developed for addictions counseling, but can be applied to basically everything ever.
The core skill I’m talking about is called OARS:
- Open-ended questions
- Affirmations
- Reflections
- Summaries
And you want to do this while in the spirit of Motivational Interviewing, summarized by the acronym PACE:
- Collaboration (Partnership): “We are going to work together”
- Autonomy (Acceptance): “I value you and am delighted to talk with you”, and supporting the person’s autonomy or independence
- Compassion: “I want to understand and respect you and your experience”
- Evocation: “I am going to create a space for you to share yourself and your story with me”
Listen to what the person is saying. Try to hear what they’re not saying, too. Be really curious, interested, and with a spirit of compassion. Don’t get judgmental or defensive, don’t make it about you; even if they’re talking about something that has to do with you, try really hard to detach yourself from the situation and focus on the other person and their feelings with empathy and understanding. Give yourself time before you speak. You don’t have to respond right away, you don’t have to say anything right away. You can take a silence or a breath to think it through and notice your own internal responses. Slow down, respond rather than reacting.
- Open-ended questions: Ask questions. This is part of being interested and curious, of evoking, drawing out their ideas and wisdom rather than imposing your own ideas. Seek to hear the story deeper and more fully, more completely. AVOID any question starting with “why”; for whatever reason, “why” brings in judgment and shame as often an automatic response, it moves someone from their heart to their head. Ask who/what/when/where/how. Ask them to tell you more. DON’T ask questions that can be answered with yes or no (close-ended questions); ask questions that are open ended.
- Affirmations: Validate their experience. Affirm their strengths and successes. Build empathy, find that place in yourself that resonates with what they’re going through and voice it. “That sounds really hard”, “It takes a lot to share something like that,” “You really want to make this work,” “You’re putting a lot of effort into this,” etc. Note: you do not have to validate their story of a situation (which you may very well disagree with) in order to validate their feelings and experiences. Oftentimes, having feelings heard and validated reduces the intensity. People will often get more intense and loud about their hurt, story, or feelings if they feel unheard or invalidated, which can quickly escalate into a full-blown argument. Defuse it from the start by looking to the emotion and validating the emotion. There’s a great Dialectic Behavioral Therapy lesson on validation here — you only validate the valid parts, but feelings are always valid.
- Reflections: This is also part of validation, with a focus on reflecting back to them what’s going on. A lot of people struggle with reflections, thinking it’s just parroting back what the person said. That isn’t it at all: you are finding the very heart and gem of the person’s story and giving it back to them. Skillful reflection finds the unsaid intent of the person’s story, the emotion of it, and states it aloud. You’ll know you gave a good reflection when they light up and say “YES, EXACTLY”, which may seem odd when you’ve just told them something close to what they said to you. Sometimes you get it wrong, and that’s okay! Don’t be attached to your reflection. Reflection is also a great way to make sure you understand what’s going on. If you reflect gently and have built rapport through open-ended questions and been non-judgmental, then they should hopefully feel comfortable correcting you if you got the wrong emotion. For example, I’ve reflected back to clients, “And that feels… sad…?” and they’ve responded with “…No, not quite sad, more like… disappointed.” But that leads to better understanding anyway! So it still works out well. You can also reflect what’s happening in their body, not just what they’re saying. “I’m noticing your voice is shaky,” “I’m seeing tears in your eyes,” “you smiled when you said that”. This can get really intense really quickly; people aren’t used to being seen on a somatic level, to having all the little things noticed, and some people can get really self-conscious about this. Sometimes it feels too vulnerable to have someone notice that much. So use this carefully, and observe how they respond; do they close off and tense up, or do they relax and open up more? One thing that can aid reflection is mirroring their body language. Do it subtly, not blatantly, or else it looks like you’re mocking or copying. But if you are in a similar position to them, not only does it create a sense of connection, but it can also help you understand what they’re feeling. Mood follows body; if you shift to their position and you notice a different emotion in yourself, or sensation, then you can try out that as a reflection and see if that’s what is going on for them too.
- Summaries: A kind of advanced reflection. You are taking everything you heard and tying it all together in a neat bow and giving it back to the other person. A great way for this is, “Let me make sure I understand. I heard you say…” and then summarize the conversation or situation. This gives them a chance to fill in anything you may have missed, it allows you to demonstrate understanding and get a correction if you misunderstood something, and it allows them to see their story from a different perspective, which can sometimes provide insight. “Did I miss anything?” is a great closing question.
At that point, you can move to sharing from your experience. That allows you to relate to them, to be vulnerable in exchange, to connect further to their story, and to share what worked for you in a way they might be able to use.
Evocation instead of advice-giving.
This is an advanced skill.
Realizations, decisions, and ideas are most powerful when the person in question speaks them. If you tell them what to do, they are less likely to be committed to it than if they figure it out for themselves. All the reflection and summarizing done above? That helps people come to powerful conclusions on their own, because it allows them to see their situation from a little distance or perspective. The open ended questions? Sometimes that can lead a person to figuring out what they could do.
When you ask permission to give advice and they say “yes”, sometimes it works really well to still not give advice, but rather to ask some questions first. What have they considered doing? What worked for them in similar or tangentially related situations in the past? What ideas do they have about how they can approach this situation? What do they plan to do next?
Tap into the other person’s own wisdom. This means you are supporting them in their own autonomy and growth, rather than trying to do it for them. Only offer your own advice after they’ve shared their own thoughts. Sometimes, their own thoughts contain what you were going to advise them on. And believe me, it sucks to have someone tell you to do something you’ve already tried or already knew to do; it feels patronizing, even though there’s no way they could have known you already tried it. So investigate first!
