
The last post focused on working on your marriage as a key strategy for keeping the family project afloat ~ makes sense, right? It’s the foundation upon which the whole project is built. Though I missed a beat last week due to Covid illness, this post resumes the 3rd installment* of the 10-week series which explores one new core social-emotional capacity each week to strengthen your family and partnership. This week’s post focuses on a seemingly simple, yet deceivingly difficult practice: listening.
We usually come into love and marriage with a great deal of expectation including the desire to be understood, seen, heard, and valued by our partner. While some expectations are more hidden and some more conscious, most of us believe our expectations will be met, though this isn’t always the case as anyone in a long-term relationship can attest, for better or for worse.
Some expectations are non-negotiable however, and for most marriages not feeling heard by your partner, particularly if the pattern has become entrenched over the years, is a deal breaker.
It’s easy to understand how important it is for partners to listen to one another, but the same holds true for our kids as well. Children need to be understood, seen, heard and valued by their parents in order to have a sense of trust and safety in the relationship, or what psychologists call secure attachment. Listening is a key ingredient in creating these safe and secure bonds.
So while learning to listen is incredibly important to being able to fundamentally relate to the most important people in our lives, we are not always attuned to the ways in which we don’t actually hear what our significant others are saying.
Thus, the question remains: how do we actually listen?
The Co-Active Coaching framework utilized many coaching credentialing programs provides us with a simple, yet robust framework for understanding listening, which takes place at three levels in this view:
Level 1 is referred to as “internal listening” ~ it’s what we do when we hear the words someone else is saying, but we are focused instead on our thoughts, feelings and sensations as well as to how we plan to respond to what we are hearing. It’s about the “me” in listening versus the “you.” Level 1 listening takes place when we are multi-tasking, sifting through our phone, or generally rushing through life.
Level 2 listening is referred to as “focused listening” ~ it takes place when we bracket our own responses and focus more intently with interest and curiosity on what the other person is saying. In coaching, Level 2 listening occurs when a coach pays a great deal of attention to the coachee without judgement, agendas, or opinions. It’s not that coaches just don’t interject these thoughts and feelings, but we work to bracket them, so that we can come from a more neutral place to better understand what someone else is saying.
Level 3 is referred to as “global listening,” and it is a form of listening more akin to a Jedi master. Level 3 listening is when we are more subtly tuned into the speaker, but also to the surrounding environment. It’s considered a more highly evolved form of listening, which also enables us to tap into our intuition. Level 3 listening is more rare and by its nature requires deeper attunement to others, self and surroundings.
Most of us spend a lot of our time hanging out at Level 1. We are usually so busy thinking about what we want to say in response to someone else, that we end up not tuning in. Paying attention to what someone else is saying, least of all our kids or our partners, when chores need to be done, the table needs to be set, or we need to get out the door is not easy!
Level 2 listening is far more difficult to master in every context including with your significant other, your kids, your friends, and sometimes even with your boss. Why? Because it can be amazingly taxing. Here are several things Level 2 listening requires:
Not being distracted, i.e., on your cell phone or multi-tasking
Prescencing yourself to the person by shifting your full attention to them
Bracketing your own stuff in terms of whatever is going on with you in the moment
Showing up with your body in terms of nonverbal communication – i.e., making eye contact and shifting your body towards the person
Getting curious about what the person is saying by engaging with responsive words, questions, or gestures like an affirming head nod
Tired yet? Level 2 listening requires a great deal of effort and concentration. That’s why people pay other people to do it. In our day to day lives, it just doesn’t happen that often.
The problem is that we pay a price for frequent Level 1 listening both with our partner and our kids, not to mention our friendships and other folks.
Not only is it harder to connect when we don’t take the time to presence ourselves and provide our undivided attention, but we also miss an important opportunity to help our kids, and yes, even our spouse, develop the ability to reflect on their own thinking. That’s because Level 2 listening actually cultivates greater self-understanding for the speaker, especially when the listener asks what we call in Positive Discipline “curiosity questions’ ~ open ended questions inviting the speaker to dig deeper or parse apart their own thoughts. It’s a bit like the Socratic Method, but on a more informal and regular basis. Dr. Dan Siegal calls this capacity for greater reflection into self and into others mindsight and explores it in in his book Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation.
When parents tune in and ask questions, we actually strengthen not only our own mindsight capacity, but that of our kids, too. This is an important development for our children, and parents can help cultivate it. The same holds true for partners.
When we can’t listen with more intention, we can ask our partner or kid to hold that thought until we can and make sure to circle back around with them. They will appreciate it because they’ll know you care and are interested in what is going on with them.
All of us thrive on attention and a supportive ear. The truth is, we need it ~ it helps us to know ourselves better and to feel connected to and loved by others. The good news is, we can all become better listeners with practice. So next opportunity you get, sit up. Pay attention. Put away your phone. Then relax and get curious.
*Last week was mislabeled as the 3rd installment; it was actually the second.
Explore More
Tuesdays@Noon, Upcoming Drop-In Parenting Chat Group (ongoing brief support) – https://www.mapwisdom.com/service-page/weekly-tuesday-noon-drop-in-parents-chat?referral=service_list_widget
Thursdays@Noon, Upcoming Drop-In Couples Chat Group (ongoing brief support) - https://www.mapwisdom.com/service-page/weekly-thursday-noon-drop-in-couple-chat?referral=service_list_widget
Further Learning
Co-Active Coaching: The Proven Framework for Transformative Conversations at Work and in Life (2018), Henry Kimsey-House, Karen Kimsey-House, Phillip Sandahl and Laura Whitworth
Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation (2009), Dan Siegel