THE ESSENCE OF LISTENING

LISTENING TO HER… SORRY, HIM OR THEM

Listening should be taught in schools as a curriculum and not as something students pick up while they are trying to learn from their teachers-if it is taught, it makes it more important, if it is left for students to pick up in their process of learning as they grow into life, then we make it less important-and the truth is, the greatest challenge of the 21^st century is listening.

This does not exempt adults from learning thus truth, but the point is that it should be heavily buttressed from the scratch.

Often times people only listen when they know that it will soon be their turn to champion the talk once the listening is over, or perhaps they will be punished if they do not listen. It is important that listening be taught and not caught.

It is important that we listen to people to know their minds, their hearts and with an intention to understand them better, than to listen to them because we know the table will soon turn and it will be their turn to listen to us.

Late Steven Covey in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People puts it better, ‘seek first to understand and then to be understood’.

Listening is more about focusing your attention on the message and reviewing the important information and not waiting for your turn to prove that you “know how to talk”.

While I was young I remember I vividly wrote something in my list of quotes saying, ‘I sharpen my speaking skills when I talk but I learn what to talk about when I listen’. Listening to me is another form of learning.

One of the people I love listening to in my life either during formal discussions or informal are my father, my grandfather, my pastor, a friend of mine, Gbenga Adepetu and some others, just to mention few lest I bore you.

Most of the times, their discussions are so natural, so  weaned around details that if you do not follow deep thought, you will not realise that their speeches carry weight and strategic thought-patterns. To boast of them I will tell you that, the words of these people have fined-tuned my thoughts. In their thoughts they carry such inspiring words that make me write, think, meditate and identify things.

Too often, we let the words of people that would inspire us, dissipate into the air, with no nose of perception to breathe in the air of ideas released from their tongues.   

May I reiterate that listening is not just about hearing what a person is saying but also hearing what they are not saying?

Whenever I notice an idea in a person’s speech, I write it down – atimes it could be when we are just having fun, or when I am trying to unwind the stress of the day or the week, but I have learnt this overtime that it is the least important issues, statements, moments of our lives that are the most important.

When you listen, it is good for you not just to remove things that will distract you, but things that will also distract your speaker. I am a public speaker-overtime I have noticed that things that distract my audience also distract me, not because I am distracted but the fact that they are distracted distracts me and causes me to lose my words in the process.

Recently, after a church service in my church, I was engaged in a conversation with one of the Head of Departments in the church that I worship, I was actually listening to him and we were discussing on a new paradigm for the department after a successful project we had in the church- while he was talking, I got so engrossed in his words, but along the line, I remembered I came with a new-comer to church who I am suppose to give directions to on how to get home. Immediately I remembered, I could have done two things:

(1) excuse myself and tell my Head of Department that I will have to see this new-comer and give him direction on how to get home and then come back or  

(2) excuse myself and postpone our discussion,

but I did not do any of the two, rather I started looking around to see the new-comer, while feigning listening – but my Head of Department noticed I was no longer listening, and he attempted doing things to get my distracted attention-some minutes later I saw the new-comer and now I was willing to listen, but my Head of Department had already lost his words to my distraction and ended up departing in a very cold way.

But, I could have saved the situation, I didn’t- it is important to know that your distraction as a listener can equally distract your speaker. Let me put it this way; “sometimes it helps to “show” that an active listener is one who looks the speaker in the eye and sincerely affirm or reject his (speaker words and in writing to turn the television off to make sure that the listener is not distracted by outside inference”.

Most times that is what our distractions do to us.

My point? Let us consciously put in effort to really listen to people.

Oh! I understand, sometimes you listen to people and they over-talk you into boredom that you really just want to leave, and even when you give gestures that you are bored they still keep talking. To me that is a sort of punishment. The best thing to do is to cut the person, and politely excuse yourself. That I suppose is the exemption rule to listening.

Thank you.

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