Listening well

So, I leave for Russia in only a few days, so this will likely be my last post for a while, other than occasional small updates from the land of Putin and Medvedev (what a great last name, btw).

Here are tips for listening well, taken from material I'm going to take our team through in preparation for four weeks of intense relational activity. Here, listening would be in a one-on-one context, vs. listening to a talk or speech.

What is it to be a good lisener?

1. Listen contextually. What is the speaker's purpose in sharing? What do they expect from you? Peer to peer sharing rarely looks for advice, but rather support and encouragement.

2. Give advice and input in very small doses, and then only when asked, and then only after the speaker has expressed himself fully. Ask questions.

Note: A lot of times when we are in listening situations, we think the speaker is looking for us to say some brilliant or insightful thing that will suddenly solve his situation. Probably we expect this because of some story we've heard where a person gave that one piece of advice that caused an epiphany. Or because we are used to movies or TV shows in which someone says some brilliant thing that breaks through, a la Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting. This is fantasy, or at least, extremely rare.

3. Try to grasp not just what the person has said, but what they are striving to say. Ask questions to clarify.

4. Repeat back to the speaker what you have heard. This forces you to listen carefully, and also affirms to the speaker that you are listening carefully.

5. Always affirm the uniqueness of the speaker's situation. Avoid the temptation to relate the expressed situation to your own experience, or someone else's experience. This will be very tempting! But it is almost never what the speaker wants.

6. Look always for truth as you listen. Ask questions that force the speaker to process through his experience more fully.