One of my favorite movies is Pulp Fiction. It’s an old movie so if you’re young, go out, watch this, stream it. I love the dialogue, the banter, the conversations in that movie and there's a particular scene where Mia ask John Travolta's character, “Does he listen or does he wait to talk?” And I love that question of listening and waiting to talk, because sometimes it's so easy to listen to the pieces and parts that you want to listen to and then respond to the pieces and parts and not listening all the way and you get so excited in want to respond, in start a conversation that may not even be the conversation because you're not listening. I'm not listening all the way. So what to do? How do we listen instead of wait to talk? And I dare say that this is a skill because if you've always waited to talk, then you're going to have to learn to actually listen. So here are some tips on listening all the way:
Listen all the way.
Remember when we did that head to toe scan? Where from the top of your head, all the way to the bottom. Listen like that. Look at the person that's speaking. Listen to them, lean into them. Listen all the way. You use your body, use your ears and just listen. Don't use your mouth. Keep that but not down while they're talking and part of being a good listener is part of being a good communicator. So being a good listener is part of being a good communicator so listen all the way and then what?
While you're listening, delay reserve, hang back.
Put away your judgment. Listen all the way and reserve judgment and then what do you do? You follow up, you give feedback and make sure that you're responding to what the person said and you're not just answering the question that you want to answer or are you having the conversation that you want to have because you didn't listen all the way and then, you would expect for the other person to go through the same cycle, right? You would expect for them to listen all the way. And that's why sometimes when you're talking to people and you're on your phone or you're distracted, they say, are you listening? And you say, I hear you, which is not the same thing, because you're not listening and that is why you get that question. So you would expect that that person in return listens with their whole body. They’re watching you, they're listening to you, they're listening and they are reserving judgment and they, too, are following up and giving feedback.
Ask yourself, "Are you listening?"
Are you listening all the way or are you waiting to talk? And, you know, when you're texting, it's hard to get this full level of communication because you can't look at body language. You can't hear how a person said it. You can't fully understand so that already takes out a level of being able to fully communicate.
