Allison was already crying as she walked into my office.
She slumped into the chair across from me and explained how she’s never felt more alone than her last conversation with her husband.
“I mean, he’s a good guy” she explains, “but he’s got the emotional intelligence of a rock. Any time I’m even the slightest bit upset or stressed—or even just tired—he corners me and starts grilling me about what’s wrong:
- Why are you upset again?
- I wish you could just be happy…
- What should I do?
- Why don’t you start seeing your therapist more often…
“I know he just wants to help” she tells me, trying to hold back tears, “but the more he tries to help the worse I feel. Every time he opens his mouth I feel anxious and guilty that I’m not happy enough for him, resentful that he can’t communicate the way I wish he would, and lonely because I’m married to someone who seems to not even know me.”
Both Allison and her husband are good people, who want each other to be happy, and want to make their relationship work. It’s just that one of them is pretty clueless about a core skill for any meaningful relationship: listening well.
Today I’m going to share 3 practical tips anyone can use to become a better listener and dramatically improve the quality of your most important relationships.
1. Focus on the person, not the problem.
Many of us are problem-solvers at heart.
Combine a strong biological survival instinct that pushes us to identify and solve problems with a pervasive cultural value around individual achievement and analytical prowess, and it’s not surprising that we’re all constantly looking for problems and trying desperately to solve them.
And while our ability to solve problems is helpful in much of life, it’s precisely the wrong thing to do in a few situations. Namely, when people simply want to be heard, understood, and feel connected, problem-solving and advice-giving directly interferes.
When someone is scared, angry, depressed, or otherwise upset, the last thing they want is to feel like a burden or that something is wrong with them. But that’s exactly what happens when you give unsolicited advice to someone who’s struggling — they end up feeling like a problem.
There’s a time and a place for giving advice. And thankfully, there’s a dead give away that lets you know exactly when you should start giving advice: When someone asks for it!
Until then, hold off on all your brilliant words of wisdom and focus on just being present.
Of course, whenever I suggest this to people, the classic response I get is:
What, am I just not supposed to say anything?!
Well, to be honest, you could probably do a lot worse than just being quiet!
But no, you don’t have to literally refrain from speaking at all. A good alternative to giving advice or problem solving is to get in the habit of asking a particular type of question, which brings us to our next tip…
2. Ask open-ended questions
In most parts of our lives, asking questions is about getting answers. And often the more succinct and brief the question, the more clear and useful the answer. Which means, we all tend to ask questions that encourage the other person to give one, short, concise answer. In other words, we tend to ask closed questions.
But this is a problem when it comes to being a good listener. Of course, being a good listener usually requires some question-asking. But how you ask questions matters a lot.
Remember this:
Conversations are about more than information exchange. They’re about connection.
When a family member or spouse is upset, for example, the goal of being a good listener isn’t primarily about extracting the facts of what made them upset or what their plan for moving on is.
Instead, the goal is usually to be supportive, to empathize, to offer encouragement, and to help them to feel like you’ve got their back and that they’re not alone.
Open-ended questions communicate that you care about the other person. Closed questions communicate that you care about information.
For example:
- Instead of: Why are you upset? Try: How are you feeling?
- Instead of: Was work stressful again? Try: How was your day at work?
- Instead of: Did your mom criticize you again? Try: What happened in the conversation with your mom?
When in doubt, here are a few generic open-ended questions that work well in almost any scenario:
- What was that like for you?
- Can you tell me more about that?
- How did you feel about that?
- How are you feeling right now?
- What was going through your mind?
Ultimately, open-ended questions are about inviting the other person to tell a story. And whether they want to or not, the invitation will almost always be much appreciated.
Pro Tip: When asking questions, avoid beginning with Why and use Whator How instead. Why tends to make people feel like they’re being questioned or interrogated whereas How and What feel more neutral and less inquisitorial.
Why do you feel sad? vs What happened to make you feel sad?
See the difference?
3. Validate your own emotions, especially anxiety
If you genuinely commit to practicing the previous two tips, your skills as a listener—and your relationships overall—are almost guaranteed to improve significantly.
But if you really want to take you listening skills to the next level, you need to understand and know how to deal with the one thing that derails conversations more than anything else: Anxiety
And I don’t mean their anxiety; I mean you, the listener’s, anxiety.
See, when someone we care about is upset, it’s really natural to feel anxious:
- Anxious about them and their wellbeing.
- Anxious about being supportive in the right way.
- Anxious about the relationship and how them being upset will affect it.
The trouble is that a lot of us aren’t super aware of our anxiety in the moment. We just feel a kind of pressure or urge to fix things, and quickly.
Well, that pressure is anxiety. And if you’re not aware of it, it’s very likely to grab one of your feet and shove it into your mouth, leading to everyone feeling even worse than they did to begin with.
So, step one of advanced listening training: Watch for your anxiety and acknowledge it early. This can be as simple as saying to yourself in your head: I’m pretty anxious about how anxious my husband is. or I’m feeling really nervous about my boss’s annoyance level right now. I should be mindful of that.
Once you’ve acknowledged your anxiety, the next step is to validate it. Validation simply means reminding yourself that just because you feel bad doesn’t mean it is bad, or that you’re bad for feeling it.
So, you might say something to yourself like: I really don’t like feeling anxious, but it’s okay and not surprising given what’s going on with my wife. Or: Ugh, I can feel my anxiety rising. But it’s okay. Most people would be anxious when their boss is getting visibly angry.
When you validate your anxiety, you not only take the edge off its intensity (imagine opening up a pressure release valve…), but you make it much less likely that you’ll act on your anxiety, and instead, listen well.
See, problematic advice giving or problem-solving in a conversation is almost always motivated by the desire to feel less anxious. In other words, we give advice primarily because we want to stop feeling so anxious about the other person feeling bad.
So, as you get better at validating your anxiety, you’ll feel less of a need to give advice or problem solve, and instead, have an easier time staying present, listening well, and maybe asking the occasional open-ended question.
Next Steps
Here are a few resources for becoming a better communicator and improving your relationships: