The Chaos of Active Listening

Tonight I wanted to help my class learn the skill of active listening more deeply. Previously, we had covered the workbook section on active listening—but reading about active listening and actually learning how to do it are two separate experiences. As a psychology student, I learned active listening in dyads. As a therapist, I honed that skill in the office. I even began to apply it at home, learning to listen to my wife instead of immediately trying to solve her problems—that took our relationship to a deeper, closer level.

In the past I've taught active listening by having students pair off and do passive listening first, then do active listening, but somehow, it didn't seem to teach the skill as well as I had hoped.

Tonight, I did something different. First, we dove into chaos. In dyads, I had the students tell about what they did last night, both members of the dyad speaking at the same time. We were all frustrated at wanting to listen to our partner, but being so caught up in our own speaking that we couldn't even remember what it was that caught our attention.

We talked about how frequently that happens in real life, how much “listening” time is spent focusing on what we're about to say next, not on the other person. Then we moved to active listening directly. No passive listening (next time, I think I'll do dyadic passive listening first). Rather than working in dyads, though, we worked together as a class. I chose some of the deeper self-inventory questions from the workbook, and had each person around the circle answer it. After a person answered the question, the next person replied with an active listening response. We discovered how difficult it was to set ourselves, our desire to speak our own thoughts, aside and simply reflect what we had heard. Doing this in the larger group allowed the entire class to participate in each conversation, either witnessing or assisting in the active listening response.

It was difficult. It was chaotic. It was also deep. Almost everybody reported being surprised at how much work it was to listen actively. We'll do it again in a few weeks. And again, and again. One student asked if there was ever a time to speak his own truth. We reviewed assertive communication, briefly, as the opportunity to speak, but within the context of hearing the other deeply, from the heart, first.

Another student felt hurt by the one-way process. “So, after I get done actively listening, nobody is going to actively listen to me in real life. I'm going to have to come to class to get that.” This allowed us to discuss the frustrations that come from learning anger management skills and practicing them among people who have few, if any of those skills. Time was running out, so I reminded the class of Ghandi's wisdom: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”