The 12 blocks to listen

There are twelve blocks to listen to. You’ll find that some are old favorites that you use over and over again. Others are kept in reserve for certain types of people or situations. Everyone uses listening blocks, so don’t worry if a lot of blocks look familiar to you. This is an opportunity to become more aware of your blocks the moment you actually use them.

1. Comparing

Comparing makes it hard to listen because you are always trying to assess who is smarter, more competent, and more emotionally healthy, whether it is you or the other person. Some people focus on who has suffered more, who is a bigger victim. As someone speaks, you think, “Could I do that well? Hey, my kids are so much brighter.” You can’t let much in because you’re too busy seeing if you’re up to the task.

2. Mind reading

The mind reader does not pay much attention to what people say. In fact, he often mistrusts him. He is trying to find out what the other person is really thinking and feeling. “She says she wants to go to the show, but I bet she’s tired and she wants to relax. She might resent it if she pushed her around when she didn’t want to go.” The mind reader pays less attention to words than to intonations and subtle cues in an effort to see the truth.

If you read minds, you probably make assumptions about how people react to you.

“I bet she’s looking at my lousy skin… She thinks I’m stupid… My shyness puts her off.” These notions are born of intuition, hunches, and vague misgivings, but have little to do with what the person actually tells you.

3. Rehearsing

You don’t have time to listen when you’re rehearsing what to say. All your attention is in the preparation and elaboration of your next comment. You have to appear interested, but your mind is racing because you have a story to tell or a point to make. Some people rehearse entire strings of responses: “First I’ll say, then he’ll say, then I’ll say,” and so on.

4. Filtering

When you filter, you hear some things and not others. Just pay close enough attention to see if someone is angry or unhappy, or in emotional danger. Once you’re sure the communication doesn’t contain any of those things, let your mind wander. A woman listens to her son long enough to know if she is fighting again at school. Relieved that she isn’t, she begins to think about her shopping list. A young man quickly realizes the mood of his girlfriend. If he seems happy as he describes her day, his thoughts begin to wander.

Another way that people filter is simply to avoid hearing certain things, particularly anything

threatening, negative, critical or unpleasant. It’s as if the words were never said: you just don’t remember them.

5. Judge

Negative labels have enormous power. If you prejudge someone as stupid or crazy or unqualified, you don’t pay much attention to what they say. You’ve already dropped them. To hastily judge a statement as immoral, hypocritical, fascist, or insane means you have stopped listening and started a “knee-jerk” reaction. A basic rule of listening is that judgments should only be made after the content of the message has been heard and evaluated.

6. Dreaming

You’re half listening, and something the person says suddenly triggers a chain of private conversations.

associations. Your neighbor says she got fired from her, and in no time you’re back to the scene where you got fired for playing hearts on those long coffee breaks. Hearts is a great game, and there have been a lot of good nights of gaming. And you leave, only to return a few minutes later when your neighbor says, “I knew you’d understand, but please don’t tell my husband.”

You are more likely to dream when you feel bored or anxious. Everyone dreams, and sometimes it takes Herculean efforts to stay tuned. But if you dream a lot about certain people, it may indicate a lack of commitment to meeting or appreciating them. At a minimum, it’s a statement that you don’t really value what they have to say.

7. Identify

In this block, you take everything a person tells you and refer it back to your own experience. They want to tell you about a toothache, but that reminds you of the time you had surgery on your mouth for receding gums. You launch into your story before they can finish theirs. Everything you hear reminds you of something you have felt, done or suffered. You are so busy with these exciting stories of your life that there is no time to really listen or get to know the other person.

8. Advice

You are the great problem solver, ready with help and suggestions. You don’t need to listen more than a few sentences before you start looking for the right advice. However, while preparing suggestions and convincing someone to “just give it a try,” you may miss the most important thing. You didn’t listen to the feelings and you didn’t acknowledge the person’s pain. He or she still feels basically alone because they couldn’t listen and just be there.

9. Combat

This block makes you argue and debate with people. The other person never feels heard

because you’re so quick to disagree. In fact, much of your focus is on finding things you don’t agree with. He takes firm positions, he is very clear about his beliefs and preferences. The way to avoid confrontation is to repeat and acknowledge what you have heard. Find one thing you might agree with.

A subtype of combat is humiliation. Use biting or sarcastic comments to dismiss the other person’s point of view. For example, Sally begins to tell Joe about her problems in an English class. Joe says, “When are you going to be smart enough to drop that class?” Jake is overwhelmed by the noise of the television. When he tells Rebecca, she says, “Oh please, no TV routine again.” Humiliation is the standard listening block in many marriages. It quickly pushes communication into stereotyped patterns where each person repeats a familiar hostile litany.

A second type of combat is the discount. Discounts are for people who can’t stand compliments. “Oh, I didn’t do anything… What do you mean I was totally lame… It’s nice of you to say that, but it’s actually a very poor try.” The basic discounting technique is to burn out when you receive a compliment. The other person is never satisfied that you have really heard their appreciation. And he’s right, you didn’t.

10. Being Right

Being right means that you will do everything you can (twist the facts, start yelling, make excuses or accusations, invoke past sins) to avoid being wrong. You can’t listen to criticism, you can’t be corrected, and you can’t accept suggestions for change. Your convictions are unshakeable. And because you won’t recognize that your mistakes are mistakes, you keep making them.

11. Derailment

This auditory block is achieved by suddenly changing the subject. You derail the conversation train when you get bored or uncomfortable with a topic. Another way to derail is by joking around. This means that you continually respond to what is said with a joke or joke to avoid awkwardness or anxiety by listening seriously to the other person.

12. Placement

“Right – Right… Absolutely… I know… Of course, you’re… Amazing… Yeah… Really?” You want to be kind, nice and supportive. You want people to like you, so you agree to everything. You may be half listening long enough to get the idea, but you’re not really into it. You are placing rather than tuning in and examining what is actually being said.