When you’re ‘talking’ to others, what you should really be trying to do is listen.
Don’t:
- Just wait for your turn to talk.
- Engage in one-upmanship or verbal brinksmanship. Conversations are not debates, and you don’t need to win.
- Sermonize or lecture without a podium in front of you.
- Feel the urge to craft a linguistic epiphany in every deep conversation. This actually compromises depth.
- Fake interest — people can sense insincerity as easily as you can.
Do:
- Temporarily abandon your agenda.
- Ask and listen more than you talk.
- Listen intently — try to hear the unsaid words, the unspoken context.
- Validate what others are feeling — connect emotionally before logically.
- Believe you can learn something from everyone.
- Embrace silence. It feels deadly, but is not deadly.
- Give your inner voice the same grace and patience you give others.
“To listen well, we must create a climate which is neither critical, evaluative, nor moralizing.”
~Carl Rogers (via an excellent Aeon article by Pam Weintraub)