Persuasion
Mindfully Listen: 3 Potent Ways to Connect and Influence
Listening to others is key to building strong bonds and influencing others.
Posted January 6, 2022 Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster
Key points
- Listening carefully to one another is how we build strong bonds and earn each other's trust.
- When we're listening, it's possible to feel more connected to others than when we're talking.
- We don't have much influence on others until we connect to their experience and they feel heard.
We were given one mouth but two ears. Perhaps biology already knows how important listening is. In the couples and families I see in therapy, one of the most common concerns they speak of is not feeling listened to. Personally, I also feel vexed when I really want to communicate something important, and my loved one doesn’t seem to get it despite my best efforts. Not feeling heard can feel like being invisible. You probably know exactly what I'm talking about.
In all honestly, I've been on the other side of it too. I catch myself every now and then not listening attentively to my wife, friends, family—or even worse, my clients. For me, this is most likely to happen when I feel married to the point I want to make, tired, or overwhelmed with emotions and reactions or my to-do list.
What has helped me navigate this is noticing when my attention wanders as I would in my mindfulness practice and pivot back to listening—what I believe is the most important interpersonal skill.
Since the quality of relationships is the quality of life, the quality of your life, at least in part, hinges on your ability to listen to others effectively. By listening, I mean proactively attending to what the speaker's message means to them, not to you.
It's easier said than done to let go of a desire to explain myself, relax into listening, and direct all my energy toward trying to understand. This requires resigning my agenda, at least temporarily, to access genuine curiosity and care about what the other person is saying. It builds strong bonds and makes deep and difficult conversations more likely to succeed.
The motto I'm encouraging here is "connection before correction." It applies most fundamentally to parent-child relationships but also applies to all. Parents have little influence over their children if children don't feel listened to, gotten, felt, and understood. Good parents connect to their children's experiences before correcting them, especially if they want their correction to stick. Correction by force usually just generates fear and rarely enters a child's heart. (No wonder recidivism rates are so high in correctional prison systems. But I digress.)
Connecting and becoming a better listener may sound simple, but it’s surely not easy. It takes continuous practice: We need to train ourselves long-term, with mindfulness and other practices, to notice when we’re operating from our habitual tendencies—like when you're prepping your rebuttal rather than listening. This bad habit has become all too common in our politically polarized country. The key is to approach conversations, especially if you know they'll be challenging, with presence and care.
Here are three simple yet powerful tips rooted in my 12 years of mindfulness training as well as being a doctor of relational psychotherapy.
1. Be curious.
Curiosity means that we are interested in learning and letting the other(s) influence us. Learning requires humility; we must be willing not to know. To comprehend anything, we need to put aside our preconceived ideas and be open to new ways of seeing. Curiosity requires patience.
See if you can find a genuine intention to understand the other person—their needs, feelings, thoughts, and views, no matter how angry or misunderstood you feel toward them. The more they see your effort, the more they'll be able to understand you later on. What matters most to this person in what they're sharing? What is the deepest feeling underlying their share? What do they long for or need? If you can: stretch yourself to not stop being curious until you’ve reflected what they’re saying to where they say they feel understood.
As you work on this with important people to you, you can check in with your body and mind. How does it feel to be genuinely interested? What are you learning that you may not have known otherwise? Try to get a sense of that feeling.
Ironically, like my father, Daniel Linder, LMFT, taught me, I often feel most connected to others when I'm listening more than talking. As you may have gathered, showing care, warmth, vulnerability, and flexibility is essential to curiosity.
2. Letting the other(s) influence you.
It helps to listen to the other in the way you'd like to be listened to. For most, this means letting your words affect, change, and influence the other.
As mentioned above, we need to be open to being affected emotionally, cognitively, and behaviorally by what we hear. We need to demonstrate commitment to seeing the other person’s humanity, feelings, and intentions. We need to show them we are willing to include their needs in the situation rather than fixated on getting what we want or expressing our opinion.
3. Establish positive intention or "goodwill."
As with curiosity, it can be helpful to check in with your values and establish positive intentions before a difficult conversation even begins. If the other senses, consciously or subconsciously, any ill-will, it may sabotage the interaction before it begins. If you're concerned this may be the case, you can use mindfulness:
In a quick, pre-conversation meditation, after connecting to an attentional anchor like the breath or sound for 1-2 minutes, you might silently ask yourself a question like, “What’s happening here? Why am I so vexed? Can I temporarily self-soothe to hear the other first? How can I relax and find some balance?” Or “Regardless of the outcome, how do I want to handle myself here if we disagree?” Each question at a time, letting the body answer. Let that simple intention guide what you say or do next.
The speaker's intended message often, unfortunately, doesn't translate to what the listener hears. So, effort matters more than outcome, especially at first. If loved ones feel your effort, they're more likely to forgive your misses, and vice versa.
When we approach difficult conversations with curiosity, openness, and care, when we’re willing and able to not only listen but actively show the other's influence on our decisions and establish goodwill, it opens sacred doors to deeper connection and understanding.
In this turbulent, chaotic, and unpredictable world, strong connections to others are really the only true, long-term safety the world can provide. These connections depend on consistent and effortful listening. It takes practice, but it’s one of the most important keys to unlocking deep, long-term, fulfilling, and meaningful connections.
What's more important than that? I would love to hear how it goes for you.
