WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO REALLY LISTEN?

I’ve just completed teaching another class for volunteer mediators.

As in previous cases, most who attended believed they were good listeners, but soon learned their assumptions of what they thought they heard duing the session was distorted compared to the actual messaging presented throughout the course.

This is one of the reasons mediators stress the importance of listening and don’t iagree with listening by “putting yourself in the other person’s shoes.” Recent studies have found no evidence that intentionally applying this approach improved one’s ability to understand another person’s feelings. If anything, the concept may decrease accuracy while simultaneously increasing misdirected confidence in one’s judgment.

Imagining how we would understand another person’s world based on our own history and experiences, not on theirs. is a recipe for disaster.

To improve listening, we need to engage each other in conversation. This “perspective getting” to understand how the other person sees their situation is a more effective listening skill.

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Fred Jandt is the author of “How to Survive a Mediation,” available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever books are sold.