Levels Of Listening

“Seek first to understand” involves a very deep shift in paradigm. We typically seek first to be understood. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. They’re either speaking, or preparing to speak.

They’re filtering everything through their own paradigms, reading their autobiographies into other people’s lives.

“Oh, I know exactly how you feel!”

“I went through exactly the same thing. Let me tell you about my experience.”

They’re constantly projecting their own home movies onto other people’s behaviour. They prescribe their own glasses for everyone with whom they interact.

If they have a problem with someone – a son, a daughter, a spouse, an employee – their attitude is, “That person just doesn’t understand.”

That’s the case with so many of us. We’re filled with our own rightness, our own autobiography. We want to be understood.

Our conversations become collective monologues, and we never really understand what’s going on inside another human being.

When another person speaks, we’re normally “listening” at one of 4 levels:

We may be “ignoring” another person – not really listening at all.

We may practice “pretending” – “Yeah, Uh-huh. Right”.

We may practice “selective” listening, hearing only certain parts of the conversation.

Or we may even practice “attentive” listening, paying attention and focusing energy on the words that are being said.

But very few of us ever practice the 5th level, the highest form of listening, “empathic” listening.

When I say empathic listening, I mean listening with intent to understand. I mean seeking first to understand – to really understand – it’s an entirely different paradigm.

Empathic (from “empathy”) listening gets inside another person’s frame of reference. You look out through it, you see the world the way they see the world, you understand their paradigm, you understand how they feel.