The Importance of Deep Listening and Empathy for Building Trust-Based Relationships

Understanding Your Trust Assessment Report

When I received my trust assessment report, I was surprised to see that others see Intimacy as my greatest area of growth while I see Self orientation as my greatest area of growth. Hence the sessions on deep listening and empathy were extremely important to me as I began exploring the horizon of context that was beyond what I was seeing or experiencing so far. 

Even though others see Self orientation as my greatest strength, I am aware of the fact that sometimes I have a tendency to shift focus on myself and become center of conversation.  After reading the article What to Say Instead of 'I Know How You Feel' to Someone Who Is Struggling, I started reflecting back to many conversations I had in past where instead of exploring , feeling or imagining the emotion that other person is going through, I started sharing my own experience in similar situation. After the session on deep listening at Haas, I recently had a conversion with my colleague Martin at work who I felt has been keeping very quiet recently.

Martin’s bid on a house was accepted recently and he was trying to secure loan to close the deal. The process of acquiring jumbo loan can be very stressful and Martin was very worried about the provable liquid assets he needs to qualify for the loan. I listened to him with full focus in the beginning and also paraphrased his thought to ensure my understanding of the situation. But I was not able to shift my perspective and soon I started sharing my experience of similar situation. I observed that I didn’t recognize Martin’s emotion and how overwhelm he was. I didn’t use my imagination and hence didn’t understand what he was going through. Also I didn’t spend enough time on Level 3 to Level 5 of listening spectrum in this conversation and therefore couldn’t foster close connection.

1. Wide Open Awareness: Now I am approaching all the conversation with wide open awareness. The goal is to avoid any distraction while listening.
2. Perspective Shift: The intent is to imagine myself in the situation of speaker instead of sharing my own experience. I feel very strongly about this now particularly after observing myself in recent couple of months. I have made conscious effort to avoid giving shift response in conversation and have has started focusing on support response.
3. Paraphrasing and Summarizing: I will paraphrase and summarize in order to ensure my understanding of the situation.
4. More information: I will try to gather more information using imagination without any judgement.
5. Feedback: I will constantly take feedback from people and evaluate my progress.

It’s a long way to go before I perfect the art of deep listening but I am glad that I am much more aware of my short comings and am working on it by taking BABY STEPS towards improvement.

 In my trust assessment report, others see Intimacy as key area of growth. Intimacy is related to emotional intelligence and Empathy is one of the key ingredients needed to foster deeper intimate connection and conversation.

As I read the article The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison and reflected on our classroom session on empathy, I began to understand the difference between active listening and empathy. Empathy is much more than active listening. It is about imagination, putting oneself in shoes of others, asking thoughtful questions, exploring emotions and unexpected situations, been in vulnerable positions etc.

In the past, I had many conversations where I have limited myself to level 1 and 2 of listening spectrum ie they ended up being mechanical conversations and lacked empathy. Being an engineer, I have this tendency to reach to the root cause and solve the problem rather than asking for more information or acknowledging the issue. And hence have failed to completely empathize with people in difficult situation.

Recently I had a conversation with my fiancée Amrita related to her increase workload at office. Her boss is out of office on paternity leave and she has to work extra hours as she has additional responsibility of managing the group in additional to a demanding job.

Thanks to the session on colors of negative emotions, I understood this time that she was scared and mad even though she was visibly showing the sign of sadness. She was feeling helpless and frustrated and may be was looking for mirrored emotional response. Earlier I would try to find silver lining in the situation and never understood what I did wrong. Like in this case I would have asked her to look on a brighter side ie I would have told her to consider this as an opportunity for next step in career or promotion. And thanked god I didn’t do it and asked more neutral questions to understand her feelings. I didn’t offer any solution and acknowledge her emotions on the situation she was in. Acknowledgement of her emotion calmed her down and she was relieved.  

As I reflected on above mentioned conversation, it became clear to me that I need to work on level 5 of listening spectrum ie empathize and feel other person’s emotion. As mentioned in The Empathy exam article, enquiry and imagination is very important factor in forming deeper connection and trust based relationship both at work as well as at home.

1. Imagination: The goal is to go to understand other person’s emotion by using self-imagination. Imagination gives ability to visualize and conditions our mind and heart in a way that can resonate with other person’s emotion.
2. Curiosity: Genuine curiosity helps in understanding perspective of other people.
3. Deep Listening: Deep listening will shift focus from me to other person and is very important ingredient for empathy.
4. Slowing down: No more Fast response. I have a tendency of responding fast to a situation  and I am always looking for solution. I will try to remain calm in conversation.

I have seen an improvement in my deep listening and empathy skills and I feel that I am much aware of the situation now. Even though I do make mistakes but more often I am able to identify what went wrong and what lesson I can drive out of it.

As I embark on this journey, I feel more awakened and also confident in my ability in building trust based relationship.