The Art of Listening

By Bonnie Artman

"Don't put words in my mouth, that's not what I said!"
"You're not listening to me!"

Any of the above sound familiar? My guess is that you have either said or heard something similar in an argument with a loved one. When tension is high, you just want to be heard. However, the other person is also focused on getting their point across... miscommunication flies back and forth, no one is doing any listening, and the conversation goes south.

Remember playing the game "telephone" as a child? One of your friends whispers in another child's ear the message ("Sandy has a crush on Tyler!") and by the time the message gets to the last person in the game, it is a completely different message ("Sandy punched Tyler in the face!"). We've been bad listeners since childhood.

Here's a personal example of how my family and I have a tendency to hear what we want to hear instead of listening to what is being said...

Several years ago, my father was diagnosed with cancer. It was Fall and Dad was scheduled for surgery. But he wanted to postpone his surgery until after the crops were in. (Having been raised on a farm, one of dad's loves was to pick field corn for harvesting.) He became very defensive when we, as his family, questioned waiting when his life was at stake.

The key part of this story is that it wasn't even his corn! He wanted to help his brother and his cousin harvest on their farms, which he had often done in the past. What upset our family was not only that he wanted to postpone the surgery, but the corn in question wasn't even his responsibility!

After many upsetting conversations throughout the Fall (that went nowhere) Dad finally agreed to the surgery in December. A few days before the procedure, he talked about why he prolonged it for so long. Yes, some of it was about his love for driving the tractor and harvesting corn, but more of it was really about his fear. What we as a family missed months earlier was what our father wasn't saying. Had we known how to listen beyond his words, we may have been more patient and understanding of his postponement of the surgery.

Often the most heartfelt, meaningful things we want to convey are in what we don't say - a look, a tear, a tone, arms folded, backs turned...learn to pay attention to nonverbal cues and you'll hear what's most important.