I've been wondering why listening is so hard. It's a simple skill, yet it seems at odds with our fast-paced, busy lives. It's hard to listen to oneself sometimes, let alone pay attention to what my mother, a curious check-out assistant or an excited colleague is sharing (sorry, mum!)
Yet, even when we remove distractions, like when on a holiday or retreat, listening can still be challenging. These pockets of time have been ring-fenced for connection and are primed for deep & meaningful conversation. However, they don't guarantee that we will listen or be listened to. Removing distractions and busyness isn't enough- we need to update HOW we listen by considering our energy.
In this article, I explore how our energy impacts how we listen. We are sometimes unconscious of the energy we bring to our relationships. But we can also be conscious and intentional about our energy to create a particular impact. So when we’re listening, what impact do we want to make? And what energy is going to best serve the relationship?
Task-orientated vs Relationship-orientated
Our progress is primarily measured by our ability to do specific tasks throughout our education and careers. Awards, promotions and pay rises are given principally to the people who get things done (and often, the quicker, the better!) However, this task-orientated approach is often at the expense of our relationships.
Being task-orientated brings a distinctive energy: it’s a lens through which we see the world. However, when we're listening, this filter can have us treating the person in front of us as a task to be ticked off. I made this error recently when a friend started sharing several challenges in her life that were making her feel quite overwhelmed. She clearly needed a shoulder to cry on, yet I went straight into advice-giving mode: "have you tried this?" and "have you looked into this?" Whilst the sentiment came from a caring place, the impact was sloppy. As someone who has been on the receiving end of an exchange like this, I imagine my friend felt unheard and dismissed. She was longing for a place to ground out her frustrations, but instead, my task-orientated, fixing approach likely supercharged her insecurities about not doing enough!
Conscious and Intentional Energy
In my work as a coach and facilitator, I draw on the world of theatre and my experience as an actor to help people raise their awareness around the energy they bring. At any given moment, we can choose to bring a different energy to create a certain impact. Some of us do this instinctively; we might find ourselves putting on our 'game face' for a big presentation or party. However, it's a massively underutilised communication skill. Most of us go from meeting to meeting (or zoom to zoom) with the energy we've got. How we show up is how we are. Which is all well and good if that energy is serving us. However, if it's not having the desired impact, we can consider tuning into a different energy.
The more aware we are of our intention and impact, the more choice we have. With this awareness, we can continue to close the gap in our communication between our intended impact and how it lands on other people. By reducing this gap, we increase our impact.
So, when we listen, we will show up with our default energy unless we consciously and intentionally choose to bring something different. Whilst these default energies might be qualities that help us to thrive in a fast-paced, task-focused world (like direct, efficient, or practical), I am questioning if they are the most helpful for active listening. Because even if we create the space to really listen to a colleague or family member, a task-oriented energy that wants to 'get stuff done' will impact the quality of our listening and the way we process information.
The Levels of Listening
Many coaches assert that the key ingredient in coaching is asking powerful questions. Now whilst questions are essential, they are useless unless we bring the other side of that coin: listening. Listening properly to someone else can reveal a lot about them. Perhaps more importantly, how we listen to others can reveal a lot about us.
Stephen Covey, author of the business classic 'The seven habits of highly effective people’, said that "most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply." Rather than projecting our thoughts, motives, and interpretations onto every situation, we can use our listening skills to understand another person's point of view.
Here is a model I use with my company, which offers insight into the different ways we listen:
Superficial- this is when we're distracted by something else and not really listening. For example: when I'm on a call (without video), whilst simultaneously clearing e-mails and responding to texts.
Conversational- when we're listening but preparing for what we will say next. This is also where we may relate what is being said to our experience. (E.g., "You went to Spain? I went to Spain with my family last year too...”)
Active- Active listening is staying fully present with the person opposite you and really hearing everything they say. Instead of thinking about how their story relates back to you and jumping in, you stay with their story and respond appropriately.
Deep- Deep listening builds on active listening and is where we tune into the spaces between the words, their body language, tone and mood.
I'm curious about the energies that help us access the deeper listening levels. If there is a misalignment between our intention and impact, does it limit our ability to listen profoundly? In my experience, yes. I run a listening exercise using this model where people practice active & deep listening in pairs: one person shares a story, perhaps their leadership journey, for up to 5-mins and the other listens and resists the urge to respond. Whilst people understand the listening levels from a theoretical standpoint, they sometimes find it hard to access the active and deep listening levels until they consider their impact. How do you want your partner to feel? And what energy can you bring that will support this?
Where is your intention?
I have a wonderful friend and mentor, who spent many years living in an ashram, and I am always struck by how he listens. When I finish speaking, he doesn't immediately jump in. Instead, he pauses to digest what I've said and then responds. Unlike my friend Danny, many of us (read: me) think about what we want to say instead of really listening to what is being said. This pre-emptive pattern prevents us from moving into deeper levels of listening.
This is why intention is crucial: what is your intention when listening? Is it to be a saviour, or is it to be at service? With my example from earlier, I cringe at the level of saviour energy that showed up. I didn't intentionally choose to bring saviour energy into the conversation. But that's often the issue. If we aren't conscious and intentional with our energy, whatever energy drives us that day will start moving the conversation. Before meeting my friend, I spent my day being productive and ticking off tasks, so unwittingly, my friend became the next task on my to-do list over dinner that evening.
What kind of person do you want to be when you listen?
Thinking about your energy ahead of time can completely transform how you listen. It doesn't have to take long. Think about the impact you'd like to have when listening to someone, and then assign an energy that aligns with that intention. Some examples of energies that serve active and deep listening include curious, open, understanding and receptive. The list of energies we can bring to our listening (and communication in general) is endless and provides us with a spectrum of options we can choose to show up with as human beings. We don't have to show up with the default energy that we woke up with that morning; we can choose to bring something else if it better serves the situation.
And if you don't have any apparent opportunities to listen over the next few days, a helpful question to ask yourself can be: what kind of person do I want to be when I listen? This question will help connect you to the impact you'd like to make and will support you in becoming more aware of how you show up when you listen. I use a version of this question as a daily tuning fork to remind me of who I want to be, connect with my range and align my actions with my goals.