Listen Or Don’t.

If they say you’re not listening, you’re not listening.

You can protest all you want. You can line up the evidence: the meetings they failed to attend, the surveys they stuck under a pile, the voicemails they neglected. You can assemble a dazzling exhibit of attempts you’ve made to listen that they have missed or flat-out snubbed, all while maintaining that you’re listening. 

But you’re not. 

Sometimes people burn through our energy and we have to stop listening to them. I think that’s okay. I think some people should be told they’ve lost the right to be heard in certain circles. Don’t assure these people you’re listening, because you’re not and you shouldn’t be. 

But I’m finding that more and more of my work is to understand how to listen to different people, and contemporary life is making it so that the pool of those who are easy to listen to is shrinking. Fewer people reply to emails and phone calls–even texts– ,and fewer still come to meetings to have their say. I spend more energy soliciting conversation than I ever did before, and the list of media I’m using to do it grows almost weekly. 

It’s exhausting, but the rewards are manifold. Not only is our work enriched by the listening, but we turn would-be adversaries into partners and disinterested observers into leaders. 

What’s your favorite listening strategy?