How to listen well to support others

Listening is a 'doing' thing. To listen is a verb. Yet many people feel they are not doing enough to help someone else by simply listening.

Listening is one of the most important ways to support someone else’s well being. If you are a parent or teacher you may find it is challenging on your time to provide a listening support to a young person. There are things you can do to maximise the time you have available, as well hone your listening skills. Think of yourself as ‘a heart with ears’. Think of yourself as a listener with a capital ‘L’. You are offering yourself as someone who is ‘listening with everything’.

Listening to others

Active listening sounds easier than it is. People who volunteer for listening services like Childline and the Samaritans undergo intensive training over a period of weeks and months before being qualified to listen to callers on the telephone, email, text or face to face.

Listening to someone else well, primarily means having to shut down your own needs, judgments, opinions and goals. It means finding a way to quieten yourself. It is essentially a selfless activity which focuses on the other person and not your own thoughts or desires to advise or direct another person. It can be very tempting to jump from being a listener into another role, such as ‘instructor’, particularly when we are listening to young people.

I find the words of the Persian poet Rumi’s helpful when I try to be a good listener for my teenage sons. Rumi said

“Somewhere beyond right and wrong, there is a place, I will meet you there”.

These words help me to ‘situate’ myself away from my own opinions and judgments when listening to young people. It frees me from a (very) strong desire to tell my children what they should do to put things right. Rumi’s words encourage us as listeners to locate and travel to a space in which we can be non-judgmental.

Listening to someone who needs and wants to talk can be very hard. It requires patience, patient understanding and more patience. We have to pack away our own notions of pace and direction in a conversation, and accept that the seeds of an important conversation may be sown over time through connecting with the other person in silence, or through a shared activity. We need to be there to connect and be ready to listen when the time is right.

How to show you are ready to listen well- put away electronic devices

Letting the person know you are there to listen, being physically and emotionally available gives strong signals to them that you are ready, patient and willing to listen when they are able to talk.

Sometimes, I notice that electronic devices can get in the way of this ‘display of availability’. It is unfortunate when that happens, because these moments for potential connection can be fleeting. If we are not ready, and signalling that we are available to listen and do nothing else but listen, then the moment is lost. If, as parents, our attention is divided between our children and our devices, those moments of potential connection will be broken each time they are delicately formed. This results in a fragility to the communication we have with our young people.

If you want to be able to listen well to others, try showing them that you are ready and available. Put away your mobile phone so that it is out of sight as well as out of earshot. Turn away from your electronic device, put the lid of your laptop down. Turn and face the person who is talking to give them your undivided attention. Do not think you can listen and be in cyberspace at the same time. Even glimpsing a text will convey to the other person that you have travelled somewhere else. There is research that shows that simply having a mobile phone in sight on the table in front of you is enough to impair the sense of connection between two people.

Be ready to spot the opportunity for listening. This is especially important with adolescents, who may give signals that they want to talk in subtle ways. A car journey can be a good place for listening. Be available to your young person as much as you can, even when time is short, be around them. I find it helps to move into my kitchen every time I hear the teenagers rustling for more food 45 minutes after their last meal. Just being there- taking a plate through, making a cup of tea, drying the dishes, puts me in the same space as them, and often opens up an opportunity to talk.

Active Listening is not;

· Giving advice

· Passing judgment

· Trying to fix difficult feelings/problems

Active Listening is;

· Non-judgmental

· Empathic

· Taking the time and adjusting pace of communication to match the speaker

· Validating emotions- allowing people to have their feelings regardless of what they are

· Summarising and checking back on understanding of the situation and the feelings

· Asking questions rather than providing ‘solutions’ or ‘interventions’

Listening to Yourself

That wise old poet Rumi also said

“The quieter you become, the more you can hear”.

When we think about listening we might imagine it is all about listening to someone or something else. There is however, a deep listening activity which we use to tune in to our own internal physical and emotional states. We could practise ‘Taking Notice’, tuning into our inner thoughts and feelings as we rush about our busy lives. Often it is the people around us who notice we are stressed first, before we realise this ourselves. Often it is the people around us who hear the strain in our voices before we notice that ourselves.

If we take the time to listen to ourselves, we can develop self-awareness of our own feelings and vulnerability. We can then practise self-care, which will lead us to a place of greater resilience. When we start with ourselves, we will be able to listen and support others to better effect.