To understand someone, does not mean you have to necessarily agree with them. To understand someone means that you are listening to them, respecting their point of view, allowing them to express themselves in a risk-free and safe environment as you lend an empathic ear. As the listener, you do not probe, judge, or advise the person. Instead, you listen to understand. While the other person is speaking, you are actually listening to what they are telling you with the intent of understanding where they are coming from rather than ignoring what they are saying in an attempt to formulate a response. When you are too busy thinking of how to respond to the other person while they are still talking, then you are not listening, and if you are not listening, you cannot possibly connect with them because you are not allowing their words to touch you enough for you to put yourselves in their shoes and actually listen with empathy. When you truly listen, the message you send is, "I value you and what you have to say is important enough for me to stop what I am doing and look at you and truly listen to your words". This is a skill that must be taught, modeled and practiced. A behavioral change I plan on making in my own life is to stop interrupting people when they speak. I acknowledge that as people are speaking to me, I often make so many connections to what they're saying that I randomly burst out the connections as they come to my mind, interrupting the speaker, and often times going off on a tangent and then either the speaker forgets what they were going to say, or they're such good sports about it that they just go along with the conversation in a different direction, and never go back to their original purpose of why they were sharing those thoughts with me to begin with. I think that one of the reasons I end up interrupting with connections is to show that I'm listening and to show that I understand and connect with them, but it looks like that is not the best way to show a connection to the speaker because at that point I'm only listening to what others say through my own experiences and not as their experiences.
I plan on teaching this habit to my students as another example of creating a win-win situation. I will explain to them that when they seek to understand others first, before being understood, they are increasing their sphere of influence because they truly value others. No one wants to be around someone who does not care to listen to others and only wants to be heard. I will model this behavior with my student-teacher and then students will have a chance to practice empathic listening with a partner. I will give them different scenarios that they can role-play and I will show them the difference between empathic listening (objective) and listening with an intent to respond (subjective). My student-teacher and I will also model that it is okay to have silence between the speaker and the listener. Silence shows that you are processing the information they are giving you and also that you're not quick to want to judge, probe, or advise. I will provide them with a sheet that they can use as reference. That sheet will have three columns. One column will have examples of what we mean by judging, probing, or advising. This habit will definitely be one that will need continuous practice throughout the school year because it will take a while for us to unlearn our old behaviors and learn these new, more effective ways of listening to one another.
I plan on teaching this habit to my students as another example of creating a win-win situation. I will explain to them that when they seek to understand others first, before being understood, they are increasing their sphere of influence because they truly value others. No one wants to be around someone who does not care to listen to others and only wants to be heard. I will model this behavior with my student-teacher and then students will have a chance to practice empathic listening with a partner. I will give them different scenarios that they can role-play and I will show them the difference between empathic listening (objective) and listening with an intent to respond (subjective). My student-teacher and I will also model that it is okay to have silence between the speaker and the listener. Silence shows that you are processing the information they are giving you and also that you're not quick to want to judge, probe, or advise. I will provide them with a sheet that they can use as reference. That sheet will have three columns. One column will have examples of what we mean by judging, probing, or advising. This habit will definitely be one that will need continuous practice throughout the school year because it will take a while for us to unlearn our old behaviors and learn these new, more effective ways of listening to one another.