Do You Look to Your Protégé Like You Are Listening?

Try this the next time you need to listen to someone: imagine that you’re a newspaper reporter from another culture sent here on assignment to get the story and report it. Your readers cannot see, hear, or feel this story except through your words. They also know nothing about the culture; you must rely on every tiny clue, nuance, and symbol to get the story right.

Your first interviewee is sitting before you, talking. It is your protégé. Now in your role as a foreign reporter, describe every subtlety in the protégé’s tone, gesture, or expression. Notice especially the eyes—what have been called the “windows to the soul.” Pretend you do not know this person and are hearing her speak to you for the first time. Listen for her choice of words and expressions. Is there a deeper meaning behind the sentences you hear? Is there a message that is not initially obvious in the communication?

If you ask a question or make a statement, how quick is the protégé’s response? What might be implied by her silence? Is her laughter polite, muted, or hearty? If her words and tone could be a song, what style of music would it be—a country song, a rap tune, a chorale, a gospel hymn? If a great painter were to use this person’s words as the inspiration for a picture, what might appear on the canvas? What color is the protégé’s tone or mood?

Listening, done well, is complete and sincere absorption. Ever watch Piers Morgan on CNN or Charlie Rose on PBS? Their success as interviewers lies not in their clever questions but in their terrific listening skills. Both zip right past the interviewee’s words, sentences, and paragraphs to get to the real meaning. The mission of listening is to be so tuned into the other person’s message that understanding becomes a copy-and-paste function from one mind to another. Perhaps the expression “meeting of the minds” should be changed to “joining of the minds.” Dramatic listening is not just a rendezvous of brains; it is a uniting, a linkage, a partnership. Like all human connections, it requires constant effort and commitment.