How to listen

The superpower Marvel hasn't noticed yet

If you want to deepen your relationship with someone: listen.

A good listener knows that they don’t know everything about the other person’s world and is curious to discover more.

More importantly, someone who listens is letting the other person know that they are interested in them, their experience, and their viewpoint.

It is essential to build deeper relationships, and to collaborate well.

But how do you show how well you are listening?

We’ve all heard the term “active listening”. We’ve probably also all been sat across from someone who’s been taught that this means nodding and making noises of agreement while we’re trying to talk. Maybe they use our name excessively, too, just to make sure we see how engaged they are.

And I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one who finds this deeply annoying!

This is not active listening.

Active listening as a term was originally coined by the psychologist Carl Rogers. It wasn’t about demonstrating to the other person how well you were listening (which is, after all, about you, not them), it was about making a conscious decision to listen, to pay attention to everything that was being said (non-verbally as well as verbally) and to work to truly understand what was happening for the other person.

When someone is genuinely, actively listening to you, you can feel it.

And it feels good.

Never, ever underestimate the power of listening. It is a superpower.