LISTENING(2)
Last time I wrote about communication. Conveying one's wishes, one's ideas, one's personality, in order to create and maintain relationships depends on communication. Our ability to help ourselves and others depends on communication. But helping requires more than one-sided communication. It requires conversation, it requires listening. Helpful communication requires that we speak and listen, not engage in monologues. We all know people who speak well but don't really interact with others because they don't listen.
Dr. Joyce Brothers recently gave some good advice about listening. Her advice was addressed to recipients of requests for help but applies equally to all communications. She advised using body language to indicate interest, defining the issue, analyzing options and knowing your limits, among several good suggestions. But I thought her most important advice was to let the other person speak.
One of my worst faults is mentally leaping ahead of the conversation, assuming I know where the speaker is going and interrupting the conversation. I continually work to eliminate this fault but something, maybe impatience, maybe inattention, perpetuates my fault. It's an important fault to eliminate. Interrupting is impolite, unpleasant and seemingly indicates lack of concern for what other people say and think. I'll continue to work on this. But Dr. Brothers points out another aspect of this fault: If you don't hear everything another person has to say about a topic, you lose your chance to understand them, you deter them from understanding you and your opportunity to create a relationship may be lost, the opportunity to help may be eliminated.
It seems simple enough. Wait. Wait until the other person has clearly finished. Don't speak until you're sure. While you may experience awkward pauses once in a while, that's better than interrupting. I think I can do it if I can accept the occasional silences. (I hope I don't run into too many slow talkers.) In this way, I'll be doing my best to know and understand and help as needed.
11-25-02
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