Listen

I could see that something was off. I had worked with Tom for a long time and I have become sensitive to his mannerisms. So I asked, “Everything Ok?”. He responded with a halfhearted “yeah”, but rather than press, I just waited silently for 2 seconds. “Well, actually...”.

Tom needed to verbally express some things that he was thinking. I listened. I am trying very hard to be an active listener and to read queues from people. It is a challenge for me to do this because my nature is to start thinking about something else halfway through my own thoughts. This is doubly difficult when listening to someone.

I had a modest level of success listening as he wrestled with himself about expectations and his observation of himself. At times casting a critical light on his thoughts and at other times forgiving himself.

I asked a few prompting questions to help us take a deeper look into these thoughts, but the one thing that I didn’t do was to ask him if he wanted to change his behavior.

Reflecting and pondering are good research into one’s own thoughts, but at the end, we need to ask ourselves if we want to act.

Normally, in these situations, we ponder and reflect, but then we just stop thinking about it over time and go on about our daily routine. What we should do instead is ask ourselves, “Does this information provide me a reason to act or behave differently?” Then, if nothing should be done, make a ‘decision’ to do nothing. If something should be done, decide to do it and then execute.

Did I help Tom today? Likely, the ability to verbalize his thoughts were helpful to him. I do know, however, that his talk helped me practice listening.