Emphatic Listening- The Interested Challenge
Listen with the intent to understand, not the intent to reply.
Listening is an art and major portion of our daily life communication. We can’t survive just by talking, we need to listen in order to talk better. According to Stephen Covey there are four basic types of listening, Ignoring, Pretending, Selective Listening and Attentive Listening.
Most of the time we are ignoring others or pretend to listen but actually we are ignoring them. We have no interest in them as we think they are trying to be interesting by telling about themselves. Then comes selective listening. We humans are very clever, we listen to what attracts us. We are inclined towards the part which gives us benefit. We listen the part of conversations which are beneficial to us and the rest we pretend to be hearing.
Attentive listening is giving all ears to the speaker. As someone has said “One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say”. In his book, Covey writes a secret of successful life and that is going an extra mile in listening someone. The Empathic Listening. Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another being is experiencing from within the other being’s frame of reference. It means listen to someone while you are putting yourself in that position. Reading this made me thing why shouldn’t I try this out.
When I read the book by Sean Covey, I was influenced very much. I tried using the concept of attentive and empathic listening. The results were amazing. I am a socializer, I start the conversations and love to interact with new people. Using the concept of listening and being interested in others I found out few things. The most important was the flow of communication. When I took interest in them, they felt comfortable, they were open and sharing the true feelings.
Let me narrate a more personal experience. As I am in maps and geography stuff, this helped me interact with Laura and her friend at the Amal Academy Iftar gathering. I asked Laura from where she was, she said Colombia, I instantly told her Bogota is its capital and it is in South America near Paraguay and Uruguay. She smiled real well and then we had a real nice conversation. My taking interest of her origin helped develop a bond. Same happened with her friend, Funa, she was from Hong Kong. I told her Hong Kong and Macau Islands are special independent states of china. It near Taiwan and Philippines. She was really impressed and the interaction about Pakistan and China was very healthy. So the takeout is by taking interest in others, we can really relate to them, we can build a strong and healthy interaction and relation with others.
I tried the experiment on friends by asking them how they were and how was their life. The results were very amazing. They shared their future plans and even asked for suggestions from me. They were very happy and thankful to me for asking about them. They showed their intent on keeping in touch with me. One friend even visited me at home. He also asked about my future plans and we had a real constructive discussion. So one simple step of involving yourself in others life can make you the center of attention.
I had read this chapter “How to win Friends” already and have applied the idea many times. Wherever I go I try to greet the person with energy and ask him how he is doing, how is the day going. These simple questions are very important. Other person thinks you care for him and he tries his best to help you. I have tried this many times whenever I had something task in department office and in university admin block. Clerks are tired from working all day and if someone asks them how they are feeling, makes them happy and they try to serve you well. So the take away is to show energy and passion towards other person. By Taking interest in others you are doing your best in listening to him.
