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Brains learn from other brains, and listening well is the simplest way to draw a thread, open a channel.
The psychologist Carl Rogers and the art of active listening | Aeon EssaysAnd lest this all sound a bit pious – active listening is not pure altruism. Listening well, as Rogers said, is ‘a growth experience’. It allows us to get the best of others. The carousel of souls is endless. People have deeply felt and fascinating lives, and they can enfranchise us to worlds we would never otherwise know. If we truly listen, we expand our own intelligence, emotional range, and sense that the world remains open to discovery. Active listening is a kindness to others but, as Rogers was always quick to make clear, it is also a gift to ourselves.
The psychologist Carl Rogers and the art of active listening | Aeon EssaysYet this generosity of attention is what people deserve.
The psychologist Carl Rogers and the art of active listening | Aeon EssaysThe people who listen so hard that they pull new things out of us – who hear things we didn’t even say – are the ones we grab on to for life.
The psychologist Carl Rogers and the art of active listening | Aeon EssaysTo sincerely listen means to marshal a mixture of agency, compassion, attention and commitment.
The psychologist Carl Rogers and the art of active listening | Aeon EssaysThe active listener’s job is to simply be there, to focus on ‘thinking with people instead of for or about them’. This thinking with requires listening for what Rogers calls ‘total meaning’. This means registering both the content of what they are saying, and (more subtly) the ‘feeling or attitude underlying this content’.
The psychologist Carl Rogers and the art of active listening | Aeon EssaysAnd when we do intervene, following Rogers, we must resist the ever-present urge to drag the focus of the conversation back to ourselves. Sociologists call this urge ‘the shift response’. When a friend tells me they’d love to visit Thailand, I must resist the selfish pull to leap in with Oh yeah, Thailand is great, I spent Christmas in Koh Lanta once, did I ever tell you about the Muay Thai class I did? Instead, I must stay with them: where exactly do they want to go, and why? Sociologists call this ‘the support response’. To listen well is to step back, keep the focus with someone else.
The psychologist Carl Rogers and the art of active listening | Aeon Essays‘To listen to oneself,’ he wrote, ‘is a prerequisite to listening to others.’ Here, the analogy with meditation is clear: don’t chase every thought, don’t react to every internal event, stay centred. Today, in conversation, I try to constantly remind myself: only react, only intervene, when invited or when it will obviously be welcome.
The psychologist Carl Rogers and the art of active listening | Aeon EssaysUntil we can demonstrate a spirit which genuinely respects the potential worth of an individual,’ he writes, we won’t be good listeners.
The psychologist Carl Rogers and the art of active listening | Aeon EssaysThe flipside of not listening is not questioning – because, when you don’t want to listen, the last thing you want to do is trigger the exact scenario in which you are most expected to listen.
The psychologist Carl Rogers and the art of active listening | Aeon EssaysThe exceptions to this state of affairs, I began to see, were situations where there existed self-interest. If the subject was me, or material that might be of benefit to me, my attention would automatically sharpen. It was very easy to listen to someone explaining what steps I needed to take to ace a test or make some money.
The psychologist Carl Rogers and the art of active listening | Aeon EssaysI had a horrible habit, I saw, of sitting in silent linguistic craftsmanship, shaping my answer for when my turn came around – and only half-listening to what I’d actually be responding to.
The psychologist Carl Rogers and the art of active listening | Aeon EssaysAs a culture, we treat listening as an automatic process about which there is not a lot to say: in the same category as digestion, or blinking. When the concept of listening is addressed at any length, it is in the context of professional communication; something to be honed by leaders and mentors, but a specialisation that everyone else can happily ignore. This neglect is a shame. Listening well, it took me too long to discover, is a sort of magic trick: both parties soften, blossom, they are less alone.
The psychologist Carl Rogers and the art of active listening | Aeon EssaysWhen people talk, listen completely… Most people never listen.’
The psychologist Carl Rogers and the art of active listening | Aeon Essays