Listen to Understand

Great article with lots of practical ways to implement it. In my view this is a superpower and I find I can usually do it if I'm not stressed or tired.

As follow-up thoughts:

- It's important whom you listen to. Consider it a gift you're giving and give it only to those who you think deserve and not abuse it or make you consistently feel bad about something.

- Those listeners are also very healthy in/for a group,e.g., at work.

- Listening is a big part of managing a team. People's thoughts are often all over the place and it's your job (partly) to structure these, within a person and a across a team. People that feel heard are much more inclined to listen.

- For starters: Just make an effort to ask five open-ended questions in every conversation you have. You will see how people open up after some time. This also works for family, dates, colleagues, ...

"How did that make you feel"

It made me feel like I'm talking with someone role-playing a therapist; it's just my worldview but if I want to talk about how something made feel I will talk about it but dislike to be directly inquired, is evident that this is way of thinking is more common in men than women of course.

It’s great advice.

If you can be intentional going in to a conversation then I think the chances to serving the other person through listening becomes much higher.

It’s truly a gift…offering someone your time and attention. Possibly the most valuable gift you can give - I don’t mean that facetiously.

The Gottmans talk about bids for attention. It’s random comments inviting the other person to engage.

This sounds really similar.

Sometimes listening is hard bc you don't really care or the speaker's way of relaying content and presentation is very boring.

Solid advice for as long as one can stand only listening. My experience is as mentioned in the post, people are egocentric and don't bother listening. That's why I stopped telling others how I feel or how things are after a while, and only superficially pay attention to them. Saves me some energy as well.