In a Perfect World: Connection Potential

I think the greatest gift you can give someone is to listen to them. I mean, really listen.

I love good listeners, don’t you? People who look you in the eye as if they find you endlessly inter­esting. Who maybe incline their heads slightly, the better to hear what you have to say. People whose whole demeanor gives you the message that what you’re about to tell them matters.

Once you start speaking, they give you their full attention. Even better is what they don’t do. They don’t let their eyes glaze over as if they’re bored. They don’t drift off into their own thoughts, espe­cially not thoughts of what they’re going to tell you the minute you’ve finished talking. And they never, ever interrupt the flow of what you’re saying. They actually wait to hear you through to the very end.

In a word, they listen.

One of the best ways to create a connection with another person is to listen to them, or, on the flip side, feel listened to. Conversely, not listening well drives in a wedge. That’s because not listening gives the speaker the message that they’re either not all that important, or not a very fascinating conversa­tionalist. That can hurt.

In reality, the poor listener may simply be preoc­cupied with thoughts of his own. The speaker may actually be quite important to them and their af­fairs of interest. All he may really be saying with his distracted listening is, “I’ve got something on my mind. Please don’t bother me right now.” But that’s not the way it feels to the speaker.

Suppose someone decides to confide in you about something that’s weighing on them. It can be a re­cent problem, or something dredged up from the past that still stings. This is a perfect opportunity to form or strengthen a connection… if used correctly. Reacting incorrectly to such a confidence is liable to cause a disconnect. It can give rise to hurt feelings, anger, or even, in extreme cases, despair. If a rela­tionship encounters the stony wall of non-listening often enough, there won’t seem to be much point in trying anymore.

So, the first step in building a connection is to lis­ten. This means listening with your ears and with your heart. The eyes, too, have their part to play: by watching the speaker’s face as he vents, you can read the pain or sorrow lurking there. You can un­derstand them better.

When someone expresses a feeling to you, they want to know that you care enough to witness their emotional reality with your own senses. If not, there won’t be much connecting going on.

Step Two

Once you’ve given your full atten­tion to the confider and absorbed what they’ve told you, you’re ready to move on to the next step: expressing empa­thy. Why is this important?

It’s important because, otherwise, the speaker feels as if his words have dropped into a well of uncaring. A well so deep that the feelings he dared to share hardly even made a distant splash.

You’ve taken in what he’s told you. Now your job is to relate, not so much to the words themselves, as to the emo­tion behind them. “That must have hurt.” “I can only imagine what you felt.” “You must be furious!” Tapping into the feeling that fueled the confi­dences takes the connection potential to the next level.

But the opposite is also true. However courteously you’re willing to listen, if you leave it at that you’re depriving both of you of a chance to build the re­lationship. Silence is not the appropriate response to shared feelings. An empa­thetic remark is. It shows the speaker that it’s safe to confide in you. That you’re willing to step into her world and feel what she’s feeling, even if only for a few seconds. It shows that you care.

Step Two is where you show that you not only heard what they said, but that you also understood and related to it. It turns the two of you into equals and peers. Omitting this step may en­gender a pain-driven backlash. At the very least, the confider will leave the conversation feeling unsatisfied. All of your careful listening will have gone to waste.

It’s not easy to build a connection with someone who observes your pain from a remote vantage point, as if you were a fish swimming around in a tank with a glass wall dividing you. Even if she thrives on air and you live in water, the fact that she’s willing to hold her breath and dive in to experience what you’re experiencing, however briefly, is a powerful cement to solidify the bond.

Step Three

You’ve listened well. You’ve ex­pressed sympathy and caring for the other’s emotional reality. What more do you need?

Sometimes, nothing. But suppose you’re in a position to help assuage some of the other person’s pain. Sup­pose you see things that they can’t see because they lack an outsider’s objec­tivity about themselves. You notice the way their persistent view of life sabo­tages their own happiness. You’d like to offer another perspective. You want to help.

The right time to offer solutions or insights is not during the first stage of the interaction. Step One is devoted purely to listening. Letting the other person vent. Giving them a safe emo­tional space to share how they’re feel­ing.

Nor is the second stage the right time. If you jump into problem solving mode prematurely, without taking the time to express sympathy and validate the other’s feelings, your well-intentioned desire to help will fall flat. To offer solu­tions immediately after someone con­fides in you feels like a slap in the face. Like you see them as a problem to be fixed, a mechanical glitch to be solved, rather than a thinking, feeling human being. Jumping ahead to the fixing stage feels as if you’re trying to dismiss their inconvenient feelings in order to more rapidly get rid of the problem.

The right time to guide and advise is after the first two steps have been com­pleted. Once you’ve listened well and expressed sincere empathy for what they’re feeling, you may want to of­fer some gentle advice. The kind that shows that you’re not just trying to solve a problem or get rid of a pesky an­noyance. You want to guide them purely for their own benefit.

You might tell her gently, “It seems to me that brooding over slights you suffered in the past is hurting you. It’s holding you back from being happy.” Saying this too early or too critically makes the confider feel that your goal in life is to urge her to discard old hurts because they’re an inconvenience for you. Expostulations such as, “Why do you always hold onto negative things from the past? Let it go already! Move on!” are not calculated to strengthen the connection.

In contrast, offering caring advice at the end of the process makes her feel that you truly have her best interests in mind. Once she’s vented her feelings to a caring listener and received the em­pathy she craves, she’s finally ready to hear what you have to say for her ben­efit.

There you have it, folks: three steps to a better connection. They’re worth tak­ing the time to practice. The next time someone opens up to you, even some­one whose confidences can feel bur­densome at times, remember that fol­lowing the program step by step can do three things.

It can help the confider grow.

It can strengthen the bond that you share.

And it has the power to make each of us a wiser and more caring human be­ing.