Empathic Listening

"The key to effective interpersonal communication is... to seek first to understand, then to be understood." --Stephen R. Covey

Reading and writing are both forms of communication. So are speaking and listening. In fact, those are the four basic types of communication. And think of all the hours you spend doing at least one of these four things. We spend most of our waking hours communicating. But consider this: Y ou' ve spent years learn- ing how to read and write, years learning how to speak. But what about listening? What train- ing or education have you had that enables you to listen so that you really, deeply understand anotherhumanbeing fromthatindividual'sown frame of reference? The Redeemer Review Proclaiming Christ into the 21st Century February, 2012 When another person speaks, we are usu- ally"listening"atoneof four levels.Wemaybe ignoring another person, not really listening at all. We may practice pretending. We may practice selective listening, hearing only cer- tain parts of the conversation. We often do this when we're listening to the constant chatter of a preschool child. Or we may even practice attentive listening, paying attention and focus- ing energy on the words that are being said. But very few of us ever practice the fifth level, the highest form of listening, empathic listening. When I say empathic listening, I am not referring tothetechniquesof"active"listening or "reflective" listening, which basically involve mimicking what another person says. That kind of listening is skill-based, truncated from char- acter and relationships, and often insults those "listened" to in such a way. It is also essentially autobiographical. If you practice those tech- niques, you may not project your autobiogra- phy in the actual interaction, but your motive in listening is autobiographical. Y ou listen with reflective skills, but you listen with intent to reply,tocontrol,and somewhat tomanipulate. When I say empathic listening, I mean lis- tening with intent to understand. I mean seek- ing first to understand, to really understand. It' s a different paradigm of listening. Empathic (from empathy) listening gets inside another person' s frame of reference. Y ou look out through it, you see the world the way they see the world, you understand their paradigm, and you understand how they feel. Empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy is a form of agreement, a form of judgment. And it is sometimes the more appropriate emotion and response. But people often feed on sympathy. It makes them dependent. The essence of empathic listening is not that you agree with someone. It's that you fully, deeply, understand that person, emotionally as well as intellectually. Empathic listening involves much more than registering, reflecting, or even understanding the words that are said. In empathic listening, you listen with your ears, your eyes and with your heart. Y ou listen for feeling, meaning and forbehavior.Youuseyourrightbrainaswellas your left. Y ou sense, you intuit, and you feel. You are listening to understand. You are focused on receiving the deep communication of another human soul. What would happen if we practice em- pathic listening at home, workplace, and church? What would happen if we practice empathic listening with our spouse, child, par- ents, friends, coworkers, and others in our life? For doing "church" as a team at Our Redeemer' s UMC, let' s wait and see what will happen to our faith community when we try to listen to each other more empathically this year as a FROG team!

~Pastor Sunny