Listening to Understand

Liam and Cathy were into a very familiar pattern.  Convinced that Cathy did not fully understand his position, Liam was insisting that he needed to explain it to her again.  Every time she opened her mouth to speak, he overrode her, speaking more loudly than she and insisting that she needed to understand his side of things.
Cathy was convinced that if only he listened to her, he’d surely see her point.  So she kept fending him off and trying to speak.  When he got louder, she just waited him out, figuring that he had to take a breath and that that would be her opportunity to make him hear her.  She wasn’t listening; she was just impatiently waiting her turn.  

When he did pause and she did speak, it became obvious that she had been waiting to make a point but had not particularly listened to anything that he’d said. Frustrated by this, Liam waved away what she was trying to tell him and tried again to speak over her.
Each time, eventually, they both gave up and went their separate ways, convinced of the hopelessness of the effort. As such failures accumulated, they each tried less and less often to share feelings or thoughts of any consequence. The fabric of their relationship was getting thinner and thinner as time went on without substantive communication. Yet they both wished that something would happen that would make their futile, and increasingly rare, attempts at communication more satisfying and more productive.
Liam was the first one to undertake to change the way they communicated. He’d been participating in leadership training at work and figured that some of what he was learning might be useful at home. From his point of view, there HAD to be a better way than the way they’d been doing it.
In the training, the coach had been stressing that a good leader listened before he led, especially if he hoped to be followed. Liam had no desire to become a leader at home, but he thought that the principles still applied. He did want Cathy to follow him in the sense of paying attention to what he had to say.
When the next opportunity presented itself, he restrained his impulse to try to force Cathy to listen to him. Instead, he told her straight out that he wanted first to hear and to understand her side of things.
Cathy blinked several times while she attempted to shift gears. She was already digging in her heels and this threw her for a loop. Afraid to lose the moment, she collected herself and started talking. She spoke quickly in hopes of getting it all out before he changed his mind. To her surprise, he listened without interruption. When she was finished, he asked her a couple of questions in an effort to understand more fully what she had told him. And he listened again to her answers.
It was only after that that he began his own presentation of his point of view. Furthermore, because he’d listened to her, his own perspective now reflected his understanding of her perspective.
Cathy was ready to jump in and shout him down, but there seemed no need. He seemed to have listened without the need for her to do any shouting. Because of his patient listening, and his active listening, she felt attended to. She even felt that he’d been really committed to understanding her point of view. Once she felt that she’d been truly listened to, she was much more willing and able to listen to him. With his demonstration of listening, he showed commitment both to understanding her message and to their relationship. With that as the first step in their communication, his own presentation was much more persuasive. And she was much more open to hearing it. Without having to defend her right to be heard, she was much more accessible as a listener. She copied what he had done—listening attentively, without interruption, then asking questions to clarify what she’d heard, and then listening to his answers. Knowing that he’d listened to and understood her thoughts and feelings, she felt very close to him and eager to hear and understand his thoughts and feelings too. The result was not only a successful communication but a nourished relationship.