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You're Not Listening summary

Name: You're Not Listening
Rating: 4.5 (324 reviews)
Author: Kate Murphy

Kate Murphy

What You're Missing and Why It Matters

4.5 (324 ratings)

22 mins

Topics

Listening Interviewing

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You're Not Listening
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What’s in it for me? Discover how to listen when everyone around you is shouting.

It might not happen often, but you know when you’re being listened to. When someone gives you their undivided attention and truly focuses on whatever you have to say, it’s a special sensation that can create an instant feeling of closeness – whether that person is your best friend or someone you’ve just met in an elevator.

Sadly, in this age of instant communication and social media, as our attention spans shrink ever lower, listening sometimes seems like a dying art.

But that just means we need to try harder. Through looking at how some of the world’s most effective listeners work, and considering a range of advice, you can become a better listener – which won’t just create a positive atmosphere around you, it’ll help you grow as a person too.

In these blinks, you’ll find out

why so many people would rather confide in a stranger than their loved ones;
how good listening helps CIA and FBI agents do their job; and
how to craft the perfect question to show you’re listening.

Listening is a rare skill – especially today.

We’re not really encouraged to listen these days. It’s pretty much the opposite, in fact: we’re encouraged to broadcast ourselves. We train ourselves in public speaking, we constantly announce ourselves to the world on social media, and of course we chat away endlessly on our phones.

But when was the last time you truly felt someone was listening to you? And how about the last time you really listened closely to someone else?

It’s ironic that even though we’re more connected than ever before, we’re also experiencing what some have called an epidemic of loneliness, as the population ages and younger people retreat to their phones and computers. It’s easier to stay in contact with each other, but the quality of all this communication isn’t cutting it; people still feel isolated.

In other words, they're not getting the attention they crave. You won’t be shocked to learn that our attention span has gone down recently, but you might be surprised that – since as recently as 2000, according to research by Microsoft – the average attention span has decreased from twelve seconds to just eight. That actually puts us below the nine-second attention span of a goldfish.

What’s to blame? Our phones certainly play a part, as well as all the other technological devices we’re addicted to. In fact, distractions are everywhere around us – even in the form of the music piped into shops and cafes.

All of which means that there’s something extra special about focusing your attention on what somebody else is saying. A good conversation can cut through all the background noise around us. And you’ll be amazed at the things you’ll learn. Everybody in the world is interesting, the author suggests – you just have to ask them the right questions.

How do you do that, though? The author spoke to some of the best listeners in the world to find out.

Even in the age of Big Data, listening can bring unique insights into what people want.

Listening is a vital skill for people in professions from therapy to military interrogation. The author herself is a journalist who needs to know how to extract the most fascinating insights from her interviewees. But even she was struck when she met Naomi Henderson.

Known simply as “Naomi” to those in her field, she’s a living legend of focus groups. Over her 50-year career, she’s worked on everything from Kentucky Fried Chicken to Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign; she was the one who told him to stop playing up his Southern accent. All in all, she has moderated some six thousand focus groups – more than fifty thousand people.

To be a good listener, you have to be curious about people, and say just enough to show you understand.

Some of the very best listeners are the most naturally curious people. One retired intelligence officer proves this perfectly: Gary Noesner, former lead hostage negotiator with the FBI.

Noesner has an eccentric habit when he stays in hotels. He goes to the bar, chooses someone, and gets them to talk. The aim is to find out everything he can about them – not because they’re under investigation, but simply because Noesner has an insatiable natural curiosity. One time, a salesman told him about his tightrope-walking hobby, and Noesner learned all about how a tightrope walker practices.

Don’t assume you know what someone is saying – especially not the people closest to you.

Who do you find it easiest to confide in: a stranger, or someone you’re close to? Surprisingly, a lot of people prefer to talk to strangers.

This is known as closeness-communication bias, and psychologist Judith Coché is an expert in trying to break it down. Her specialty is couples’ group therapy; she brings several couples together for long, regular sessions in which they can talk about their relationships in detail. When someone shares their problems, it’s not just their spouse who’s listening: it’s the whole group. And the conversation changes dramatically when you’re really being listened to.

Listening to contrasting views is tough, but crucial.

In 2016, a neuroscience study at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles discovered something remarkable. It took a group of people with strong political views, and scanned their brains while challenging their beliefs. The brain scans that resulted were similar to what it would have looked like if they’d been running away from a bear.

Strange though it may seem, it’s just that difficult to listen to opposing views. Ahmad Hariri, a professor at Duke University, suggests that, because humans live in relative safety these days – bear chases are pretty rare – the biggest threats we generally face are social in nature. The amygdala – the part of the brain that kicks in when we’re under threat – can therefore go into overdrive even when faced with differences of opinion.

One of the keys to good listening is good questioning.

A good listener will probably find themselves saying less in a conversation than the person they’re listening to. But whatever the listener does say needs to be exactly right.

Sociologist Charles Derber of Boston College says that there are two basic types of conversational response: the support response and the shift response. Say someone tells you that her dog recently ran away for several days. If you answer by explaining how your own dog never gets out, that’s a shift response – you’ve shifted the emphasis onto you. A support response, though, might be to express sympathy and then ask a question – like where she eventually found her dog – that encourages the speaker to tell her story more fully.

Listening to others means not seizing control of the narrative, and trying to silence your own inner voice.

A lot of people like to be the center of attention and control a conversation’s narrative. A comedy improvisation session – if it’s not a very good one – can be alarming proof of that, as people compete for the limelight and the funniest comeback. But in fact, for truly effective improv, listening skills are vital.

Improv is a great way to learn to maintain focus. At the famous Second City in Chicago, Artistic Director Matt Hovde runs a training program for beginners. One game they play is group storytelling. Hovde controls which group member narrates a made-up story, and also decides when the narrator changes. It forces the whole group to listen closely, so that, if they’re called upon, anyone can pick up the thread.

Listening is hard work, and sometimes you have to ration it, but it’s always worth the effort.

As if everything we’ve covered so far about how to listen wasn’t challenging enough, bear this in mind: you need to listen not just when others are talking, but also when you’re talking.

Every speaker has to read her audience. What are they actually interested in, and what leaves them cold? You might have a really fascinating story to tell, but it’ll be an uphill struggle if the person you’re talking to is thinking about something else, or simply has zero interest in the topic.

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What is You're Not Listening about?

You’re Not Listening (2020) casts a spotlight on the undervalued skill of listening. It’s filled with examples of talented professional listeners, as well as practical advice for getting more out of conversations with others – not by saying more yourself, but by listening more closely to others.

Best quote from You're Not Listening

Everybody is interesting if you ask the right questions. If someone is dull or uninteresting, its on you.

—Kate Murphy

Who should read You're Not Listening?

Couples looking to improve their communication skills
Professional listeners, from journalists to business negotiators
Everyone who wants to have better conversations

About the Author

Kate Murphy is a journalist from Houston, Texas. She has become a talented listener through her many interviews and articles for publications including the New York Times, the Economist, and Texas Monthly, as well as Agence France-Presse.

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