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The Art of Listening

September 16, 2015
Clinical Education, Motivational Interviewing
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little green flying insect

It’s the practice itself that really matters

I found this on Twitter the other day, and it got me thinking about the art of listening…

While someone else is speaking, how often am I busy framing a reply? And if I’m focused on thinking about what I’m going to say next, that’s not actually listening. And then, I started thinking about how many conversations occur where both parties are more engaged in their own internal dialogues rather than a real, authentic, “I’m listening to you” dialogue.

Through this lens, silence isn’t just not speaking while someone else has the floor. Silence is a way of being, an inner stillness. In addition to silencing my “outside voice” (i.e., not interrupting), listening includes silencing my “inside voice” (see above) … and paying complete attention: with ears, eyes, undivided attention and heart.

I’ve been delivering training on Motivational Interviewing for about the last 15 years, and have spent much of that time focusing on the skill of reflective listening in clinical practice. In fairness, I also endeavor to “walk the walk” in everyday life. But something about that tweet caught my attention and made me pay attention.

Every conversation is an opportunity to simply practice listening. And like any discipline, it’s the practice itself that really matters.

Tell more stories!

September 9, 2015
Presentation Skills, Uncategorized
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firepit

 

 

“Every person is like all others, some others, and no others.”

 

Night air, pine trees, starlight and throw another log on the fire. Sitting around a fire-pit makes us all storytellers.

This weekend I finally heard the complete narrative of my dad’s1981 road trip through Canada’s Maritime provinces with Uncle Ulysses. Including the ill-advised (in retrospect) meal of fresh-cooked clams that led to their acute and enduring distress. Like all heroes, Euclid and Ulysses (actual names) valiantly carried on through their itinerary of roadside museums and historic landmarks. It all culminated on the final night of the trip where, after three days of fasting, they deemed it safe to order pizza as an accompaniment to the 6-pack of beer they’d picked up earlier. The smell of fresh pizza proved too much to bear, and as my father put it, “I said: ‘Please don’t hit the beer’; and we never did eat the pizza”. To this day, neither of them has ever tasted shellfish again.

I loved that story, and even more I loved the experience of hearing the story. The fireside version took around 15 minutes and was punctuated with the audience’s questions, observations, digressions, reflections and laughter. It was engaging, relateable, suspenseful, totally human.

This makes me think more about the axiom of “tell more stories” in presentations and workshops. For listeners, the most powerful storytelling experiences are not passive, but rather, involve actively participating as co-authors in the telling. Even in large groups or online or asynchronous learning environments this can take the form of an internal conversation and co-authoring, as each of us relates to our own lives and our personal stories.

So…my lesson learned is to try going beyond just telling stories, and to intentionally create avenues for the audience to participate in the telling. Most training venues and classrooms don’t permit campfires, but I’m inspired to find ways to leverage stories as powerful shared experiences. Every story represents the rich complexity of human experience, as each of us is “like all others, some others, and no others” (paraphrasing Murray and Kluckhohn, 1953).

Stories connect our content to others in powerful ways. Being a better presenter has to involve getting better at storytelling.

 

 

 

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