In the world today, having the ability to listen to someone empathically is in high demand. Giving someone the floor to share their story and letting them share their truth while we listen with our whole hearts can be powerful and bring us together.
However, certain actions consistently get in the way of allowing our ears to fully open and mouths calmly settled.
In this podcast, Adam J. Salgat and Leader of Curriculum Improvement & Development for Our Community Listens, Sarah Weisbarth, discuss what gets in the way in their relationships, how they try to overcome it, and what improving ourselves first could mean for the community we live in and beyond.
Four things to do in order to truly listen when others are seeking to be heard:
• Stop saying “It’ll be ok.”
• Stop asking questions to serve our own needs.
• Stop giving advice.
• Stop telling our own stories when they are just seeking to be heard.
AI-generated dictation of the podcast audio
Please note that this transcription was completed using AI software. Occasionally, unanticipated grammatical, syntax, homophones, and other interpretive errors are inadvertently transcribed by the software. Please excuse any errors that have escaped final proofreading.
Adam Salgat:
Hey listener, we would love it if you could take a quick moment to give our podcast a review on iTunes, Spotify, or leave us a message on our Facebook or LinkedIn pages. Hello and welcome to the Our Community Listens podcast. My name is Adam [Salgat 00:00:30] and with me today is Sarah Weisbarth, leader of Curriculum Improvement and Development. Sarah, how are you doing today?
Sarah Weisbarth:
My answer is I’m always doing well, Adam. It does give me a little pause though to think about am I really doing well, because I feel like there’s so much happening and so many stressors and so many things that I appreciate you asking the question so I can go, “How am I really doing?” I will say that I am happy to be here with you today and happy to talk about our topic matter.
Adam Salgat:
Well, I am also very happy to have you. It’s one of my favorite things, getting a chance to touch base with you on a bi-weekly basis at very minimum and share it with our listeners. And speaking of listeners today, our topic is listening which as we know, is a key element in Our Community Listens. As we step into this, I know we want to talk about what it means to listen and we also want to talk about the things that get in the way of effective listening. Why don’t you set a table a little bit more for what we’re going to tackle today?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah, so I was reflecting on it this morning on my walk, knowing that our topic for the month is listening. We talk about listening as an organization a lot. It is, I don’t know, our organization’s name. We’ve taught the five reflective listening skills multiple times and we’ve talked about reflective listening on our podcast multiple times.
I actually went back through and podcast number eight, one of our very early podcasts, talked about the five reflective listening skills. And even there’s podcast 22, podcast number 6. There’s many refreshers about reflective listening and parenting. We talk about how to reflectively listen, but there’s some things that we first have to commit to doing differently if we are going to be able to apply the five reflective listening skills, and that’s what I think I want to talk about today as it relates to listening.
Adam Salgat:
So when you say about things we need to do differently, one of the things that pops into my head is, and I remember thinking about it when I first went through the class years ago was eliminating all of the filler comments that people, when they’d come to me with a problem or they’d come to me with just a story or an issue, and then I’d immediately go to, “It’s going to be okay.” I mean, you could put it in quotations, you could put it on a shirt. I’d say that all the time, it’s generally because that’s my outlook on life. It’s my outlook on things but the truth is when someone’s coming to me, that is not necessarily helpful.
Sarah Weisbarth:
I love it. I’m really just reflecting because I’m appreciating your heart and wanting to assure people that I don’t know how, but I’m sure it’s going to be okay. And my joke around here is my very low bar for things being horrible is no one died. Not the end of the world, no one died. Except for individuals when they are experiencing a problem, that’s not a helpful comment.
And it’s the same thing like you’re saying, it’s not helpful to be like, “I’m really sorry you’re struggling with that issue at work. It’ll be fine. I’m sorry you’re struggling with this personal issue in your life. It’ll be okay, you’ll be fine.” We naturally though, want to reassure people. We want to provide that comfort.
And there’s been multiple times where I’ve been upset about something and I’m sharing with my husband and he very kindly, I’m sure you’ve done this with your wife, says, “It’ll be okay.” And in that moment I go, “How do you know it’ll be okay? You don’t know it’ll be okay. Tell me how it will be okay.” And so then I’m almost even more out of my logic and emotion balance, and then I can’t solve my own problem because I’m not reacting to him telling me it’s going to be okay.
Adam Salgat:
Right. I say to Becky a lot, “We’ll figure it out. That’s in our relationship it’s me saying, “It’ll be okay, but we’ll figure it out.” And I know that doesn’t necessarily help balance her out or get her a point because she needs to process things a little bit differently than I do. We’ve talked about that before.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. You just totally gave me a light bulb because I say that all the time and I never really thought about that being almost dismissive. And I don’t think that’s really anyone’s intent, but when someone’s come to me with a problem, what they really need me to do first is just listen and reflect back that their experience of their problem is very real.
Adam Salgat:
Right. And I think that can be easily skipped. And that’s what we’re talking about today, the idea that we can easily skip this idea of reflecting back or just acknowledging, because we may think saying, “It’ll be okay.” Or “We’ll figure it out.” Is acknowledging but it really may not be, especially depending on as we’ve talked about before, the non-verbals.
Depending on the tone or the situation, are you looking at them when you say it even? Are you still got your back doing some work or on your phone or whatever, it might be? So many non-verbals can give such an additional context to the statement and feel dismissive, even though that may not be the goal. We’re talking today about how do we start eliminating some of those?
I do want to bring up a thought I’ve had about how those get ingrained in us. And I don’t know it to be a fact, it’s only personal experience, but I have a four-year-old and then I have a one-year-old. And I still do it now with the one-year-old often because when she has a problem, if she’s crying or she’s upset, she can’t verbally relay what it is that’s bothering her.
She might be able to point to something that hurts, so she stubbed her toe or scraped her foot but if she’s hungry or just angry, sometimes it’s very difficult to know. And let’s think even younger than a one-year-old. My friend has a six-week-old and he was telling me, “Honestly, there’s a lot of crying in the house right now.” And it made me think we pick that baby up when it’s crying and we want to make it feel better. We maybe try a couple of things but almost immediately many people including myself, we go right to, “It’ll be okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m here.” Anything along those lines we say those things.
When they’re that little, obviously they don’t quite grasp it. They need that touch and they need to know physically that we’re there, and they need us to maybe change your diaper or give them a bottle or whatever it might be, but we start with that almost instinctual reply to the baby that is not going to say to us, “You’re not listening to me.” They can’t do that.
And I tend to wonder sometimes if that’s where it comes from. It’s not that we can’t change that behavior and it’s not that that behavior can change. But when our little one was under a year and I was doing that, I was thinking about how I don’t say that to my four-year-old as much as I used to because now she can relate. So what I’m really trying to say is, I think it’s almost like we innately start saying that at a very young age and maybe we forget to get out of it when we can.
Sarah Weisbarth:
It’s our natural reaction to want to comfort and we know it will be okay. We’re the logical one in the problem right now. We do know it will be okay, but the one that’s having the problem doesn’t know that it’ll be okay. The one thing that I really loved about what you said when you’re picking up that child and trying to create that sense of stability for them is to be able to say, “I’m here. I’m here.” And I think even as adults, we want that feeling of stability when we’ve gone to someone and something’s troubling us or we’re upset, we’re having a problem. We just want that stability of, “Hey, I’m here with you. I’m here.”
Adam Salgat:
Absolutely. So now that we can identify certain things like it’ll be okay. And I don’t know if you have any other examples that you want to mention of how we potentially dismiss or just step right into or step right away from, I should say, reflective listening. Any other examples that you have in mind?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Well, you actually keyed on what I want to help listeners understand, is that if I’m going to tell you to not say that it’s going to be okay, right and that’s what we’re telling our listeners like, “Please stop telling people it’ll be okay.” Instead say things like even to Emmy, even to your little ones be able to say, “You’re really upset right now.” And then that helps them begin to identify their emotion and what they’re dealing with.
With adults to be able to say, “This seems really upsetting to you.” That’s all that it takes. That actually is giving a sense of reassurance without telling people it’ll be okay. So just changing your wording a little bit gives people that sense of you’re listening to me, you’re present for me, and now you’ve given me the mental and emotional space to walk through my own problem.
Adam Salgat:
Yeah. I do really that too. It gives them the opportunity to go further if they want to, to identify more feelings and or explain why they feel that way, or maybe say, “No, I’m not upset, I’m just a little annoyed.” Maybe we’ve taken it too far with our response and they can correct us in a way and just say, “You know what? I’m just annoyed.” I know they can then say, “It’ll be all right.” I mean, maybe it helps them bring them back to a logic and emotion.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Absolutely. Yeah. They come back to that space of like, “Well, thank you for listening. I now know I’m fine or I know what I’m going to do about this situation.” One of the other things that is almost instinctual, again, we often talk about listening to understand. We want to listen in a way where we can understand the other. That can sometimes easily move into asking a lot of questions about the story, the situation, the problem, the topic, the issue that the other is coming to us with and is talking about.
And to help clarify, so one of the things we say is, “Don’t ask questions. It is not helpful to ask questions.” And it’s so intriguing. It goes back to that sense of our logic again where well, if I just knew some more information about the situation, I could help you solve it. Or if I knew some more information, I could help you understand how to figure it out and that it will be okay. In all of that, I’m serving my own need for the information, not the individuals need to be understood in their experience of what’s happening to them.
Adam Salgat:
That’s a really good point. And I think asking questions is definitely something, again, we’re talking about ourselves quite a bit, but I know I’ll jump into it because it makes me feel more information will help me identify the problem or move forward from the issue.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. And I think about it with our teens, right? So in no real world are you going to get any additional information from your teen, about a problem if they have come to even talk to you about a problem they’re having. In no real world are you going to get more information from them by peppering them and interrogating them with questions.
Adam Salgat:
It’s interesting. I’m not there yet with teenagers, but I mean, I know how it can be. I didn’t go to my parents a lot and if I did, I didn’t really want to be peppered with questions. I was probably going to give them what I wanted to give them. So have you seen that with your son or any other teams that you’ve been around, where you’ve seen more benefit out of just listening and giving them the space to reveal more, to share more on their own?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Oh my goodness, yes. And someday when Aaron listens to all of these podcasts, he’ll be annoyed that I shared all of these stories about his life and his childhood. I have found that if I just have more door openers and we’ve talked about door openers in other podcasts, but if I just lead with open-ended, curious statements and then employ the silence, he’ll fill in all of the gaps of all of the information of what he is comfortable sharing with me.
When I lead with well who, and what, and where, and when, and what about, and what were you thinking, and have you done this? It usually wraps around to a comment his dad used to say to his mom was, “What are you doing, writing a book? Are you collecting all of this information to write it down?” And it just shuts the conversation right down.
And there have been times where it’s been a disciplinary situation where I have led with the questions and the interrogation. And Erin has turned and looked at me and said, “If you would just listen to me, you would understand.” And it is everything in me as a parent to take that feedback from my child because instantly of course you want to come back with, “You’re disrespectful. I can’t believe you said that.” But he is so spot on.
And if I can pause for a moment and take a breath and realize that he’s actually asking for what I’ve taught him to do and then give him that gift of listening, holy cow, he has solved problems that I don’t even have to be a part of. He’ll come back around and tell me, “Hey, this and this happened and here’s how I resolved it.” Because of how we’ve been able to walk through issues in the past, without me being the interrogator. And as my high tendency of C of the DiSC profile, let me tell you, I am good at asking questions but I really had to work on.
Adam Salgat:
Well, I’m glad and it sounds you guys are building a good relationship then, because if he’s able to problem solve on his own in certain respects, and you’ve given him the guidelines and the skills to do that, I mean, as a young adult, you just think how much further he will be as a true young adult in his twenties. When he’s really faced with more difficult things and even lots of things out in the world that he’s going to come into contact with and need to know the right way to deal with it and make the right decision.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that affirmation. That is certainly my hope and my soap box would be, as I feel that’s the job of parenting. That’s probably another podcast, another conversation.
Adam Salgat:
In our world today there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot of issues, a lot of strong protests being held around the world for racial equality around the world. And especially in the United States, some of the tips and things I’ve seen out there tell people that to really understand what’s happening and what this movement is about and what they’re looking for is to listen. To take the opportunity to have that hard conversation with a friend about racial equality and what it means to them and how we can help.
And one of the biggest ways to help they say is to sit and listen. And so that would mean maybe it’s not peppering them with questions and really trying to dig deep into what their childhood was like and what it was like for them as a young black adult or a young black female and just how did they get through life? I mean, just let them tell their story, give them the opportunity to have the floor and listen. And know that you can empathize with them in many different ways, but it may not be directly the same way that what they have been through.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Oh my gosh. I so appreciate watching you and listening to you wrestle with and almost stumble through how to really speak the truth of what people really want is to be heard and people, all of us have our story. When we talk about listening to understand and we talk about listening with empathy, empathy requires us. Empathy is being able to take on the perspective of another, to see it as they see it. To suspend a judgment, basically keep my opinion thinking I’m right and you’re wrong out of the situation. Identify at the feelings of others and communicate that feeling.
It’s really that simple but in order to do that, again, I have to set some things aside for me. I actually have to just sit and listen to your story and that might mean it goes against maybe what I think or believe. Your story might be similar or incredibly different than mine. Your story might cause me to want to share my story, except if we’re going to really connect and understand one another, my job first is to give you the floor to share yours.
Adam Salgat:
That’s some great advice.
Sarah Weisbarth:
And there are so many problems out there like all of this weighs upon me. People are hurting. People are struggling with issues. We could spend the entire podcast listing struggles and issues that people are facing, that our society is facing. And it really does boil down to if we could just start to listen to one another and hear each other’s stories for what they are and stop them saying, “Well, well, my story then, right? Well, let me tell you about my story.”
We all need to be heard and I think that’s probably why you’re seeing protests about all kinds of different things but in particularly, I feel people don’t feel heard and so then you get loud. And if we take it back to interpersonal relationship, we say it is not helpful. It is not helpful to share your story when someone else is sharing a problem with you.
So if someone comes to me and is sharing their story about struggles in their marriage, it is not helpful for me to be like, “Well, let me tell you about mine.” Right? It’s not helpful. That person, you’ve just now hijacked that conversation. So if you put that on a societal scale, when people are loudly trying to share their story and you say, “Well, let me tell you about mine.” You’re cutting them off and they’re just going to get louder because they’re not being heard. They’re not being heard.
Adam Salgat:
I think that’s a really great example. And I think social media can be a great balance of what is good and giving people a platform that I can now read and hear more of their stories. But it also can be really negative because you have a lot of comments of people who are essentially saying, “Well, your story’s not valid and mine is.” Or, “Your story’s not valid because of my opinion and my judgment.” When really all they’re trying to do is to be heard, to let people know that what they’re facing, what they’re going through is real, that it does exist and this is how they feel about it and we need to listen to how they feel about it. They want to be heard.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yes, absolutely. Without ponying up, without jumping on the bandwagon, without saying, “Well yeah, I got a story as well.” And people feel like it makes sense again. All of these things we’re talking about avoiding doing are natural instincts. We feel like if I share my story that’s relatable to your story, now I’m connecting with you and now we have something to relate about.
I feel like that’s okay when we’re chatting over coffee or we’re hanging out around the campfire or we’re in a social situation. But when you’ve come to me with something you’re struggling through, an issue you’re facing and then I just jumped on board and then hijack that conversation, and it just so invalidates that person’s experience. Sorry, I think I get mad about it now that we’re talking about it because don’t be telling me your story. I really don’t want to hear about how much bigger your fish was, my fish is big enough.” It’s just yeah, okay.
Adam Salgat:
I have tried to do that when somebody actually wrote me that they were pregnant and then I didn’t mention anything about us being pregnant until later and they said, “Well, why didn’t you say it then?” I was like, “Well, it wasn’t well in my space and it was your space right now, too, to just tell me about how excited you were and what you were going through and I just wanted to listen to that and let it be.”
And it wasn’t long after that we chatted that I got to tell them what we are going through because they asked, but I didn’t come right back because I wanted them to have that time. So I think there’s great value to giving people that time that they’ve come to you to say something, whether it’s negative, sad, frustrating, disappointing or happy, exciting, celebratory. Any of the above, really, any emotion, if they’ve come to you to share something, give them the space to let it be theirs.
Sarah Weisbarth:
I love that, absolutely spot on and what a giving thing you’re doing by doing that. That’s an act of service. That’s an act of service that you’re doing for that individual. Oh, that makes me so happy.
Adam Salgat:
thank you very much and maybe I’ve talked myself up just enough, truthfully because I’ll be honest, the wife and I went through a conversation this past week that made me go, “You know what? You can do a lot better.” And hey, I’m just going to leave that as a teaser for a potential different podcast, because it really made me realize of the people that are closest to us, we may not always be doing our best. We might not be putting as much effort into it as we maybe should be.
And we’re putting that effort in other spaces and therefore those who are closest to us just get enough. And the conversation and what we went through, an argument, and then talking about it afterwards made me realize, and this is something that I think could be its own podcast. Made me realize what are we doing for those that are closest to us compared to those that are not? Where are we putting our biggest amount of energy and where should it be going?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Well, I feel like these skills and these concepts are so needed and we talk about them all the time. And so even you sharing like, “Hey, I feel I could be doing better in this area.” We’re having conversations like this twice a month at the minimum. I teach these skills. I work for the organization that promotes these principles and these skills. And let me tell you, there are days where I am like, “I don’t want to.”
I look at our world, right? Here’s my point. If we’re immersed in it and we’re still saying, “We could be doing better.” Or there’s days where I’m like, “Well, clearly I still need to be working on that.” The rest of the world has got to be all that much more hungry for it because they’re not always immersed in it. We’re immersed in it, Adam.
And so anyways, this is why I get excited about the work that we do because when you look at what’s happening in the world, you look at social media and the political structures and you see everything that’s happening, I feel like we have the answer, right? We have the answer if we could just listen to one another, be empathetic, confront in ways that are effective. Recognize everything that goes into interpersonal communication, the change has to start with me.
I’m not going to change my household or my community or a system until I start to change, until I shine that light on me and go like, “Oh wait, there’s a bias I didn’t realize I had. Oh, there’s a belief system that maybe could be challenged. Oh, look at how judgmental I was about that, that doesn’t sound like empathy. “I don’t pause and say, “Where are those spots in me that need [inaudible 00:27:03], how can I expect the world around me to change?”
Adam Salgat:
I love that and you said something in there about change begins with me. The Our Community Listens, I am the message. I mean, both of those statements really sums it up in my mind. The idea that we can take the opportunity to make a difference, but we have to make the difference within ourselves first.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah, which is one more concept I want to link to all of this is advice giving. And when someone comes to us with a problem, telling them what they should do is really not helping them. Which is intriguing based on my passionate plea that I just had about I feel like we have the answer. We have the answer as empathetic listening. It’s connection. It’s understanding.
When we feel like we have the answer for others though, if they haven’t come to that understanding first, they’re not ready to embrace a change. I could give advice all day long to people, all day long. When people call and say, “Hey, I need your opinion about something.” I was like, “Oh, I am the perfect person for this job. You want my opinion? Let me help with that.”
I could do that all day long, but what’s really most helpful if I listen in a way that allows that space like you talked about, for others to sort through how am I going to handle this situation? What change do I want to make in me? Maybe there’s a change I want to make to the situation or maybe I want to confront someone else’s behavior.
And we’re going to get to effective confrontation this fall, as we move through acceptance and agreement next month. And then move into choice and the power of being able to choose our options, and then really dive deep into effective confrontation this fall. But the point I’m getting to is if I just tell people what to do all the time, they’re never going to be empowered to solve their own problems. They’re never going to have those critical thinking skills. Well, never is a strong word but I’m impeding their opportunity to grow and that’s not helpful.
Adam Salgat:
Sarah, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. As always, we’d to give our listeners a couple of key takeaways so have something to think about as they finish up the podcast here.
Sarah Weisbarth:
My hope for our listeners was that they heard in our conversations around parenting, around relationships, around the community, that at the core of it is the helpful thing that we can do is listen. And that in order to do that, there are four things that we need to stop doing and that’s telling people it’ll be okay, asking questions to serve our own need, giving others advice and telling our own story, especially when others are just really seeking to be heard. So when we look at the opportunity to change me, so that then others can go around me, the most helpful thing someone can do is listen.
Adam Salgat:
Great advice as always, Sarah. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Happy to be here.
Adam Salgat:
If you have any suggestions about subjects for our podcast, feel free to reach out through our Facebook page. And if you’re interested in taking a class, visit OurCommunityListens.org. Thank you again for listening to our podcast and don’t forget each word, each action, each silent moment of listening sends a message, therefore you are the message.