In this assignment I am required to empathetically listen to another person for 45 minutes. The listening here is not in the strict definition where I just listen and not talk at all. It is quite the opposite. I have to use techniques like asking questions, mirroring, paraphrasing and hypothesizing. Besides that, we also have to Agree, Build and Compare to points addressed.
Listening is not a good word for this. You realize that all of the skills is not in how you listen, but how you respond. Interrogate is more accurate in meaning, but definitely not in connotation. After all, you goal is to understand what someone is thinking. Whether it is an emotion, a feeling, an idea, an opinion or anything else. You just want to understand, because that is what the listenee wants. Empathetic listening is about quality, not quantity. 45 minutes can't guarantee you understand everything the listenee wants to express, but sometimes the listenee just doesn't want to talk that long.
What I have dealt with is one of the most difficult situation on Earth. I was talking to a friend on phone, and she said she hate her mother because her mother is annoying and scold her all the time and even mock about her academic results. She was very frustrated. I would like to calm her down, but I can't entirely agree on what she said, because this will add fuel to her hatred to her mother. (Luckily I knew it's not really hate, but a moment of frustration). Still, I have to calm her down. I asked her about the thing that lead her to such frustration. She was unwilling to share at first, but after I try to make some assertions, guessing what the situation was, she told me that her mother scold her because she was not studying despite the fact that she was studying all day.
What I did is I spoke from her standpoint, agreeing to what she said (her mother is XXXX annoying) while playing down her emotions. I understand her frustration because I have been in similar situations before, except the fact that I was able to keep myself calm and keep my emotions out of it. I drew a comparison to the situation I had before, and she felt I really understand. I told her how I dealt with the situation and urged her to do the same. Keep calm and stay out of it. She followed what I said and calmed down.
In this situation, I used a lot of the"listening not listening" skills (AMPP and ABC), to empathize her. But the fact is even elementary school students know this. They always ask questions, they compare each others points, built on each other, and mimic what their teacher said etc. What they do not know is that when there is some disagreement between you and the listenee, you don't have to say it directly, but you can ask more about it the understand more. You can draw comparisons to indirectly show your point. This way your voice is much more acceptable to the listenee, and you can understand more about them.
You started out by stating a better word for what we are doing is integrating. I first read this and totally disagreed until I read the part about dropping the connotation. I really tried hard to drop the connotation but I found it very difficult. So then I tried to find the a different word that would mean the same thing but that was also very hard. "Conversation" doesn't really cut it because it means an equilibrium which does not favor either reaction forward or reverse. So me and my chem mind could only relate this situation to a system at equilibrium which favors the forward reaction meaning feedback and response will travel back.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing I noticed is that you seemed to feel that agreeing (part of the ABC) is not always the right thing to do. (A quick random question, where did you learn about the ABCs I feel as though it was attached to the blog about our assignment but I couldn't find that information?). So back to the topic of agreeing, I wonder why in the ABCs the A is agreeing when it doesn't seem to apply to every situation? Next, I really liked your point that you can disagree with out explicitly stating stating that fact. It is definitely a skill I want to work on disagreeing without exactly disagreeing. I also really admire your ability to calm the situation down when you listened to your friend. You seem to really have a good handle on understanding the emotions of others. All and all I learned a lot from your listening experience about different ways to handle a listening situation and new skills to work on.
"Listening" is not all about listening sometimes. It sounds strange but it's true. As far as the assignment is concerned, listening is more like a way you communicate with other person instead of pure listening. As long as we all know what it stands for, I don't think we need to pay much attention on weather it's better to use "listening" or "interrogate", but it's good to share your argument with us, cause that's how we improve.
ReplyDeleteNo matter which words we choose to describe listening, a good listener need to be a good thinker in the meantime. I like your idea about calming your friend down at the first and then talk to her more deeply.
It seems that you are not quite agree with the advantages of those listening tools. So, do you think there's some methods that work better? I'd like to know about it if you share that.
It seems like you had to pick a difficult situation to blog about, but you handled it well. I have to agree with what you said in the end of your blog ‘even elementary students know how to do this’. It’s true they can hold conversations with each other by asking questions and applying it to their life. What differentiates their conversations with ours is something that is hard to teach and even harder to learn. Basically, you were dealing with a person who was highly emotional and looking for you to be on their side. You did a good job of supporting her and consoling her, but not just agreeing with her the whole time. We need to understand how to be tactful, especially when you are dealing with someone who is emotional like in your situation. I hope she has a better time dealing with her parents, but it’s good you are there for support.
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