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How to be a good listener

255 points by greenie_beans 3y ago

CipherThrowaway 3y ago
I'm no expert on listening, but I think do have a sense of when I personally feel heard. I don't agree with this piece at all, and I don't like the vibe of the author. The very first paragraph has a narcissism in it that rubs me the wrong way. Like the whole world let her down for not centering her in conversations the way her therapist caretaker did. > Some simple and powerful phrases to use when someone is feeling feels: “I hear you.” “I bet it is hard.” “That makes sense.” All three of these seriously suck to hear. IMO these are actually worse than the phrases the author says to never say. Someone telling you "You have no reason to feel that way" can easily be challenged. Someone disingenuously saying "I hear you" like a robot can't be. The entire idea that there are boilerplate "powerful phrases" you can drop to make someone feel heard is nonsense. These generic phrases are determined ahead of hearing someone speak, so they can not reflect the act of hearing. There's a reason why this brand of non-communication is so popular in HR circles. What this author is advocating is that we import patronizing HR speak into every day conversation. No thanks. >Replace all of the shocking, mean, hateful, incorrect, ignorant, offensive, cruel things coming out of this person’s mouth with “I’m hurt! I’m hurt! I’m hurt! I’m hurt. I’m hurrrrt.” This is narcissistic logic. When people are angry at you, and attacking you - and they do not have a clinical mood or personality disorder - you must accept that there may be a reason behind it. Things said in the heat of the moment are not always fair or measured, but they are rarely meaningless. When you decide that nothing someone is saying is valid because they are hurt, you will probably just invalidate and hurt them further. The idea that the most important thing in a situation like this is to not be upset yourself is also narcissistic logic. Although presented as practical advice to not escalate, it's really just the authors need to "win" the interaction. It says "I'm the level-headed and rational one, while the other person is crazy and flying off the handle." Acting this way can escalate the situation even more than becoming angry yourself, but it will do so in a way that allows you to avoid taking any personal responsibility for that escalation. I have to wonder what situations and interpersonal relationships the author is in that she finds this to be such a relevant piece of advice. These experiences don't sound like a model for healthy communication. >5. Don’t relate. This entire section is deeply narcissistic. The one-upmanship thing does happen, for sure. But it's not the reason people share their own experiences in the course of you sharing yours. Her conception of why people share reflects a deeply disconnected view of other people. Reads as "sometimes I'm talking to someone who is so self-absorbed they don't understand the conversation is 100% about me!" Of the whole article, this section was most reminiscent of the cognitive style of diagnosed NPDs I've known. >6. Ask questions. This is the only decent advice in here, and I can't really fault it. But there is still something off here. It's like the goal of asking these questions is to "make someone feel heard" rather than to actually hear them.
- Etherlord87 3y ago
  I agree with you completely. The more I think about the article, the more I wonder - why would such ridiculous thing be voted up on HN? How to listen to someone: if someone is angry, don't listen to him at all and just imagine that he says he's hurt. Sorry, but that's just idiotic.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - CadmiumYellow 3y ago
    It's because a lot of people who frequent HN have difficulty with social skills and are always looking for a manual for how to handle tricky interpersonal situations. The problem is that their difficulty with social skills renders them not-so-great at assessing the quality of advice about social interaction so they upvote things that they think sound nice or valuable without realizing that that's not actually the case. I hope this comment doesn't come across as judgmental or mean, it's just something I've noticed as a person who works in tech but has always had strong social and communication skills. This article describes a communication style that is repellent to anyone with normal social skills who doesn't have cluster B tendencies.
- 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
  Agreed; it seems like a really weird mix of perfectly reasonable advice and wild assumptions about how "normal" human relationships work, both given in a condescending tone. Also, I hope I'll be forgiven for doubting that someone is an expert on empathy when they write something like this: > Then, try this: look at the person in the eyes. If you can’t stop thinking about yourself, know that you have a problem. Your self-centeredness renders you incapable of intimacy. Get help.
- StefanBatory 3y ago
  "Replace all of the shocking, mean, hateful, incorrect, ignorant, offensive, cruel things coming out of this person’s mouth with “I’m hurt! I’m hurt! I’m hurt! I’m hurt. I’m hurrrrt.” This is narcissistic logic. When people are angry at you, and attacking you - and they do not have a clinical mood or personality disorder - you must accept that there may be a reason behind it. Things said in the heat of the moment are not always fair or measured, but they are rarely meaningless. When you decide that nothing someone is saying is valid because they are hurt, you will probably just invalidate and hurt them further." I understand your point but I think there's actually merit to that part. Sometimes people are just mad for no reason. My mother would release her frustrations on me when I was a child whenever things weren't going well in a marriage, and I don't think whatever I did deserved that. There is a good point in saying that there's sometime a real greviance let out in a bad form but sometimes there is nothing to this and nothing you can do or say to change their mind.
timeagain 3y ago
In my experience the less judgement I bring to a situation, the better I will be able to listen. If someone is telling me a story where I feel like they were morally wrong or where “one easy trick” would have solved their problem, it is very hard for me to not want to blurt out advice, admonishment, or shut the conversation down. The funny thing is that being quickly opinionated is highly valued in tech, so my maladaptive behavior (in part) got me accolades and promotions. I actually think this tendency to have a hot take on everything immediately is a large portion of why engineers rub non-engineers the wrong way
- amatai 3y ago
  This is the same reason engineers rub engineers the wrong way. Its true for all humans.
- devjab 3y ago
  > The funny thing is that being quickly opinionated is highly valued in tech I don’t really agree with this in the context you seem to put it. It’s not that it’s completely wrong, it’s just that engineers who rub non-engineers the wrong way are most certainly also rubbing engineers the wrong way. That being said, tech teams are often rather “quiet” and having that crude loudmouth is often better than having nobody speak their opinions at all. I wouldn’t say it’s valued though. At least not in my experience. What is valued is engineers who can voice their opinions in an assertive and friendly manner. This is because that unlike the crude loudmouth, these people lead to the quiet people joining in. Which can lead to actual discussion and at the very least put forward more opinions from the team, without you having to be the elementary school teacher picking the quiet student in order to hear what they have to contribute. I guess being a crude loudmouth can lead to promotions, but it’s probably also a quick way to become one of those managers/architects which are called hot-air balloons or the emperors new clothes behind their backs.
andxor_ 3y ago
> What a different world we’d live in if more boys felt safe sharing feelings, in their own way, right from the start. What if it turned out to be a world much worse than what we have? There is perhaps some evolutionary advantage to people that suck it up and carry on?
- OfficialTurkey 3y ago
  Could you expand on this argument more? My first reaction was negative ("Why would the world be worse if more people felt safe sharing their feelings??") so I would like to hear more and challenge my assumptions. For my part, I'll point to research that suppressing emotions increases risk of suicide[1] and that many more men die from suicide than women[2]. I'm willing to hear out an argument that the world would be worse if these tragic deaths hadn't happened but it requires extraordinary evidence and argumentation IMO. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5036455/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5036455/ [2] https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/ https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/
  - Sai_ 3y ago
    (Since we're discussing counterfactuals and could-have-beens) In a macabre way, maybe suicidal ideation due to suppressed emotions is nature's way of managing male populations? What if men stopped killing themselves because they felt safe sharing their feelings? What if that led to testosterone fueled "musth" rages where men started to go on rampages just to let off steam? That world would be worse for everyone involved.
    - baroque_pas 3y ago
      I don't think that to be the case testosterone fuelled raging is an effect of suppressed emotions. Imo sharing of feelings would lead to more soft, feminine personalities which is the direction we are slowly heading towards.
  - andxor_ 3y ago
    Higher suicide rates in themselves might not be an evolutionary handicap. They probably get far more stuff done relative to the ones that are emotionally closer to females and live longer. Just spit balling here.
kelseyfrog 3y ago
As someone who went out of their way and studied being a good listener, none of these are wrong, but I don't see it as being the best way of learning how to be a good listener. Reading about how to be a good listener can only get someone so far - watching someone demonstrate it and talking about it is the surest way to understand what it means. Specifically, Reflective listening[1], Clean language[2], and the approach used by Eugene Gendlin[3], jump-started my own skill of practicing being a good listener. You may also hear the term "holding space" as a sort of umbrella term for this as well. You would be amazing at how far these go toward creating a safe, non-judgemental, space for people. Simple, open-ended, genuine questions worded in their own language, has afforded me the opportunity to hear people open up from the very bottom of their souls. It's absolutely amazing that the simple act of listening can do that, but it does. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_listening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_listening 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_language 3. Wiki reference, but best seen, of course, on Youtube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Gendlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Gendlin
- madhir 3y ago
  > watching someone demonstrate it and talking about it is the surest way to understand what it means Do you happen to have links to any example videos demonstrating this or are you referring to in person examples
  - kelseyfrog 3y ago
    Sorry, but the nature of the material and the HN audience at large is leading me to hesitate. I'd be happy to share privately, the material that spoke to me. Contact info in bio.
  - jodrellblank 3y ago
    Dr Burns' Feeling Good Podcast has examples of listening to people, possibly not the same exact thing the parent comment means, but his T.E.A.M.S CBT therapy stands for "Testing, Empathy, ..." and Empathy is where the patient tells their problem, and the therapist has to communicate that they heard it and empathise with it. Otherwise if the therapist does a "yeah ok got that, let's move on" the patient will get stuck not wanting to move on and keep going back over what's wrong, thinking the therapist isn't properly understanding why they are there. [Happens in life elsewhere, e.g. if you complain to a company and get a generic 'sorry' and you feel like you haven't been heard and try complaining again. Whereas if you feel heard and understood, you don't need to try complaining again]. There's a ton of his podcasts and this comes up in many of them; some talking about it: 003 on E=Empathy 014 on The Five Secrets of Effective Communication 066 on The Five Secrets part 2 - Disarming people (by showing that you hear them) Some demonstrating / using / modelling it: 029 and 030 a recording of a therapy session with Mark 049 recording of a therapy session with Marilyn other 'live sessions' Detailed Database of podcasts: https://feelinggood.com/podcast-database/ https://feelinggood.com/podcast-database/
aidenn0 3y ago
> You know the obvious no-brainer ones already—don’t interrupt, don’t look at your phone, make (frequent, but not creepily constant) eye contact, turn your body towards the speaker… These "obvious" things are so unnatural for me that doing them consumes so much of my attention that I don't actually hear anything the person is saying.
- jimkleiber 3y ago
  I'm not sure what you meant, you doing them or the other person doing them?
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    Me doing them. E.g if I'm making eye contact with you, I'm thinking about making eye contact with you, not what you're saying.
    - jimkleiber 3y ago
      Ahhh, ok, I hear you now. I wonder if just practicing the skills more, maybe even in a practice environment, would help you feel more comfortable with them. Have you found that over time there have been some things you feel more and more comfortable doing?
devjab 3y ago
I’d recommend getting into role playing and paying attention to how good game masters get their players to elaborate on what sort of actions they want to take.
- space_oddity 3y ago
  A good game masters can teach you lots of good things
elevaet 3y ago
> 5. Don’t relate. I see this recommendation all the time, but I know I do it all the time, and personally I often _like_ it when other people do it to me. Sometimes it's nice to commiserate or share a connection on a similar experience, and maybe even learn from what the other person already went through. Does anyone else question this common piece of advice? Can't relating be useful if it's not being used to steer the focus over to the "relater"?
- jimkleiber 3y ago
  I question it quite often. I think relating can be very useful for both people involved. I do think that sometimes it may be useful for one and not the other, but I don't think it's as simple as saying to not "one-up" someone. The intention may not to be to one up and yet the other perceives it that way. Or the intention actually could be the one up and the other _doesn't_ perceive it that way. Overall I think we talk way too much about getting better at listening and not nearly enough at getting better at talking. EDIT: OK, I can get better at listening/reading lol, as the author said the following: > One reason is this myth: that the good listener just listens. This egregious misunderstanding actually leads to a lot of bad listening, and I’ll tell you why: because a good listener is actually someone who is good at talking.
- avyeed_desa 3y ago
  This was the only point I also disagreed! And i also share the same sentiment you observed. But thinking about it, it highly depends on the situation and the way someone phrases it. The example used in the article is exaggerated. Relation creates a sense of shared feelings only if you are trying to approximate the other person's feeling and thoughts and if you disengaged directly after you said "i also stubbed my toe once". Most of the time, people don't stop there and keep on telling THEIR story and how they felt, instead of just being an interjection. This is not the fault of people, but a normal way of most people doing conversation. I guess the author is thinking about these persons.
- chacham15 3y ago
  I agree that I disagree with this as a blanket statement, but as a baseline, I would agree. The real issue here is why/how you're relating A lot of people relate poorly. The common mistake is as the author points out: to compare experiences. This comparison is almost never useful. Either your experience was worse, which feels invalidating to a listeners feelings or your experience was not as bad, which feels like an inauthentic relation. IMO relating does a lot better when it serves a purpose useful to the listener. A few that I have found: 1. when you're validating how they've already expressed how they feel. sometimes people doubt their own feelings and so you can use your own related experience to show them that you felt a very similar way when you were in a similar situation. caveat: dont ever tell them how they should feel, only validate what they've already expressed. also, if theyre not doubting their emotions, dont do this either...its not useful at best 2. when you're trying to understand how they're feeling (e.g. one time my dog died and I would just always expect to see her around the corner, but she was never there...is that like what you're feeling?) 3. when you're helping out with things that need to be done: (e.g. my parents passed away too, do you want help with sending out funeral invitations / finding a cemetery / etc) 4. if they dont know what to do / what options are and you relate different experiences about how you may have dealt with a similar situation. Caveats: 1. Relating without a purpose will come off as a comparison, dont do it. 2. Not every purpose is valid for every person. A lot of these reasons require that the person trust you to an extent. E.g. offering to help a stranger with their funeral obligations will come off very poorly. 3. You have to have actual relevant experience with something, trying to shoehorn something tangentially related comes off very poorly. 4. You have to know how to deliver the related experience 5. They have to be ready to hear it: if someone is talking, dont interrupt. dont change the topic. only use the solutions above if the person seems like they are looking for it. 6. tons more. In sum, there are reasons to relate, but there are lots of potholes here so its very easy to get wrong. So, as a general statement I would agree, but if you can do these above things well, it can really help people when they may need it.
mvkel 3y ago
I went through a yearlong coaching program and one of the modules was learning how to listen. Imagine a friend tells you about a situation where their dad is starting to show signs of dementia and the strain it's putting on them as a caretaker. Level 1 listening (you're focused on yourself): - "Oh my dad had dementia, too. It's awful." Level 2 listening (you're focused on them, but parroting): - "caring for a parent with dementia must be a huge burden; I can hear the toll it's taking in your voice" Level 3 listening (a focus on what's not being said): - "when you were telling me about your dad's dementia noticed that you smiled a little bit when you said 'strain'. What was that?" Listening is a muscle that needs to be trained. Part of it was learning what it feels like to be -listened to-, too. Feeling heard is 80% of the way to a deep connection with another person. It's amazing how safe and trusting someone can seem if they simply, truly, hear you.
- squigz 3y ago
  I'd be a little freaked out if someone responded with that "level 3" response...
  - zarathustreal 3y ago
    Replying in exactly that way, as if you’re a sentient observation bot, is probably not a good idea but the approach itself is solid. It’s mostly about context
  - poulpy123 3y ago
    yeah, and the level 1 is actually good too. I understand what it is meant but the example is terrible
    - creesch 3y ago
      I do agree. I am familiar with three levels of listening, but in a slightly different way where the three levels are more about where your focus is as a listener. Roughly it comes down to: 1. Listening but focussed on yourself, interjecting with own experiences and sometimes in the process take over the conversation with your own experiences. 2. Focussed listening but on a factual level. Asking clarifications about events, etc. 3. Focussed not only on what is being told, but the emotions behind it. Asking about how certain things impacted the person sharing something with you. I am hugely oversimplifying here, of course. But for point 1 it doesn't mean that you can't briefly let someone know you have a shared experience. It does mean that you shouldn't make your experience take over and then dominate the conversation.
germandiago 3y ago
I am not a therapist or the like. I opened the article bc I really think I should be a better listener (specifically with my tendency to interrupt, which I even do unconscuously, not bc I want to not listen, just my mind accumulates information like very fast and things pop up quickly). However, I think I found a kind of "be super sensitive", let things come out article... unfortunately that behavior, in my experience, does not help the other part. Sometimes we should tell the truth or give good advice or warn of the consequences of a bad decision. Yes we should listen, but not fooling the other part with "fake-positive" stuff, I am not sure I am expressing myself well. What I kean is, stay positive as much as possible, do not create unnecessary negativity, but keep it honest. But according to this article, it seems that those should be disregarded. Everything looks so soft in the article, at least from the point of view of my culture. I must also say I was often classified as aggressive in the sense of being too direct. But if you are listening to someone and have a cinversation, I'd rather take the truth of what's wrong better than having compliments from the other side when they are not actually thinking that even themselves. That would just be being fake. Also, dealing with children, which are still forming their personality, should be treated a bit differently and I can agree with the tips given in the article. However, if someone comes and tells she is sad, my most likely reaction would be to ask why, do an analysis, try to stay positive BUT not lying about it so that it ends up genuinely helping that person. Same for many other situations.
- creesch 3y ago
  > But according to this article, it seems that those should be disregarded. Depending on the context, yes. You are coming into this from a perspective of "listening to fix" and not "listening to understand" which are two different things. Even if your intent is to help people by listening, you first might want to get the entire picture and understand the entire context. Because if you don't, what change do you really have of meaningfully helping someone?
  - germandiago 3y ago
    In order to listen to fix first you must understand... I mean that the kind of "I hear you", "yes, blabla" seems nice but it is the same thing anyone would tell you. Someone that does not know you maybe would react the same. For me it is better (as in valuable) to get a: "because you fail to see you are doing it wrong? Don't you see that..." or something that tells you why you are being dumb and you should not be sad. For example: I am sad bc... the reason is important. If it is bc your father passed away there is nothing I can help with but if you just lost your job or did not get the marks you wanted, there is good advice to make people feel better and try to suggest to analyze what went wrong instead of saying: "oh poor you, I feel you" which does not help except to make that person feel better at that very moment and nothing else. That "negative" information is more valuable to correct something. If ehat you have is always people who just listen and let it go, you will end up without any helpful information and maybe even thinking that the problem is elsewhere.
Gerard0 3y ago
Does anyone know who is the author? Apart from "Molly Brodak". Is it this[1] person, perhaps? [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Brodak https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Brodak
- zarathustreal 3y ago
  Tangentially related for anyone that needs to hear it: evaluate the content in context, the author is irrelevant
  - krisoft 3y ago
    > evaluate the content in context, the author is irrelevant But the author is part of that context. Especially with this kind of content where one explains how they think people should behave we can ask the question if the author embodied the guidelines they are talking about, and if so where did it took them. Did they had an enviable life full of things the reader would find valuable?
    - zarathustreal 3y ago
      I disagree. The speaker is not part of the context when evaluating the correctness of a given assertion. This is a fundamental fact, for example when the speaker is unknown. If it helps, in situations where you’re reading something controversial or where you’d be tempted to make unfounded inferences based on the speaker, you can simply pretend that you’ve “discovered” the assertion rather than that someone has said it to you. Granted, it can be a bit unnerving to accept something without a human being willing to stand with you to defend it when you reach the limits of objective reality (such as the issue of varying perspective). Typically the advice here is to “stand up for what you believe in” - but honestly that’s overrated when survival is on the line (and you potentially haven’t yet absorbed the info as part of your identity).
      - krisoft 3y ago
        > The speaker is not part of the context when evaluating the correctness of a given assertion. On a philosophical level this sounds true. On a practical level evaluating correctness has costs. If you tell me the James Webb Space Telescope detected this and that i won’t launch my own space telescope to verify it. I need to figure out if I trust you as a source. There if you are a crackpot journalist with seemingly no connection to JWST my trust will decrease, at least until i find independent sources. And that is a hard scientific claim where in theory one can conduct an independent experiment and judge the facts for certain. The kind of claim this one is on about is much harder to verify. It is of the form “live by these rules and you will have a better life”. There both the interpretation of the “rules” and the “better life” is fuzzy. And even if you get it right in your own experiment it will take years until you see results. Just on a practical level. Imagine that a thin and sporty person tells you that the secret of them maintaining their healty weight is starting every day by eating two scoops of ice cream. Now imagine that the same statement is said by an obese person. In both cases it takes the same amount of effort to evaluate the correctness of their statement but which case is going to make you want to investigate it more deeply?
bdjsiqoocwk 3y ago
> Replace all of the shocking, mean, hateful, incorrect, ignorant, offensive, cruel things coming out of this person’s mouth with “I’m hurt! I’m hurt! I’m hurt! I’m hurt. I’m hurrrrt.” You're replacing what the person is saying with what you think the person means. Surely if you could just go with what you think they mean, listening would be easy. In fact this sounds like the opposite of listening.
- whoomp12341 3y ago
  a knee jerk reaction when being attacked is to fight back. This is a replacement for that
- coldtea 3y ago
  It's rather the opposite: if you could just go with what the person says to understand what they mean, then listening would be reallyyyyy easy.
  - lkdfjlkdfjlg 3y ago
    > It's rather the opposite: if you could just go with what the person says to understand what they mean, then listening would be reallyyyyy easy. Then I must be really good as listening, because I always believe I know what people are going to say.
    - coldtea 3y ago
      That's orthogonal though - wha they are going to say is not the same as what they mean. Good at listening means "understanding what they meant" (not necessarily, or even usually, what they said) and also "make them feel heard".
revskill 3y ago
You must spell well.
0898 3y ago
A few times on LinkedIn I’ve complained about people “story topping” like #5 in the article. Each time I’ve been brigaded by people who say that’s a “neurodiverse” trait and I’m being an insensitive clod.
- red_admiral 3y ago
  There are two sides to that coin. The people in autism research these days, at least on the sociological end of things, well tell you about the "double empathy problem" (after Milton, 2012 - it's enough of a "thing" now that it has its own wikipedia page). The idea is that if you put one autistic person in a group of "neurotypicals", it'll seem as if they are bad at relating to people - but in a group of (sufficiently high-functioning) autistic people, sometimes everyone gets on just fine, and if you put a single non-autistic person in a group of autistic people, an observer might conclude that they are the one having difficulty "reading the room" and relating to the unspoken norms of the group. It's as if, to make an analogy, autistic people are not worse at picking up "signals" from other people, they're just signalling on a slightly different wavelength. And certainly, relating to others by sharing your own simliar stories is a big thing in some neurodiverse groups, where it is often experienced as a positive. But that then intersects with other cultural aspects, for example the stiff-upper-lib Brits versus outgoing Americans stereotype, with neurodiverse people acting as their own subculture if you like. Sharing your own story is hardly a uniquely autistic trait though: imagine you meet a new co-worker, share that you like Nightwish, and they go "oh, I love them too! I saw them live in Helsinki back in 2022!" and before you know it, you've made a new friend over shared taste in music even if what they did is technically story-topping. But, if you are line-managing a "neurotypical" person and they're in your office crying because of some bad thing that happened to them, it's an essential skill for your job to know that you don't make the story about you. Same if you're training to be a therapist.
- whstl 3y ago
  I love it when other people do this online. This is actually one of my favourite aspects of HN. People chiming in with their own experience and stories. On the other hand I'm not exactly a neurotypical person, so there's that.
Xcelerate 3y ago
The weirdest thing is when someone interrupts you, you point it out, and then they get mad, as though you had the audacity to point out their interruption. It’s the most bizarre thing. After many times of this occurring with one family member in particular, I’ve sort of passive aggressively started responding “Sorry, I didn’t mean for the middle of my sentence to interrupt the beginning of yours.” But sometimes they don’t even hear that because they’re still talking right on over me.
- CadmiumYellow 3y ago
  This is one of those tricky things...interrupting someone is rude but pointing it out is rude too. It makes the tone of the conversation confrontational, which will almost never be received positively. The best way to deal with being interrupted is to handle it gracefully in the moment and if it continues to be an issue eventually address it with the person in a way that doesn't feel accusatory. A lot of people don't even realize that they're doing it or they're used to a different conversational style where it's normalized to interject when you have something to say. You can't call someone else out for being rude and expect them to be happy about it, especially if it's for something they're not aware that they're doing or that they personally don't consider rude.
sourcecodeplz 3y ago
Don't wait for your turn to speak.
metalrain 3y ago
Person can wallow in their thoughts, but when they engage in conversation, I'd expect them to want something else than just their words repeated back.
- Etherlord87 3y ago
  Yea, I think the author was spoiled with always being "listened to", in the way the author describes, and then the author was shocked, that the world doesn't revolve around him. That people don't care what he has to say. So now the author teaches us how we should get into this EXTREMELY passive state, where we mirror everything our interlocutor says, agree completely, never say anything about ourselves, and back away from any confrontation. The guide is useful in a way, but it's useful for a particular situation: when you want to help someone emotionally. This is not a (good) general listening guide, however. Actually, it's a terrible, toxic guide.
xoac 3y ago
If a person is debating a decision, there’s no need to stress out about what advice to give him or her. Forget what you know. And don’t talk about your experience unless the person is specifically asking for it in hoping to learn from you (see #5). The person already knows the answer or the best solution—or at least, has a preference. All you have to do here is just repeat what he’s saying back to him. ?????????????????? How is this not toxic? If I'm talking to someone I want to know what they think.
- JR1427 3y ago
  I think it depends on whether someone has actually explicitly asked you for advice or not. If they have, then you should be careful to consider their position regarding this decision. But if they haven't actually asked, then probably best to not advise which decision to make. I would think that trying to help _them_ make the decision would be a good thing to do, though.
vampiresdoexist 3y ago
I agree with “don’t relate” as a general concept, but I had to stop shortly after reading this: “There are two reasons a person redirects the conversation/attention back to himself: (1) the person is deeply self-centered and incapable of processing information about anyone unless it relates to him. It’s likely this person is cripplingly insecure, and therefore his worry about himself has turned into his only functioning pathway to the world. Or possibly this person is a sociopath.” I know the author goes on to state a more benign reason as the second reason. But opening with the possibility that someone is a sociopath for over-relating is wild. I’d expect the child of a therapist would choose their words with more purpose and with their intended meaning.
space_oddity 3y ago
"...a good listener is actually someone who is good at talking". Totally agree! In aorder to be a good listener you need to be able to give a good feed back
- slipperybeluga 3y ago
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robaato 3y ago
This reminds me of some things that Chris Voss (Author: Never Split the Difference - Negotiating as if your life depended on it) refers to as "tactical empathy" * mirroring * labelling Anyone else had positive or negative experiences in this area?
DanielleMolloy 3y ago
I've been told a few times that I'm a good listener. All I ever did in this direction was reading Michael Endes "Momo" as a child.
bradybd 3y ago
Good post. Have found that active listening like this is extremely important within the context of feedback. Both parties need to be active listeners. It's vital for the recipient of feedback to repeat back what the giver is saying to make sure everyone is on the same page. Minor step, but has a massive impact on how feedback is perceived and acted on between parties.
greenhearth 3y ago
Very nice article and very relatable. But I think for this to work, a person practicing must have a capacity for empathy, or at least some degree of it, in the first place.
cchi_co 3y ago
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consf 3y ago
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255 points by greenie_beans 3y ago

I'm no expert on listening, but I think do have a sense of when I personally feel heard. I don't agree with this piece at all, and I don't like the vibe of the author. The very first paragraph has a narcissism in it that rubs me the wrong way. Like the whole world let her down for not centering her in conversations the way her therapist caretaker did. > Some simple and powerful phrases to use when someone is feeling feels: “I hear you.” “I bet it is hard.” “That makes sense.” All three of these seriously suck to hear. IMO these are actually worse than the phrases the author says to never say. Someone telling you "You have no reason to feel that way" can easily be challenged. Someone disingenuously saying "I hear you" like a robot can't be. The entire idea that there are boilerplate "powerful phrases" you can drop to make someone feel heard is nonsense. These generic phrases are determined ahead of hearing someone speak, so they can not reflect the act of hearing. There's a reason why this brand of non-communication is so popular in HR circles. What this author is advocating is that we import patronizing HR speak into every day conversation. No thanks. >Replace all of the shocking, mean, hateful, incorrect, ignorant, offensive, cruel things coming out of this person’s mouth with “I’m hurt! I’m hurt! I’m hurt! I’m hurt. I’m hurrrrt.” This is narcissistic logic. When people are angry at you, and attacking you - and they do not have a clinical mood or personality disorder - you must accept that there may be a reason behind it. Things said in the heat of the moment are not always fair or measured, but they are rarely meaningless. When you decide that nothing someone is saying is valid because they are hurt, you will probably just invalidate and hurt them further. The idea that the most important thing in a situation like this is to not be upset yourself is also narcissistic logic. Although presented as practical advice to not escalate, it's really just the authors need to "win" the interaction. It says "I'm the level-headed and rational one, while the other person is crazy and flying off the handle." Acting this way can escalate the situation even more than becoming angry yourself, but it will do so in a way that allows you to avoid taking any personal responsibility for that escalation. I have to wonder what situations and interpersonal relationships the author is in that she finds this to be such a relevant piece of advice. These experiences don't sound like a model for healthy communication. >5. Don’t relate. This entire section is deeply narcissistic. The one-upmanship thing does happen, for sure. But it's not the reason people share their own experiences in the course of you sharing yours. Her conception of why people share reflects a deeply disconnected view of other people. Reads as "sometimes I'm talking to someone who is so self-absorbed they don't understand the conversation is 100% about me!" Of the whole article, this section was most reminiscent of the cognitive style of diagnosed NPDs I've known. >6. Ask questions. This is the only decent advice in here, and I can't really fault it. But there is still something off here. It's like the goal of asking these questions is to "make someone feel heard" rather than to actually hear them.

Etherlord87 3y ago
I agree with you completely. The more I think about the article, the more I wonder - why would such ridiculous thing be voted up on HN? How to listen to someone: if someone is angry, don't listen to him at all and just imagine that he says he's hurt. Sorry, but that's just idiotic.
- deleted 3y ago
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- CadmiumYellow 3y ago
  It's because a lot of people who frequent HN have difficulty with social skills and are always looking for a manual for how to handle tricky interpersonal situations. The problem is that their difficulty with social skills renders them not-so-great at assessing the quality of advice about social interaction so they upvote things that they think sound nice or valuable without realizing that that's not actually the case. I hope this comment doesn't come across as judgmental or mean, it's just something I've noticed as a person who works in tech but has always had strong social and communication skills. This article describes a communication style that is repellent to anyone with normal social skills who doesn't have cluster B tendencies.
0xcde4c3db 3y ago
Agreed; it seems like a really weird mix of perfectly reasonable advice and wild assumptions about how "normal" human relationships work, both given in a condescending tone. Also, I hope I'll be forgiven for doubting that someone is an expert on empathy when they write something like this: > Then, try this: look at the person in the eyes. If you can’t stop thinking about yourself, know that you have a problem. Your self-centeredness renders you incapable of intimacy. Get help.
StefanBatory 3y ago
"Replace all of the shocking, mean, hateful, incorrect, ignorant, offensive, cruel things coming out of this person’s mouth with “I’m hurt! I’m hurt! I’m hurt! I’m hurt. I’m hurrrrt.” This is narcissistic logic. When people are angry at you, and attacking you - and they do not have a clinical mood or personality disorder - you must accept that there may be a reason behind it. Things said in the heat of the moment are not always fair or measured, but they are rarely meaningless. When you decide that nothing someone is saying is valid because they are hurt, you will probably just invalidate and hurt them further." I understand your point but I think there's actually merit to that part. Sometimes people are just mad for no reason. My mother would release her frustrations on me when I was a child whenever things weren't going well in a marriage, and I don't think whatever I did deserved that. There is a good point in saying that there's sometime a real greviance let out in a bad form but sometimes there is nothing to this and nothing you can do or say to change their mind.

timeagain 3y ago

In my experience the less judgement I bring to a situation, the better I will be able to listen. If someone is telling me a story where I feel like they were morally wrong or where “one easy trick” would have solved their problem, it is very hard for me to not want to blurt out advice, admonishment, or shut the conversation down. The funny thing is that being quickly opinionated is highly valued in tech, so my maladaptive behavior (in part) got me accolades and promotions. I actually think this tendency to have a hot take on everything immediately is a large portion of why engineers rub non-engineers the wrong way

amatai 3y ago
This is the same reason engineers rub engineers the wrong way. Its true for all humans.
devjab 3y ago
> The funny thing is that being quickly opinionated is highly valued in tech I don’t really agree with this in the context you seem to put it. It’s not that it’s completely wrong, it’s just that engineers who rub non-engineers the wrong way are most certainly also rubbing engineers the wrong way. That being said, tech teams are often rather “quiet” and having that crude loudmouth is often better than having nobody speak their opinions at all. I wouldn’t say it’s valued though. At least not in my experience. What is valued is engineers who can voice their opinions in an assertive and friendly manner. This is because that unlike the crude loudmouth, these people lead to the quiet people joining in. Which can lead to actual discussion and at the very least put forward more opinions from the team, without you having to be the elementary school teacher picking the quiet student in order to hear what they have to contribute. I guess being a crude loudmouth can lead to promotions, but it’s probably also a quick way to become one of those managers/architects which are called hot-air balloons or the emperors new clothes behind their backs.

andxor_ 3y ago

> What a different world we’d live in if more boys felt safe sharing feelings, in their own way, right from the start. What if it turned out to be a world much worse than what we have? There is perhaps some evolutionary advantage to people that suck it up and carry on?

OfficialTurkey 3y ago
Could you expand on this argument more? My first reaction was negative ("Why would the world be worse if more people felt safe sharing their feelings??") so I would like to hear more and challenge my assumptions. For my part, I'll point to research that suppressing emotions increases risk of suicide[1] and that many more men die from suicide than women[2]. I'm willing to hear out an argument that the world would be worse if these tragic deaths hadn't happened but it requires extraordinary evidence and argumentation IMO. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5036455/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5036455/ [2] https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/ https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/
- Sai_ 3y ago
  (Since we're discussing counterfactuals and could-have-beens) In a macabre way, maybe suicidal ideation due to suppressed emotions is nature's way of managing male populations? What if men stopped killing themselves because they felt safe sharing their feelings? What if that led to testosterone fueled "musth" rages where men started to go on rampages just to let off steam? That world would be worse for everyone involved.
  - baroque_pas 3y ago
    I don't think that to be the case testosterone fuelled raging is an effect of suppressed emotions. Imo sharing of feelings would lead to more soft, feminine personalities which is the direction we are slowly heading towards.
- andxor_ 3y ago
  Higher suicide rates in themselves might not be an evolutionary handicap. They probably get far more stuff done relative to the ones that are emotionally closer to females and live longer. Just spit balling here.

kelseyfrog 3y ago

As someone who went out of their way and studied being a good listener, none of these are wrong, but I don't see it as being the best way of learning how to be a good listener. Reading about how to be a good listener can only get someone so far - watching someone demonstrate it and talking about it is the surest way to understand what it means. Specifically, Reflective listening[1], Clean language[2], and the approach used by Eugene Gendlin[3], jump-started my own skill of practicing being a good listener. You may also hear the term "holding space" as a sort of umbrella term for this as well. You would be amazing at how far these go toward creating a safe, non-judgemental, space for people. Simple, open-ended, genuine questions worded in their own language, has afforded me the opportunity to hear people open up from the very bottom of their souls. It's absolutely amazing that the simple act of listening can do that, but it does. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_listening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_listening 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_language 3. Wiki reference, but best seen, of course, on Youtube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Gendlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Gendlin

madhir 3y ago
> watching someone demonstrate it and talking about it is the surest way to understand what it means Do you happen to have links to any example videos demonstrating this or are you referring to in person examples
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  Sorry, but the nature of the material and the HN audience at large is leading me to hesitate. I'd be happy to share privately, the material that spoke to me. Contact info in bio.
- jodrellblank 3y ago
  Dr Burns' Feeling Good Podcast has examples of listening to people, possibly not the same exact thing the parent comment means, but his T.E.A.M.S CBT therapy stands for "Testing, Empathy, ..." and Empathy is where the patient tells their problem, and the therapist has to communicate that they heard it and empathise with it. Otherwise if the therapist does a "yeah ok got that, let's move on" the patient will get stuck not wanting to move on and keep going back over what's wrong, thinking the therapist isn't properly understanding why they are there. [Happens in life elsewhere, e.g. if you complain to a company and get a generic 'sorry' and you feel like you haven't been heard and try complaining again. Whereas if you feel heard and understood, you don't need to try complaining again]. There's a ton of his podcasts and this comes up in many of them; some talking about it: 003 on E=Empathy 014 on The Five Secrets of Effective Communication 066 on The Five Secrets part 2 - Disarming people (by showing that you hear them) Some demonstrating / using / modelling it: 029 and 030 a recording of a therapy session with Mark 049 recording of a therapy session with Marilyn other 'live sessions' Detailed Database of podcasts: https://feelinggood.com/podcast-database/ https://feelinggood.com/podcast-database/

aidenn0 3y ago

> You know the obvious no-brainer ones already—don’t interrupt, don’t look at your phone, make (frequent, but not creepily constant) eye contact, turn your body towards the speaker… These "obvious" things are so unnatural for me that doing them consumes so much of my attention that I don't actually hear anything the person is saying.

jimkleiber 3y ago
I'm not sure what you meant, you doing them or the other person doing them?
- aidenn0 3y ago
  Me doing them. E.g if I'm making eye contact with you, I'm thinking about making eye contact with you, not what you're saying.
  - jimkleiber 3y ago
    Ahhh, ok, I hear you now. I wonder if just practicing the skills more, maybe even in a practice environment, would help you feel more comfortable with them. Have you found that over time there have been some things you feel more and more comfortable doing?

devjab 3y ago

I’d recommend getting into role playing and paying attention to how good game masters get their players to elaborate on what sort of actions they want to take.

space_oddity 3y ago
A good game masters can teach you lots of good things

elevaet 3y ago

> 5. Don’t relate. I see this recommendation all the time, but I know I do it all the time, and personally I often _like_ it when other people do it to me. Sometimes it's nice to commiserate or share a connection on a similar experience, and maybe even learn from what the other person already went through. Does anyone else question this common piece of advice? Can't relating be useful if it's not being used to steer the focus over to the "relater"?

jimkleiber 3y ago
I question it quite often. I think relating can be very useful for both people involved. I do think that sometimes it may be useful for one and not the other, but I don't think it's as simple as saying to not "one-up" someone. The intention may not to be to one up and yet the other perceives it that way. Or the intention actually could be the one up and the other _doesn't_ perceive it that way. Overall I think we talk way too much about getting better at listening and not nearly enough at getting better at talking. EDIT: OK, I can get better at listening/reading lol, as the author said the following: > One reason is this myth: that the good listener just listens. This egregious misunderstanding actually leads to a lot of bad listening, and I’ll tell you why: because a good listener is actually someone who is good at talking.
avyeed_desa 3y ago
This was the only point I also disagreed! And i also share the same sentiment you observed. But thinking about it, it highly depends on the situation and the way someone phrases it. The example used in the article is exaggerated. Relation creates a sense of shared feelings only if you are trying to approximate the other person's feeling and thoughts and if you disengaged directly after you said "i also stubbed my toe once". Most of the time, people don't stop there and keep on telling THEIR story and how they felt, instead of just being an interjection. This is not the fault of people, but a normal way of most people doing conversation. I guess the author is thinking about these persons.
chacham15 3y ago
I agree that I disagree with this as a blanket statement, but as a baseline, I would agree. The real issue here is why/how you're relating A lot of people relate poorly. The common mistake is as the author points out: to compare experiences. This comparison is almost never useful. Either your experience was worse, which feels invalidating to a listeners feelings or your experience was not as bad, which feels like an inauthentic relation. IMO relating does a lot better when it serves a purpose useful to the listener. A few that I have found: 1. when you're validating how they've already expressed how they feel. sometimes people doubt their own feelings and so you can use your own related experience to show them that you felt a very similar way when you were in a similar situation. caveat: dont ever tell them how they should feel, only validate what they've already expressed. also, if theyre not doubting their emotions, dont do this either...its not useful at best 2. when you're trying to understand how they're feeling (e.g. one time my dog died and I would just always expect to see her around the corner, but she was never there...is that like what you're feeling?) 3. when you're helping out with things that need to be done: (e.g. my parents passed away too, do you want help with sending out funeral invitations / finding a cemetery / etc) 4. if they dont know what to do / what options are and you relate different experiences about how you may have dealt with a similar situation. Caveats: 1. Relating without a purpose will come off as a comparison, dont do it. 2. Not every purpose is valid for every person. A lot of these reasons require that the person trust you to an extent. E.g. offering to help a stranger with their funeral obligations will come off very poorly. 3. You have to have actual relevant experience with something, trying to shoehorn something tangentially related comes off very poorly. 4. You have to know how to deliver the related experience 5. They have to be ready to hear it: if someone is talking, dont interrupt. dont change the topic. only use the solutions above if the person seems like they are looking for it. 6. tons more. In sum, there are reasons to relate, but there are lots of potholes here so its very easy to get wrong. So, as a general statement I would agree, but if you can do these above things well, it can really help people when they may need it.

mvkel 3y ago

I went through a yearlong coaching program and one of the modules was learning how to listen. Imagine a friend tells you about a situation where their dad is starting to show signs of dementia and the strain it's putting on them as a caretaker. Level 1 listening (you're focused on yourself): - "Oh my dad had dementia, too. It's awful." Level 2 listening (you're focused on them, but parroting): - "caring for a parent with dementia must be a huge burden; I can hear the toll it's taking in your voice" Level 3 listening (a focus on what's not being said): - "when you were telling me about your dad's dementia noticed that you smiled a little bit when you said 'strain'. What was that?" Listening is a muscle that needs to be trained. Part of it was learning what it feels like to be -listened to-, too. Feeling heard is 80% of the way to a deep connection with another person. It's amazing how safe and trusting someone can seem if they simply, truly, hear you.

squigz 3y ago
I'd be a little freaked out if someone responded with that "level 3" response...
- zarathustreal 3y ago
  Replying in exactly that way, as if you’re a sentient observation bot, is probably not a good idea but the approach itself is solid. It’s mostly about context
- poulpy123 3y ago
  yeah, and the level 1 is actually good too. I understand what it is meant but the example is terrible
  - creesch 3y ago
    I do agree. I am familiar with three levels of listening, but in a slightly different way where the three levels are more about where your focus is as a listener. Roughly it comes down to: 1. Listening but focussed on yourself, interjecting with own experiences and sometimes in the process take over the conversation with your own experiences. 2. Focussed listening but on a factual level. Asking clarifications about events, etc. 3. Focussed not only on what is being told, but the emotions behind it. Asking about how certain things impacted the person sharing something with you. I am hugely oversimplifying here, of course. But for point 1 it doesn't mean that you can't briefly let someone know you have a shared experience. It does mean that you shouldn't make your experience take over and then dominate the conversation.

germandiago 3y ago

I am not a therapist or the like. I opened the article bc I really think I should be a better listener (specifically with my tendency to interrupt, which I even do unconscuously, not bc I want to not listen, just my mind accumulates information like very fast and things pop up quickly). However, I think I found a kind of "be super sensitive", let things come out article... unfortunately that behavior, in my experience, does not help the other part. Sometimes we should tell the truth or give good advice or warn of the consequences of a bad decision. Yes we should listen, but not fooling the other part with "fake-positive" stuff, I am not sure I am expressing myself well. What I kean is, stay positive as much as possible, do not create unnecessary negativity, but keep it honest. But according to this article, it seems that those should be disregarded. Everything looks so soft in the article, at least from the point of view of my culture. I must also say I was often classified as aggressive in the sense of being too direct. But if you are listening to someone and have a cinversation, I'd rather take the truth of what's wrong better than having compliments from the other side when they are not actually thinking that even themselves. That would just be being fake. Also, dealing with children, which are still forming their personality, should be treated a bit differently and I can agree with the tips given in the article. However, if someone comes and tells she is sad, my most likely reaction would be to ask why, do an analysis, try to stay positive BUT not lying about it so that it ends up genuinely helping that person. Same for many other situations.

creesch 3y ago
> But according to this article, it seems that those should be disregarded. Depending on the context, yes. You are coming into this from a perspective of "listening to fix" and not "listening to understand" which are two different things. Even if your intent is to help people by listening, you first might want to get the entire picture and understand the entire context. Because if you don't, what change do you really have of meaningfully helping someone?
- germandiago 3y ago
  In order to listen to fix first you must understand... I mean that the kind of "I hear you", "yes, blabla" seems nice but it is the same thing anyone would tell you. Someone that does not know you maybe would react the same. For me it is better (as in valuable) to get a: "because you fail to see you are doing it wrong? Don't you see that..." or something that tells you why you are being dumb and you should not be sad. For example: I am sad bc... the reason is important. If it is bc your father passed away there is nothing I can help with but if you just lost your job or did not get the marks you wanted, there is good advice to make people feel better and try to suggest to analyze what went wrong instead of saying: "oh poor you, I feel you" which does not help except to make that person feel better at that very moment and nothing else. That "negative" information is more valuable to correct something. If ehat you have is always people who just listen and let it go, you will end up without any helpful information and maybe even thinking that the problem is elsewhere.

Gerard0 3y ago

Does anyone know who is the author? Apart from "Molly Brodak". Is it this[1] person, perhaps? [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Brodak https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Brodak

zarathustreal 3y ago
Tangentially related for anyone that needs to hear it: evaluate the content in context, the author is irrelevant
- krisoft 3y ago
  > evaluate the content in context, the author is irrelevant But the author is part of that context. Especially with this kind of content where one explains how they think people should behave we can ask the question if the author embodied the guidelines they are talking about, and if so where did it took them. Did they had an enviable life full of things the reader would find valuable?
  - zarathustreal 3y ago
    I disagree. The speaker is not part of the context when evaluating the correctness of a given assertion. This is a fundamental fact, for example when the speaker is unknown. If it helps, in situations where you’re reading something controversial or where you’d be tempted to make unfounded inferences based on the speaker, you can simply pretend that you’ve “discovered” the assertion rather than that someone has said it to you. Granted, it can be a bit unnerving to accept something without a human being willing to stand with you to defend it when you reach the limits of objective reality (such as the issue of varying perspective). Typically the advice here is to “stand up for what you believe in” - but honestly that’s overrated when survival is on the line (and you potentially haven’t yet absorbed the info as part of your identity).
    - krisoft 3y ago
      > The speaker is not part of the context when evaluating the correctness of a given assertion. On a philosophical level this sounds true. On a practical level evaluating correctness has costs. If you tell me the James Webb Space Telescope detected this and that i won’t launch my own space telescope to verify it. I need to figure out if I trust you as a source. There if you are a crackpot journalist with seemingly no connection to JWST my trust will decrease, at least until i find independent sources. And that is a hard scientific claim where in theory one can conduct an independent experiment and judge the facts for certain. The kind of claim this one is on about is much harder to verify. It is of the form “live by these rules and you will have a better life”. There both the interpretation of the “rules” and the “better life” is fuzzy. And even if you get it right in your own experiment it will take years until you see results. Just on a practical level. Imagine that a thin and sporty person tells you that the secret of them maintaining their healty weight is starting every day by eating two scoops of ice cream. Now imagine that the same statement is said by an obese person. In both cases it takes the same amount of effort to evaluate the correctness of their statement but which case is going to make you want to investigate it more deeply?

bdjsiqoocwk 3y ago

> Replace all of the shocking, mean, hateful, incorrect, ignorant, offensive, cruel things coming out of this person’s mouth with “I’m hurt! I’m hurt! I’m hurt! I’m hurt. I’m hurrrrt.” You're replacing what the person is saying with what you think the person means. Surely if you could just go with what you think they mean, listening would be easy. In fact this sounds like the opposite of listening.

whoomp12341 3y ago
a knee jerk reaction when being attacked is to fight back. This is a replacement for that
coldtea 3y ago
It's rather the opposite: if you could just go with what the person says to understand what they mean, then listening would be reallyyyyy easy.
- lkdfjlkdfjlg 3y ago
  > It's rather the opposite: if you could just go with what the person says to understand what they mean, then listening would be reallyyyyy easy. Then I must be really good as listening, because I always believe I know what people are going to say.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    That's orthogonal though - wha they are going to say is not the same as what they mean. Good at listening means "understanding what they meant" (not necessarily, or even usually, what they said) and also "make them feel heard".

revskill 3y ago

You must spell well.

0898 3y ago

A few times on LinkedIn I’ve complained about people “story topping” like #5 in the article. Each time I’ve been brigaded by people who say that’s a “neurodiverse” trait and I’m being an insensitive clod.

red_admiral 3y ago
There are two sides to that coin. The people in autism research these days, at least on the sociological end of things, well tell you about the "double empathy problem" (after Milton, 2012 - it's enough of a "thing" now that it has its own wikipedia page). The idea is that if you put one autistic person in a group of "neurotypicals", it'll seem as if they are bad at relating to people - but in a group of (sufficiently high-functioning) autistic people, sometimes everyone gets on just fine, and if you put a single non-autistic person in a group of autistic people, an observer might conclude that they are the one having difficulty "reading the room" and relating to the unspoken norms of the group. It's as if, to make an analogy, autistic people are not worse at picking up "signals" from other people, they're just signalling on a slightly different wavelength. And certainly, relating to others by sharing your own simliar stories is a big thing in some neurodiverse groups, where it is often experienced as a positive. But that then intersects with other cultural aspects, for example the stiff-upper-lib Brits versus outgoing Americans stereotype, with neurodiverse people acting as their own subculture if you like. Sharing your own story is hardly a uniquely autistic trait though: imagine you meet a new co-worker, share that you like Nightwish, and they go "oh, I love them too! I saw them live in Helsinki back in 2022!" and before you know it, you've made a new friend over shared taste in music even if what they did is technically story-topping. But, if you are line-managing a "neurotypical" person and they're in your office crying because of some bad thing that happened to them, it's an essential skill for your job to know that you don't make the story about you. Same if you're training to be a therapist.
whstl 3y ago
I love it when other people do this online. This is actually one of my favourite aspects of HN. People chiming in with their own experience and stories. On the other hand I'm not exactly a neurotypical person, so there's that.

Xcelerate 3y ago

The weirdest thing is when someone interrupts you, you point it out, and then they get mad, as though you had the audacity to point out their interruption. It’s the most bizarre thing. After many times of this occurring with one family member in particular, I’ve sort of passive aggressively started responding “Sorry, I didn’t mean for the middle of my sentence to interrupt the beginning of yours.” But sometimes they don’t even hear that because they’re still talking right on over me.

CadmiumYellow 3y ago
This is one of those tricky things...interrupting someone is rude but pointing it out is rude too. It makes the tone of the conversation confrontational, which will almost never be received positively. The best way to deal with being interrupted is to handle it gracefully in the moment and if it continues to be an issue eventually address it with the person in a way that doesn't feel accusatory. A lot of people don't even realize that they're doing it or they're used to a different conversational style where it's normalized to interject when you have something to say. You can't call someone else out for being rude and expect them to be happy about it, especially if it's for something they're not aware that they're doing or that they personally don't consider rude.

sourcecodeplz 3y ago

Don't wait for your turn to speak.

metalrain 3y ago

Person can wallow in their thoughts, but when they engage in conversation, I'd expect them to want something else than just their words repeated back.

Etherlord87 3y ago
Yea, I think the author was spoiled with always being "listened to", in the way the author describes, and then the author was shocked, that the world doesn't revolve around him. That people don't care what he has to say. So now the author teaches us how we should get into this EXTREMELY passive state, where we mirror everything our interlocutor says, agree completely, never say anything about ourselves, and back away from any confrontation. The guide is useful in a way, but it's useful for a particular situation: when you want to help someone emotionally. This is not a (good) general listening guide, however. Actually, it's a terrible, toxic guide.

xoac 3y ago

If a person is debating a decision, there’s no need to stress out about what advice to give him or her. Forget what you know. And don’t talk about your experience unless the person is specifically asking for it in hoping to learn from you (see #5). The person already knows the answer or the best solution—or at least, has a preference. All you have to do here is just repeat what he’s saying back to him. ?????????????????? How is this not toxic? If I'm talking to someone I want to know what they think.

JR1427 3y ago
I think it depends on whether someone has actually explicitly asked you for advice or not. If they have, then you should be careful to consider their position regarding this decision. But if they haven't actually asked, then probably best to not advise which decision to make. I would think that trying to help _them_ make the decision would be a good thing to do, though.

vampiresdoexist 3y ago

I agree with “don’t relate” as a general concept, but I had to stop shortly after reading this: “There are two reasons a person redirects the conversation/attention back to himself: (1) the person is deeply self-centered and incapable of processing information about anyone unless it relates to him. It’s likely this person is cripplingly insecure, and therefore his worry about himself has turned into his only functioning pathway to the world. Or possibly this person is a sociopath.” I know the author goes on to state a more benign reason as the second reason. But opening with the possibility that someone is a sociopath for over-relating is wild. I’d expect the child of a therapist would choose their words with more purpose and with their intended meaning.

space_oddity 3y ago

"...a good listener is actually someone who is good at talking". Totally agree! In aorder to be a good listener you need to be able to give a good feed back

slipperybeluga 3y ago
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robaato 3y ago

This reminds me of some things that Chris Voss (Author: Never Split the Difference - Negotiating as if your life depended on it) refers to as "tactical empathy" * mirroring * labelling Anyone else had positive or negative experiences in this area?

DanielleMolloy 3y ago

I've been told a few times that I'm a good listener. All I ever did in this direction was reading Michael Endes "Momo" as a child.

bradybd 3y ago

Good post. Have found that active listening like this is extremely important within the context of feedback. Both parties need to be active listeners. It's vital for the recipient of feedback to repeat back what the giver is saying to make sure everyone is on the same page. Minor step, but has a massive impact on how feedback is perceived and acted on between parties.

greenhearth 3y ago

Very nice article and very relatable. But I think for this to work, a person practicing must have a capacity for empathy, or at least some degree of it, in the first place.

cchi_co 3y ago

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consf 3y ago

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