Mrs Blackwell’s Reading Log: You're Not Listening by Kate Murphy
For anyone who has misunderstood or felt misunderstood. - Kate Murphy
I think a lot of readers - myself included - take pride in also being the kind of person who is a very good listener.
That’s probably why this book appeals to so many customers in our shop.
I first picked up You’re Not Listening. What You’re Missing & Why it Matters by Kate Murphy in an airport bookshop on the way home from a conference. I'd left a bit exasperated, feeling that the other attendees were more interested in competitive talking than in learning anything. I hoped this book would give me the words to describe what had been so frustrating about the experience.
I did find the language I was looking for but I also learned a lot about the rough edges of my own listening skills.
Here are some of the highlights from the book:
Think of listening as similar to meditation: Make yourself aware of and acknowledge distractions, then return to focus. But instead of focusing on your breathing or an image, you return your attention to the speaker.
Opinions, attitudes, and beliefs change. So it doesn’t matter how long you’ve have known or how well you think you know people; if you stop listening, you will eventually lose your grasp of who they are and how to relate to them.
On Introverts: Because they are quieter, are often though to be better listeners. But this is false. Listening can be particularly challenging for introverts because they have so much going on in their own heads that it’s hard to make room for additional input. Because they tend to be sensitive, they may also reach saturation sooner.
Being aware of someone’s troubles does not mean you need to fix them. People usually aren’t looking for solutions from you, they just want a sounding board. Moreover, you shut people down when you start telling them what they should do or how they should feel. Your answer to someone else’s deepest difficulties merely reflects what you would do if you were that person, which you are not.
And the answer to what had got me so fizzed up at the conference:
When someone else talks, we take mental side trips. We check out momentarily to wonder if we have spinach in our teeth. We remind ourselves to get milk on the way home or worry about how much time is left on the parking meter. We get sidetracked by things like the speaker’s hair, clothing, or body type. Of course, the biggest distraction is thinking about the urbane, witty, or in contentious situations, devastating thing we want to say next.
“The use, or misuse, of this spare thinking time holds the answer to how well a person can concentrate on the spoken word,” wrote Ralph Nichols, a professor of rhetoric at the University of Minnesota. According to Nichols, to be a good listener means using your available bandwidth not to take mental side trips but rather double down on your efforts to understand and intuit what someone is saying. He said listening well is a matter of continually asking yourself if people’s messages are valid and what their motivations are for telling you whatever they are telling you.
Title: You’re Not Listening. What You’re Missing & Why it Matters
Author: Kate Murphy
Format/Number of Pages: B-format paperback, 231 pages excluding the extensive notes section and index.
Genre: Popular Science
Topics Covered: Listening skills, language, communication, science, psychology, relationships, personal development, leadership.
Rating: Five shells! 🐚🐚🐚🐚🐚
