Did You Hear What I Didn't Say?

I teach active, empathic listening to grad students.  Many of them are highly skilled, multi-talented computer scientists from universities around the globe.

Team member's stress

When we listen accurately, everyone benefits.  We can better understand

• our client's needs
• our supervisor's instructions
• our team member's stress.

Showing awareness of unspoken feelings can hasten connection and problem-solving in difficult situations.

Empathic listening might involve guessing at a person's underlying feelings and tentatively reflecting those feelings back.  Since our emotional vocabulary might be limited to Seseme Street feelings, I provide students with lists of emotions and ask them to identify the feelings they have had in the last day, week, or month.

After the students learn and roleplay responding with empathy, I  pull troubling statements out of a bag and go around the circle, asking each student to respond to a different statement.  These are all real statements that people have said to me.

1. Young adult:  “I hate it when my parents’ friends ask me what I’m going to do with my life.  I don’t know what I want to do yet and they really want me to know.”
2. Friend:  “I spilled coffee on my keyboard.  Fried everything."
3. Friend:  “My mom’s in the psycho ward.  She tried to overdose."
4. Friend:  "My husband's so depressed, he hung a noose from a rafter in the hall.  Every day when I come home, I climb up on a ladder and cut it down.  The next day, it's up again."

The exercise is hard, but particularly hard for some of my foreign students.  Maybe they can't imagine that there is an underlying, unspoken feeling, and probably, the exercise makes no sense to them.

After my last workshop.  I asked one of my students how he felt about the class.

"It was interesting," he said.

"If one of your friends back home told you about a personal problem, what's the first thing you would say?" I asked.

"I'd say, 'thank you,' to my friend."

"Thank you?"

"It's so unusual," he said, "for someone to tell me a problem that I'd say thank you to them - thank you for trusting me with the problem."

 Thank you, my student for giving me that information. It will help me teach this unit. 

Possible Answers
Seriously, there's no "right" answer.  Just try to imagine what the other person is going through and reflect it back.  Read their body language if you can.  This response is just a first step in a longer conversation.  Also, be mindful of really really bad stuff and let your response reflect that awareness.
1.  "That must be embarrassing for you - to not be able to give them an answer."
2.  "Oh crap!! That's awful.  You must feel so mad at yourself."
3.  "You must be so shocked and worried."
4.  "Maybe he's trying to tell you something."   -- no just kidding, that would be a terrible response -- How about, "You must be afraid to go home."  or  "It sounds like you are feeling completely helpless."

(I want to cry thinking of these examples.  Please, shoot me an empathic response.)

Did You Hear What I Said? Part Two

I once taught a workshop at a national research institute for fuel cell innovation. The health and safety inspectors had put the institute on notice for bad and dangerous communication. They had to work towards correcting the problem. The institute employed scientists from around the world.  I taught workshops on listening.  They explained the problem and invited me to the site.

My workshop was called: Chicken Soup for the Inner Ear: Effective Listening in a Diverse Community.

It appeared that due to language and cultural differences, safety rules were not being heard and understood. While everyone spoke English, there was a good chance that they were also translating in their heads and something might be lost in the translation.  There were also cultural differences. 

"Imagine an expert is explaining a safety procedure," I said, "and you are not 100% sure that you understand.  It would be a good idea to say, 

• Please explain that again or 
• What do you mean by . . .? or 
• Can I repeat back my understanding of this?"

One person said, "I could not do that. It is considered rude in my culture."

We did some roleplaying and discovered a workaround, so that politeness would not lead to them being BLOWN UP by volatile chemicals.

There were about 25 scientists and engineers in the workshop. I was wondering how well they listened to one another, so we did this exercise:

I asked them to explain their job to the person next to them. The next person would have to repeat back in their own words what the first person's job was.

As we began this exercise, it quickly became obvious that rather than hearing what the person was saying, the listener interpreted it or translated it and said it back  inaccurately.  As we did this, the class became more engaged and invested.  They gradually realized that if there were so many misunderstandings and misinterpretations in this simple exercise, things might be going very badly in more complicated, technical conversations.

The company is still standing.  The only thing that has exploded so far is the myths they carried of being good communicators.

Did You Hear What I Said?  Part 1

What Do I Say Next? A Love Story for Shy People

This blog was inspired by my student, Mehdi, who wanted to know what to do about silences.

Location:  a meetup or party

Time:  midnight

"Let's have a conversation," he said.

"About what?" she said.

"About you.  About me."

Silence

"In a conversation, I talk, then you talk," he said.

"OK," she said.

Silence

"Is talking hard?" he said, trying hard to get it started.

"I never know what to say," she said.

"You have nice eyes," he said.

Silence

"Let's keep trying," he said.

Silence

"Is it too noisy here?" he said.

"Kinda," she said.

"Do you want to go for a walk?"

"Where?"

"Nearby, maybe a coffee shop or a bar.  Maybe along the waterfront."

"Is it safe?" she said.  "It's late."

"I have a 3rd degree black belt," he said.

Silence

"That's your cue," he said.

"Cue for what?"

"To continue the conversation."

"What's a 3rd degree black belt?" she said.

"Excellent!" he said.  "It's what I tell women when they are afraid to go for a walk."

Silence

"It's when I pull my belt tight, to the third hole."

"You're funny," she said.

"Have you ever been in danger?" he said.

"I'm always in danger," she said,

"I don't know what to say next," he said.  "I'm thinking one of these things:

a) You should protect yourself.  You should carry pepper spray and a whistle.

b) Considering the way you dress, I'm not surprised.

c) We all are.  These are dangerous times.

d) That's why I learned karate - to protect myself.

e) It's OK.  I'm here.

f) It must affect your life to feel that way.  You must feel anxious about trying new things or meeting new people."

"That last one is good," she said.  "You're right.  That's how I feel."

Silence

"Let's go for that walk," she said.

"Really?" he said.

"We can hold hands," she said.

Did You Hear What I Said?

I heard something and it was probably what you said, but I can't guarantee it was what you meant.  When you spoke to me just now, your words passed through my filter of personal associations, feelings, and experiences.   Not only do we all see things that other people don't see, but we also "hear" things that other people don't say.

In my first marital breakup, this conversation occurred:

Me:  "You said you'd take care of me."
Him:  "I thought you meant sexually."

If I'm speaking English as a second language, then your words also pass through the filters of understandable and expected phonemes and morphemes.  North Americans might be familiar with the expression "bus loop."  This is the area where a bus turns around, but is often an area where buses converge from different parts of the city.  A friend of mine, Gijs from Leiden, Holland, was in Vancouver visiting friends.  I was in North Burnaby and he was down near Kitsilano.  His English was quite good.  When he phoned, I told him to get on any bus and ask how to get to the Kootenay Loop.  I would meet him there.  I told him that all the bus drivers would know how he could transfer to the Kootenay Loop.

Yes fine, he said.  No problem.  I said Kootenay Loop, but that wasn't what he heard.  When he got on a bus, he asked to be taken to the Kookety Koo.  When the bus driver looked confused, he tried Koodely Doo, and Kootchety Koo, growing increasingly embarrassed and frustrated.  Luckily, he found a bus driver who figured out what he was saying.


In this wonderful poem, Troy Jollimore shines a little light on the fuzzy interface between perception and experience:

Lake Scugog

1.

Where what I see comes to rest,

at the edge of the lake,

against what I think I see

and, up on the bank, who I am

maintains an uneasy truce

with who I fear I am,

while in the cabin's shade the gap between

the words I said

and those I remember saying

is just wide enough to contain

the remains that remain

of what I assumed I knew.

2.

Out in the canoe, the person I thought you were

gingerly trades spots

with the person you are

and what I believe I believe

sits uncomfortably next to

what I believe.

When I promised I will always give you

what I want you to want,

you heard, or desired to hear,

something else.  As, over and in the lake,

the cormorant and its image

traced paths through the sky

                                  
             The New Yorker, July 27, 2009

What's the Best Thing to Say to a Troubled Person?

Statement:  "Every time I drive along that highway, I think about turning sharply and going over the edge."

Response:  "Don't do that.  Your insurance will go up if you total your car."

Statement:  "My mom overdosed last night.  She's in the psych ward now."

Response:  " "Your mom is in the psycho ward?  Yup, sounds about right."

Statement:  "My husband is so depressed, he cut a hole in the ceiling so that he could hang a rope from the joist.  Every day, when I come home from work, I climb up on a chair and cut the rope down."

Response:  "Sounds like he's bi-polar. Hey, have you heard this one?  How many manic-depressives does it take to change a light bulb?  Two. One to get the ladder -- and one to get the rope."

Have you ever heard a troubling statement from someone?  You might immediately give the person advice.  You might say something encouraging like, "Don't worry.  You'll be fine.  Everything will work out."  Maybe your first response is, "I'm sorry to hear that."  Maybe you make an offhand comment or inappropriate joke like the ones above.  These responses are not helpful.  These responses might leave the troubled person  feeling rejected, judged, barraged, isolated, and angry.  The troubled person shuts down and does not want to share any further.

So what can you say when you care about a person and want to help?

Hear what the other person is feeling and reflect it back.  This is just the first step but it is the most important.  You want the other person to know that you hear and are trying to understand.  You are not going to barrage them with your interpretations and advice.  You are not going to tell them your feelings, at least not yet.  "I'm sorry to hear that" is about your feelings and focuses on you, not the other person.  "You'll be fine" tells the other person that you do not want to deal with their problem.  "Everything will work out" is a brush-off.

Use one of these sentence starters:

• I guess you're feeling . . .  Is that it?
• You seem . . . 
• It sounds like . . . Is that it?
• I guess you wish . . . Is that it?
• You sound upset (angry, frustrated).  What's up?
• You seem worried that ... is going to happen.  Is that it?

Tentatively suggest a feeling.  If you want to expand your vocabulary of emotions, here is the NVC list of feelings.

If you really, really want to give advice so that the other person will actually hear you, say

1.  So you’re saying . . . [paraphrase their thoughts and feelings about the problem]
2.  What have you tried so far?
3.  How did that work?
4.  What else have you considered? 

Chances are the troubled person has thought more about his or her problem than you have.  With these questions, you will get a chance to understand the problem more deeply and see what real or imagined barriers keep the person stuck in their problem.  Finally, you can say:

Do you want to know what I think? or
Do you want to know what I did when that happened to me?

There's a chance they might say "yes."  They now feel understood and have agreed to listen to your ideas.

Listening is difficult.  It takes practice.
What troubling statements have you heard?  How did you answer?
Do you hate when people give you unasked-for advice or tell you to relax?