Let's pretend you're in a relationship, and your girlfriend is telling you about how terrible her day was.
Her boss didn't say "Thank you" once, the intern screwed up her lunch order, and she didn't realize until 4 p.m. that her shoes didn't match.
Right now, she's venting, which means you should be listening.
According to Adam McHugh, however, there's a pretty good chance you're doing it all wrong.
McHugh is the author of "The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction," in which he outlines a dozen traps people can fall into if they don't approach listening in the right way. One of those is what McHugh calls "The Password."
Here's how he describes it: "The listener sits quietly through the speaker's conversation, but then seizes on one word that she uses, amid a sea of paragraphs, and treats it as a password that unlocks a whole new conversation."
This new conversation bears no similarity to the prior one, and it typically begins with two words cleverly masked in relatability: "Speaking of ..."
"Speaking of tuna casserole, I remember my mom served the worst tuna casserole at my high school graduation party," a password-seeking person might say after a loved one begins lamenting a failed new recipe.
"Speaking of getting embarrassed, my face turns so red when I get embarrassed," the bad listener offers.
These responses may seem like a way to identify with the speaker's problems —Hey, you're not alone! — but McHugh argues they are deceptively selfish.
The password trap isn't unforgivable — most bad listeners would probably say their intentions are good, McHugh says."They would say that they sat quietly and let the other person talk before chiming in and therefore they listened successfully," he explains. "The problem is that silence and listening are not the same thing."
If you're listening to someone get upset about a tuna casserole or an embarrassing moment and your brain is searching for a way to steer the conversation away from the problem, you aren't listening.
Or, if you are listening in such a way "that the speaker must make an abrupt shift to listen," McHugh says — instead of getting to discuss his or her problems freely — "you are not doing it right."
Good listeners are patient and unselfish, and they can recognize when it's their turn to speak. When they do so, they provide reassuring commentary or ask gentle, probing questions.
That is the express lane to conflict resolution.
