The first step was deciding that you want to pay attention to what you are hearing [that is, you are willing to listen to what someone else is saying] and so you set a specific time to do so. Now, what do you do? The act of listening is not easy to do, but it is easy to learn. One of the most important tools in the arsenal of listening, is repeating. In other words, when somebody says a sentence to you, say it back to them. If you need to, start with, “I heard you say…..” and then say what you heard. You would be amazed at how difficult this is for some people to do. But you would also find the effect it has on people to be quite extraordinary. People actually lose their aggression and hostility when they think they’ve been heard, when they feel that someone paid attention to their words. And then, the more sentences you repeat, the more you start to hear the words, and more importantly, understand what the person is really trying to say.
So much of conversation is perception, often wrong, about the nuances in tone, sentence structure and gesture. When we repeat back the sentences we heard, we hear them devoid of perceived tone. We, in turn, don’t overreact to what we thought we heard. The whole conversation becomes clearer.
As both sides do this, the results magnify. Suddenly, disputes disappear and dialog takes its place. This works in workplace settings as well as in family or relationship disputes. If the parties can’t achieve this on their own, that’s why people like me exist, to help facilitate a dialogue that makes both sides feel validated. Validation is vindication, and then people can move on.
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