As someone who has taught and researched listening skills, I found this article very insightful.
However, let me add that the simple skills they described at the beginning (not interrupting, saying "um-hum," and being able to repeat back), are still good to teach because they are better than what most people do much of the time.
I despise the tactic of repeating back what other people said - it shows me that the other person isn't really dwelling on what I said, or more often in my experience, are using that to distort what I am saying in order to fit a particular agenda. I rather someone not fake listening in that case and wasting everyone's time.
Do you have any book recommendations on listening and/or conversational skills? I read one on a whim, and felt it was pretty insightful, but could probably stand to read another one or two.
The computational complexity varieties of listening:
Let n be the number of things the other is talking about (tricky to define a "thing" but, whatever?, use a consistent thing metric)
- O(1) listening: ignoring/may as well not be there - reading your phone while the other talks to you
- O(n) listening: loading their information into your brain while they talk - e.g. repeating back to them, nodding to salient points
- O(n log n) listening: sorting the information they've talked about - talking about the most important bits (after hearing everything)
- O(n^2) listening: cross-comparing all the things they've said for informational pairings
- O(|V|_n + |E|_n + |V|_m + |E|_m) listening: suppose your thoughts are laid out in network form, |V|_x and |E|_x are the # vertices and edges for person x. You are m. Then this is breadth-first search on both your idea-networks.
etc. Thoughts?
edit: I wonder how P and NP come into this! For instance, if someone asks you a question that takes P work, you should be able to derive the answer from what you've talked about alone. But if someone asks you something like, "Were you at that party 25 years ago?" and you have since forgotten, but then your other friend produces a photograph of you in a pair of silly glasses and a clown afro, you can verify quickly that you were! The hardness of remembering something might be classifiable by computational class?
> O(n^2) listening: cross-comparing all the things they've said for informational pairings
If you manage to think of a good hash function for everything they say, you can use a hash table and cross-check every new thing they say in O(1), which makes the total complexity O(n).
This is almost comical :p The brain is not a turing machine. You can't make these kind of analysis because the brain isn't just a huge von neumann computer.
I find it a bit odd you categorize methods of listening by computational complexity, rather than by the method itself. Also, the brain is not a sequential machine. And different algorithms can be used to achieve the same effect.
For example:
- O(n^2) listening: cross-comparing all the things they've said for informational pairings
Most people prefer talking to listening, so just asking a few question can get most conversations going. It's not unusual to hear someone say "we had such a great chat" when really that person did most of the talking. A trick that is used by many introverts, with great success.
"With great success" for the introvert. The person doing the talking didn't really gain anything.
And also when this happens to me I actually don't enjoy it. Propping up one sided conversations sucks, and I doubt that nearly as many people enjoy it as you're assuming.
This is why I come to HN..to find articles like this. This defies what you learn at school, because I have been taught numerous times, to nod and stfu when you're holding a convo.
Always interrupt if you have something constructive to say in a casual/business conversation (unless you're in a debate), that's how you gain trust and credibility.
This depends on the person talking. In work situations I have dealt with some (rare) people who will just talk over you if you try to politely insert a suggestion or a question.
Very occasionally, the right response is to interrupt them impolitely. Much more often the best thing is to let them finish. It's an almost passive-aggressive solution, but sometimes it's the best you can do.
I distinguish 'interject' (ie. to quickly add in your two bits' worth and then allow the speaker to resume) from 'interrupt' (ie. to talk over them and keep talking, often on a different topic).
> Always interrupt if you have something constructive to say...
This is dangerous advice. Being perceived as someone who frequently interrupts is socially detrimental. As another commenter said, save it for when someone really makes it necessary, and converse with grace at all other times.
In my experience building organizations that have totaled over 275 humans: it's a rare, rare person that can truly distinguish hearing from listening. The key to being a good listener is simple: always, to the absolute best of your cognition, meet the speaker in their place.
After almost a year volunteering in 7cups.com as a listener, I can't agree more with the article. When you show genuine interest for what other people are telling you, they will talk openly for hours and will leave the conversation feeling way better than they started it.
> almost a year volunteering in 7cups.com as a listener
How have you found it? I've thought about doing that myself from time to time, and I would value anything you'd like to share about your experience there.
I don't think that's a very good metric. In fact easily coming up with follow up questions that already come to one's mind while listening is a strong indicator for an engaging conversation.
Or did you mean "being busy" as struggling to come up with anything worthwhile to say? Then I'd agree.
It's tough to not think about what you want to say/add when the conversation is engaging.
That is, "your thoughts, when told to me, made me have my own thoughts about the subject which, hopefully when I tell you, will make you think as well."
There are moments where I stop myself from interjecting during a quick pause, and rather politely wait for a long pause to add my viewpoint only for the conversation to have altered course to the point that I'd have to backtrack on a topic no one is talking about anymore. Something that is especially difficult to do when it's a group conversation.
To disengage the impulse to attempt to further/enrich the conversation has got to be a learned behavior, in my view.
This type of debate raises the question of what kind of conversation is best. Is just being listened to better than having a thoroughly-engaging convo? Depends on the person and the moment.
I'm a good listener, but not at the moment. After long days of programming and some lack of sleep I notice that my listening is going down. I really dislike this because I think now I'm faking to be a good listener.
As for a lot of things: rest and sleep is important.
"People’s appraisal of their listening ability is much like their assessment of their driving skills, in that the great bulk of adults think they’re above average."
Well, the vast majority of people are actually above average drivers. If you got into 0 accidents over the past year, then you are doing better than average.
(Similarly, most people have more legs than the average human)
> "People’s appraisal of their listening ability is much like their assessment of their driving skills, in that the great bulk of adults think they’re above average."
My take on this is that most people DO have above average driving skills. However, that is using each persons INDIVIDUAL driving skills assessment criteria.
So a cautious person would say that they are above average because they are cautious while driving. Similarly an impatient person would say that they are above average because they make turning decisions fast and don't waste other's time. So the corollary is that individual people see that nearly everyone else is a worse driver than them, because they have different value systems.
There are many factors other than the number of accidents that also contribute to driving skill.
Now, if some holistic measure was also skewed in a similar fashion, you would still be correct. But that would require further analysis to demonstrate.
Depends on what sort of average. We might consider medians instead (with some way to make sense of these against the general backdrop of a non-continuous distribution).
Listening is innate
Listening is not an active skill. Practicing it as such diminishes your ability to truly listen.
Listening is improved through improving your own peace of mind
One’s peace of mind is improved by doing good things. E.g. completing chores, being nice to people, doing things that reduce your regrets / guilt, etc.
DO NOT follow much of the incorrect advice given around active listening and traits of a good listener.
Listening is a special case of all using any sense, and the above advice applies similarly
I mean, I hear where you're coming from and I'm not going to say you're wrong, but this is like saying that endurance training is unnecessary because humans are innately able to run marathons.
Honestly, it seems as if the article is just bending the definition of listening. It appears their idea of "the best listener" is the person who engages you the most in conversation. Sure, that person might be a more valuable person to talk to, but I fail to see why that has to be the definition of a great listener.
No, it is not arbitrarily changing the definition. They did a study where they asked people to identify how good others were at listening, and then studied what behaviors distinguished those who got the highest ratings.
>>> thus, if you’ve been criticized (for example) for offering solutions rather than listening,
>guilty
This is not necessarily a question of "guilty". There are two major directions a conversation can go - "sympathy" or "solution". If your partner wants one, and you give the other, you operate under wrong premises due to an unstated assumption. On both sides.
(If your "guilty" was a request for sympathy, I'm currently failing majorly. :)
You could do worse than ask people what they want out of a conversation when you start the conversation.
One thing that helps for expressing sympathy is using words or metaphors that describe the the person's emotions, like "that sounds scary" or "you sound angry"
Another thing is to describe what seems to be the heart of the problem, like "you want to trust him, but you aren't sure it's a good idea."
Also, once the person feels like they have expressed themselves and been well-heard, that may be all they want. But other times they then move on to a solution, either on their own or are interested in your ideas.
Listening is a journey. Now I seek conversation with people usually unaccustomed to being listened to. To give my trust as they give theirs, a conversation can be a beautiful joyous thing.
Listening, and the mode of listening, depends very much on the mode of conversation.
If the case is someone issuing orders, particularly in a critical situation, then yes, you want people to follow attentively, acknowledge the statements, and recall them, correctly, as they apply them.
If you're having a casual conversation with friends, you're looking to, generally, build rapport and mutual cohesion. It's active listening (or more, mutual conversation), but the focus is often lacking -- things can wander.
If you're hashing through (or reviewing) ideas with someone, or a small group, then the highly focused form of interactive participation described is appropriate. Where it's successful -- where people have sufficiently common experience to follow the discussion, but sufficiently divergent to be able to suggest productive directions, and the participants are engaged and committed to supporting the conversation rather than scoring points, torpedoing it, or bolstering some ideology, then that conversational magic can happen.
I suspect an Anna Karenina principle is at play -- good conversations are all good in the same (or at least strongly similar) ways. Bad conversations are each bad in their own way.
I've had the experience of the mistaken interrupter -- the person who tries to finish your thoughts ... but is always wrong (there's a YouTube video of this I saw recently, it's very much as infuriating in real life as the video makes out). I've known people who cannot follow a conversation at all -- it's somewhat like leading a small child along, and prodding them. Not only do you have to point them in the right direction every few feet, but they're wandering off in some utterly incorrect (and inexplicable) direction when you don't do so. In one case, this seems related to an inability to form a correct model of what's happening in other people's minds (or having any idea that such a model might be useful).
There's lack of familiarity with material, there's prior beliefs and knowledge which aren't correct. There's inability to draw connections or inferences (often accompanied by anger or frustration when prompted or coached to try doing so).
A huge fraction of what I do for a living is as a consultant or an interviewer. So I had better be an effective and in particular high-bandwidth listener.
1. I absolutely provide feedback about what I think I heard. One common technique is versions of "I think I understood you to say X, Y and Z. But I have question A, and whatever you said that sounded vaguely like B flew totally over my head."
That kind of thing boosts my understanding in a hurry. And the other party usually seems to appreciate it.
2. It's a cliche' in consulting that whatever question the client asks isn't the question they should be asking, or the most important one that's on their mind. So you have to get somehow from the stated question to the real one. In some consulting relationships, that can take days or weeks, and you'll still have done a great job. But in others you need to do it pretty much on the spot, in the same part of the same conversation that the question was originally asked.
3. If you feel you interrupted too much, then stop and invite the person to repeat themselves uninterrupted. I believe that I am usually forgiven when I do that.
The article misses something important. It presents 'being a good listener' as a way of tricking the other person into giving up information. OTOH a REALLY good listener is genuinely interested in what the other person has to say. It's not a mind-game or a piece of oneupmanship: you have to actually give shit because this is a human being talking, not just an 'FTE'.
One of my favorite listeners is the pianist Chick Corea. Sure he can dazzle when the spotlight is on him but the support he provides as an accompanist is also top notch. Interestingly his listening skills as a jazz pianist are evident in his speech. In the same way that he helps his colleagues on the band stand to realize their visions in the moment he also seems to help channel the ideas of the people he talks with. There is an interview he did with John Mayer that I think illustrates this well. IMO Corea is a better listener than Mayer where as Mayer seems to be more involved with his own thoughts.
The six levels suggested in the article could also serve as a guide for speakers.
If you're trying to convey important information and the listener just doesn't seem to get it, ask yourself whether you are expecting them to engage in a higher, more demanding level of listening than they are currently able to.
For example, the article says that 80% of what most people try to communicate occur at Level 4: body language. But if you can convey at least some of that information verbally, you'll be able to achieve similar results even if the listener is only at Level 3. This is especially useful if the listener is on the other side of a phone call or an internet forum.
[+] [-] woodandsteel|9 years ago|reply
However, let me add that the simple skills they described at the beginning (not interrupting, saying "um-hum," and being able to repeat back), are still good to teach because they are better than what most people do much of the time.
Here's another HN link on listening: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12228062
[+] [-] Xcelerate|9 years ago|reply
Heck, merely not pulling your phone out is better than what most people do most of the time.
[+] [-] Bahamut|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericdykstra|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cammil|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pizza|9 years ago|reply
Let n be the number of things the other is talking about (tricky to define a "thing" but, whatever?, use a consistent thing metric)
- O(1) listening: ignoring/may as well not be there - reading your phone while the other talks to you
- O(n) listening: loading their information into your brain while they talk - e.g. repeating back to them, nodding to salient points
- O(n log n) listening: sorting the information they've talked about - talking about the most important bits (after hearing everything)
- O(n^2) listening: cross-comparing all the things they've said for informational pairings
- O(|V|_n + |E|_n + |V|_m + |E|_m) listening: suppose your thoughts are laid out in network form, |V|_x and |E|_x are the # vertices and edges for person x. You are m. Then this is breadth-first search on both your idea-networks.
etc. Thoughts?
edit: I wonder how P and NP come into this! For instance, if someone asks you a question that takes P work, you should be able to derive the answer from what you've talked about alone. But if someone asks you something like, "Were you at that party 25 years ago?" and you have since forgotten, but then your other friend produces a photograph of you in a pair of silly glasses and a clown afro, you can verify quickly that you were! The hardness of remembering something might be classifiable by computational class?
[+] [-] Artoemius|9 years ago|reply
If you manage to think of a good hash function for everything they say, you can use a hash table and cross-check every new thing they say in O(1), which makes the total complexity O(n).
[+] [-] sovietmudkipz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrepd|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|9 years ago|reply
For example:
- O(n^2) listening: cross-comparing all the things they've said for informational pairings
Who says this can't be done in O(n log n)?
[+] [-] solipsism|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _v7gu|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ptype|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ethanbond|9 years ago|reply
And also when this happens to me I actually don't enjoy it. Propping up one sided conversations sucks, and I doubt that nearly as many people enjoy it as you're assuming.
[+] [-] hamhamed|9 years ago|reply
Always interrupt if you have something constructive to say in a casual/business conversation (unless you're in a debate), that's how you gain trust and credibility.
[+] [-] adrianratnapala|9 years ago|reply
Very occasionally, the right response is to interrupt them impolitely. Much more often the best thing is to let them finish. It's an almost passive-aggressive solution, but sometimes it's the best you can do.
[+] [-] taneq|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwanem|9 years ago|reply
This is dangerous advice. Being perceived as someone who frequently interrupts is socially detrimental. As another commenter said, save it for when someone really makes it necessary, and converse with grace at all other times.
[+] [-] hammock|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neom|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solipsism|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] namaemuta|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwanem|9 years ago|reply
How have you found it? I've thought about doing that myself from time to time, and I would value anything you'd like to share about your experience there.
[+] [-] altendo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AdieuToLogic|9 years ago|reply
Am I busy thinking about what I'm going to say when I get a chance?
The more the answer is "yes" the less listening a person is performing.
[+] [-] thirdsun|9 years ago|reply
Or did you mean "being busy" as struggling to come up with anything worthwhile to say? Then I'd agree.
[+] [-] personlurking|9 years ago|reply
That is, "your thoughts, when told to me, made me have my own thoughts about the subject which, hopefully when I tell you, will make you think as well."
There are moments where I stop myself from interjecting during a quick pause, and rather politely wait for a long pause to add my viewpoint only for the conversation to have altered course to the point that I'd have to backtrack on a topic no one is talking about anymore. Something that is especially difficult to do when it's a group conversation.
To disengage the impulse to attempt to further/enrich the conversation has got to be a learned behavior, in my view.
This type of debate raises the question of what kind of conversation is best. Is just being listened to better than having a thoroughly-engaging convo? Depends on the person and the moment.
[+] [-] huuu|9 years ago|reply
I'm a good listener, but not at the moment. After long days of programming and some lack of sleep I notice that my listening is going down. I really dislike this because I think now I'm faking to be a good listener.
As for a lot of things: rest and sleep is important.
[+] [-] GuiA|9 years ago|reply
Well, the vast majority of people are actually above average drivers. If you got into 0 accidents over the past year, then you are doing better than average.
(Similarly, most people have more legs than the average human)
[+] [-] spicyj|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bostonvaulter2|9 years ago|reply
My take on this is that most people DO have above average driving skills. However, that is using each persons INDIVIDUAL driving skills assessment criteria.
So a cautious person would say that they are above average because they are cautious while driving. Similarly an impatient person would say that they are above average because they make turning decisions fast and don't waste other's time. So the corollary is that individual people see that nearly everyone else is a worse driver than them, because they have different value systems.
[+] [-] dwaltrip|9 years ago|reply
Now, if some holistic measure was also skewed in a similar fashion, you would still be correct. But that would require further analysis to demonstrate.
[+] [-] Chinjut|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cellularmitosis|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cammil|9 years ago|reply
https://letmeexplainyou.wordpress.com/2016/08/17/how-to-list...
TL;DR / Summary:
Listening is innate Listening is not an active skill. Practicing it as such diminishes your ability to truly listen. Listening is improved through improving your own peace of mind One’s peace of mind is improved by doing good things. E.g. completing chores, being nice to people, doing things that reduce your regrets / guilt, etc. DO NOT follow much of the incorrect advice given around active listening and traits of a good listener. Listening is a special case of all using any sense, and the above advice applies similarly
[+] [-] throwanem|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] z3t4|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DarkTree|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woodandsteel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hoodoof|9 years ago|reply
It seems to me that the key to listening is to actually be present and not half thinking about something else or what YOU want to say. Hard to do.
>> thus, if you’ve been criticized (for example) for offering solutions rather than listening,
guilty
[+] [-] groby_b|9 years ago|reply
This is not necessarily a question of "guilty". There are two major directions a conversation can go - "sympathy" or "solution". If your partner wants one, and you give the other, you operate under wrong premises due to an unstated assumption. On both sides.
(If your "guilty" was a request for sympathy, I'm currently failing majorly. :)
You could do worse than ask people what they want out of a conversation when you start the conversation.
[+] [-] woodandsteel|9 years ago|reply
Another thing is to describe what seems to be the heart of the problem, like "you want to trust him, but you aren't sure it's a good idea."
Also, once the person feels like they have expressed themselves and been well-heard, that may be all they want. But other times they then move on to a solution, either on their own or are interested in your ideas.
[+] [-] WalterBright|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] losteverything|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|9 years ago|reply
If the case is someone issuing orders, particularly in a critical situation, then yes, you want people to follow attentively, acknowledge the statements, and recall them, correctly, as they apply them.
If you're having a casual conversation with friends, you're looking to, generally, build rapport and mutual cohesion. It's active listening (or more, mutual conversation), but the focus is often lacking -- things can wander.
If you're hashing through (or reviewing) ideas with someone, or a small group, then the highly focused form of interactive participation described is appropriate. Where it's successful -- where people have sufficiently common experience to follow the discussion, but sufficiently divergent to be able to suggest productive directions, and the participants are engaged and committed to supporting the conversation rather than scoring points, torpedoing it, or bolstering some ideology, then that conversational magic can happen.
I suspect an Anna Karenina principle is at play -- good conversations are all good in the same (or at least strongly similar) ways. Bad conversations are each bad in their own way.
I've had the experience of the mistaken interrupter -- the person who tries to finish your thoughts ... but is always wrong (there's a YouTube video of this I saw recently, it's very much as infuriating in real life as the video makes out). I've known people who cannot follow a conversation at all -- it's somewhat like leading a small child along, and prodding them. Not only do you have to point them in the right direction every few feet, but they're wandering off in some utterly incorrect (and inexplicable) direction when you don't do so. In one case, this seems related to an inability to form a correct model of what's happening in other people's minds (or having any idea that such a model might be useful).
There's lack of familiarity with material, there's prior beliefs and knowledge which aren't correct. There's inability to draw connections or inferences (often accompanied by anger or frustration when prompted or coached to try doing so).
Fascinating things, minds.
[+] [-] CurtMonash|9 years ago|reply
1. I absolutely provide feedback about what I think I heard. One common technique is versions of "I think I understood you to say X, Y and Z. But I have question A, and whatever you said that sounded vaguely like B flew totally over my head."
That kind of thing boosts my understanding in a hurry. And the other party usually seems to appreciate it.
2. It's a cliche' in consulting that whatever question the client asks isn't the question they should be asking, or the most important one that's on their mind. So you have to get somehow from the stated question to the real one. In some consulting relationships, that can take days or weeks, and you'll still have done a great job. But in others you need to do it pretty much on the spot, in the same part of the same conversation that the question was originally asked.
3. If you feel you interrupted too much, then stop and invite the person to repeat themselves uninterrupted. I believe that I am usually forgiven when I do that.
[+] [-] vermooten|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AnthonyNagid|9 years ago|reply
http://chickcoreamusicworkshops.com/podcast/04-john-mayer/
[+] [-] _Adam|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kijin|9 years ago|reply
If you're trying to convey important information and the listener just doesn't seem to get it, ask yourself whether you are expecting them to engage in a higher, more demanding level of listening than they are currently able to.
For example, the article says that 80% of what most people try to communicate occur at Level 4: body language. But if you can convey at least some of that information verbally, you'll be able to achieve similar results even if the listener is only at Level 3. This is especially useful if the listener is on the other side of a phone call or an internet forum.