Have you ever felt ready to defend yourself when someone even suggested that you might have made a mistake? This automatic response is one of the things that interferes with truth-telling in any relationship.
As soon as you start to defend yourself, you stop allowing that person to tell you their truth. If you wont listen to what someone is trying to tell you, they probably will soon stop listening to you, and a cycle of mistrust and surface politeness is created.
One way to change this familiar pattern is to learn to listen for the positive intention behind someones apparent criticism of you. In some groups, people have made an agreement to practice a new way of relating:
Listening with Your Heart:
I agree to listen respectfully to the communication of others and to receive their deepest meaning.
Listening with the intent to learn is a difficult challenge for many people. If you are like most people, you automatically focus on what you plan to say to defend yourself or your beliefs when you feel challenged. When you are thinking about how to respond or defend yourself, you are no longer listening.
If you want to develop the discipline of listening until the speaker is finished, try listening carefully so that you can restate what you have heard in your own words. If you restate what you have heard and ask the speaker if you are correct, the speaker will probably experience your respect.
Listening for the truth behind the words that are being spoken takes even more skill and patience. It is hard to avoid thinking judgmental thoughts, and these thoughts block deep understanding. A respected public speaker once said I make a daily commitment to not judge others, and occasionally I manage to keep my commitment until noon.
Learning to listen deeply is a challenging task and discipline. As in any discipline, the goal is to practice as diligently as possible, without expectation of becoming one hundred percent proficient.
Parts of this article are excerpted from The Integrity Course, an online, multimedia home-study course to help you say what you think without getting fired or losing your friends.
[tags]Business Communication, Difficult Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Self-Management, Telling the Truth[/tags]
