© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

Really important encounters are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other. 

(Paulo Coelho) 

Cultural and professional backgrounds, combined with our personal history, our state of mind, our values, make us unique “systems”. 

Everyone is unique, a ‘sphere’ of meanings, energies, dreams, ambitions, tangible cells, and intangible thoughts. 

Listening means getting closer to that sphere. Deep listening means entering that sphere. 

The more you activate empathy, the more you enter the “core” of the person. 

Each person can be likened metaphorically to an energy field, a field of light, which at some time meets other energy fields, other fields of light, finding or not finding possibilities for exchange, osmosis, transmission of signals, or remaining distant, impermeable. 

 

“Eventually soulmates meet, for they have the same hiding place.” 

(Robert Brault) 

 

If I assume that we will magically understand each other, I will not be doing quality listening. Listening means being ready to approach worlds we do not know, and not just letting words in through our ears. 

We find ourselves in a world in which everyone is within their own ‘sphere’ – a set of thoughts, signals, words, values, – together referred to in the HPM method as the ‘Semiosphere’. Each of us lives in a ‘world’, in a sphere of words, concepts, ideologies and beliefs about the world and ourselves. Communication poses the challenge of passing messages between people from different backgrounds. Listening must always consider the possibility that the other person has a different culture from ours, even if it is only slightly different, which would imply the need to listen without preconceptions. Even the difference between a humanistic and a technical-engineering education can create a degree of incommunicability. Not understanding each other is more frequent than we think. 

 

Every day we go around in a crowd, we run here and there, we almost touch each other but, there is truly little contact. All those missed encounters. All those missed opportunities. It is disturbing when you think about it. Maybe it is better not to think about it at all. 

(Jonathan Coe) 

 

Every professional or family background offers you a world of words that you use daily, until those words become your world. This world becomes your daily sphere, your sphere of words, your sphere of relationships, your sphere of high or low, strong, or weak energies. 

At some moment, these spheres have occasion for contact, but the different backgrounds make understanding not automatic or obvious. 

When this moment of contact occurs, the two ‘spheres’ can repel each other ‘by the skin’, like two balls of equal magnetic charge repel each other.  

Attraction or repulsion occurs when archaic elements of the brain (archipallium) give us signals of displeasure or pleasantness, towards a face or smells that offer us signals of danger, or with signals that also come from body language, posture, smiles and facial expressions. If the signals are negative, they alert our alarm systems, they are certainly not conducive to listening, but if we know that they are being activated, we can go beyond those signals, listen, and perceive with greater awareness what is happening inside us. 

Listening to a person who disturbs us is something we avoid as much as possible and reduce to the bare minimum, and we notice this even between people who love each other but have had a fight. There is no less talking, there is less listening. 

Listening therefore means much more than hearing words, but observing movement, the body, gestures, facial expressions, objects, moods. 

Miraculously (but it is not a miracle, but the effect of well analysable human mechanisms) the opposite can also happen, a magnetic-like attraction, a human contact where we can find an understanding with someone, a way to share something between our spheres of meaning. And almost always, in this case, listening will become an extremely pleasant process. 

 

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter. 

(Winston Churchill)

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

From vocal stress to quality of pronunciation, to confidence and trustworthiness, to gait. Listening to the ‘whole’ 

Auditory listening comes through the vibrations of the vocal cords creating sounds, which we recognise as words. 

When we are stressed, e.g., by telling a lie, or dealing with a subject that is overly sensitive to us, the body unconsciously activates the attack-escape system (sympathetic nervous system) – increasing the readiness of the muscles to spring into action. The vocal cords do not escape, and their vibration goes from a state of relaxation to a more tremulous voice (micro tremors) which corresponds to a voice under stress. 

This is to say that while we are listening, not only do ‘grammatical’ words come in, but my processing of what I hear takes place, and a form of judgement or evaluation is triggered, not only of the content (ethical or moral evaluation), but also of the speaker’s skills, or his state of stress. If an Italian person quotes a word in English, e.g., Bed & Breakfast, based on how well he pronounces even single words in English, I will understand how familiar he is with that language, how much he has studied it, and even whether he has lived there for a long time. This is augmented perception. Someone who talks about sales and uses the word Sales literally, verbatim – is telling us, unintentionally, that they have extremely poor English and probably do not have the awareness to make a big impression on someone who knows the language well. 

 

People observe the colors of a day only at its beginnings and ends, but to me it’s quite clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations with each passing moment. A single hour can consist of thousands of different colours. Waxy yellows, cloud-spot blues. Murky darkness. In my line of work, I make it a point to notice them. 

 (Markus Zusak) 

 

If while the person is speaking, we hear a vocal tremor, we are practicing advanced listening, listening to the components of vocal stress is an indicator of ongoing lies or emotional difficulties, we think the person is under stress.  

Not only that, but we also listen more than words if we phone a person in the morning, and we hear a low timbre of voice, so we go as far as to ask, “oh sorry, did you just wake up?” even if the person answering the phone does not mention it at all. We pick it up from the voice, from its qualities. Our mirror neurons allow us to identify and feel what we perceive. The thought of what might be happening takes shape in our mind, based on what might have happened to us on similar occasions. This is also an advanced and active listening dynamic. 

 

“The first step to understanding reality is to become aware of how it takes shape in our mind.”  

Stefano Nasetti 

 

But back to examples of content. If I talk about white fibres and red fibres (two different types of muscle fibres) 7, I assume that the other person understands me and has studied motor sciences or medicine or physiology. 

And not only that. The quality of the exposition will tell me a lot about his cultural status, and the calmness with which he expounds will help me to understand if it is the first time or one of the many he talks about, and therefore if he is an expert in the field or not (and this without the person having either said or officially announced it). 

And always looking at the ‘unspoken’, it is enough to see a person enter a bar or walk down the street and deduce from the type of walk, posture and body size and their proportions, a lot of data with respect to age, state of health, doing or not doing sports, and a lot of other information.  

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

A question of voice, words, and content 

During any human interaction, there are moments of rapprochement and estrangement between people. Listening, when well done, is certainly a moment of relational rapprochement. 

Words take on meaning only based on an agreement between the parties, otherwise they would just be empty sounds. The theory of the Coordinated Management of Meanings5 highlights precisely that the word with its set of shared meanings is the result of a work of coordination between the many possible meanings. For the listener, being reassured about the meaning of the primary words we are using is crucial. 

If an entire discourse, for example, revolves around the theme of Corporate Training, it is not a bad idea to actively ask “What is your conception of Corporate Training?” and compare it with your own. 

In this way we will know if there are any divergences of meaning (semantic divergences) that might hinder our understanding. 

 

To judge a man, one must at least know the secret of his thought, of his misfortunes, of his emotions. (Honoré de Balzac) 

 

There are distances, relational distances, no less important than physical distances. Listening is the most powerful mechanism we have for reducing relational distances between human beings. 

Incommunicability, on the other hand, is an enemy both of communication between people and of human mechanisms such as being friends, getting along, doing things together and having fun. It also affects relations in companies, between companies, between nations and even between whole cultures and global areas. 

I give a brief initial example of good listening skills, made, not by chance, by a friend who is also a psychotherapist and counsellor, to whom I tell by phone the joy of starting this book:  

  • Daniele “You know Lorenzo, it’s coming out really well, today I was in the library with all the windows open, crisp air, and I wrote really well, the book is starting to take shape, I can feel it flowing”. 
  • Lorenzo: “I’m glad to hear you are so lively”. 

As can be seen, the active listening of my colleague and friend Dr. Lorenzo Manfredini does not even concern himself with the content (he could have asked, for example, which chapter I was on), but “reflects” a very special kind of listening, that of my mood, perceived above all by the paralinguistic system (tone of voice, timbre, speed of speech, intonation), even more than by the words themselves (verbal component, the words I used). 

Intonation is one of the ‘prosodic elements’ of language. It  is composed of the tone and modulation of the voice during the articulation of a word or sentence. Prosody is the part of linguistics that studies the intonation, rhythm, duration, and accent of spoken language. Prosodic information, such as intonation, is full of meanings, for example, it tells us something about the health and fitness of the speaker, the energy in circulation, the mood. An example of augmented listening is listening to intonation: 

 

“The rising and falling tone or the use of a particular chant are ‘paralinguistic’ elements of communication, which add to the meaning conveyed by words. This level of communication can never be eliminated from vocal communication, not even from artificially produced communication, which in fact often appears mechanical to us precisely because of its ‘flat’ intonation. Paralinguistic communication mainly conveys information about the identity of the speaker (gender, geographical origin, etc.) and about the relationships that the sender intends to establish with the recipient (play, joke, command, question, etc.)”. 6   

 

And that is exactly what the friend did, connecting to the relationship of “sharing happiness” which was my primary communicative intent. 

Listening to the underlying communicative intent, and not just the words, is an example of listening beyond words, and augmented perception. 

This is to say that advanced active listening can enter our every moment, our every day, it requires skills, and it is not just about the words, but rather and above all about the communicative intent that a person expresses, usually doing so in a totally undeclared way. 

If we had been in a project in which this transmission of messages was connected to a deadline, the question could have been about what page I was on in relation to the deadline; the communicative intent could have been about a practical need to understand if we were late, and that would have been the appropriate question, but as this was not the case, a far superior, advanced, active listening competence emerged. 

 

“Speech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener.”  

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne 

 

Whenever we listen deeply, in some way, we are connecting to the inner worlds of people, we are getting closer to the ‘core’ of the individual, to their ‘moods’, their personality, their history, and not just facts and figures. Then, and only then, can we begin to grasp its infinite nuances, and begin to understand it. 

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

Holistic communication answers many more questions than ‘what do I say with my voice’. 

The people they are in contact with extract meanings from the most disparate elements, such as: 

  • what music you listen to, 
  • how congruent your favourite music genre is with the identities that others perceive of you, 
  • your general appearance, 
  • your haircut and its care (shades, gels, hair accessories), 
  • tattoos, their size, type, symbolism, 
  • tone of voice, 
  •  vocal stress, 
  • clothing, e.g. the degree of ‘casual’ vs ‘professional’, 
  • adherence or non-adherence to the ‘dress code’ that the social situation would like to impose (e.g. not wearing a tie in a formal interview is a form of ‘independence’ message), 
  • the body, muscular tones, body shapes, postures, 
  • what ‘your environments’ communicate, what is on the wall, how your home is furnished. The communication of environments, like any other form of holistic communication, becomes an ’emanation of the Self’, 
  • the watch you have, its type, “adventure” watch filled with features, barometer, altimeter, depth gauge, compass, etc., vs. classic watch with hands. Plastic, gold or steel? 
  • the glasses, their shape and brand, the fact that they are – by shape and frame – “tactical” or “understated”? Indicators of ‘understatement’ (wanting to be noticed little) or ‘overstatement’ (wanting to be noticed for an object)? 
  • what films you watch, what programmes you prefer, what social media you use, how you appear on your social profiles if someone who does not know you or someone who does know you observes you, 
  • the “informational mental infiltrations” or “memetic infiltrations” that we possess, e.g. knowing a piece of news that occupies our mental ram without having intentionally learned it, knowing that “George Clooney slipped on a motorbike in Sardinia but was not hurt” without ever having gone looking for that news (tells us that you have frequented public environments, such as a bar), 
  • the strength and conviction with which you express a message, 
  • your skin, its condition, the marks it has and doesn’t have, the degree of care, the ‘word of the body’. 
  • The ‘names’ you give to things or animals or objects, dense with connotative meanings that reverberate your way of being and your personality and apply it to the objects, animals and things around you. 

 

Holistic communication therefore includes listening to ourselves, and leads us to an increased awareness of the enormous variety of means, channels and tools that emit messages. 

It serves us to be more aware of all the tools we have and sometimes do not use, or the sources from which perception comes, listening to others, and to the things that tell the story of who we are. 

 

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

A telephone does not only emit radiation, but also information about its owner. Only yesterday, near an ice-cream parlour, I found an abandoned phone. It took only 50 cents of a second, an instantaneous perception, to realise that it belonged to a little girl, based on the pink butterfly sticker, the writing on the cover, and other small details, without even opening it. 

I took it to the ice-cream parlour, saying that a little girl had probably forgotten it and would come looking for it. Chance of error? Less than 1%.  

People use, in other words, a system of holistic communication and holistic listening, they judge and reconstruct based on a few ‘trigger’ signals, and the probability of a perception close to reality is quite high. Especially if we know the ‘sign system’ or semiotic environment in which we are moving. 

Understanding and governing this system of signs, when we emit them, and when we listen to them, is a fundamental component of advanced listening and perception. 

 

Holistic communication and holistic listening 

 

Holistic communication answers many more questions than ‘what do I say with my voice’. 

The people they are in contact with extract meanings from the most disparate elements, such as: 

  • what music you listen to, 
  • how congruent your favourite music genre is with the identities that others perceive of you, 
  • your general appearance, 
  • your haircut and its care (shades, gels, hair accessories), 
  • tattoos, their size, type, symbolism, 
  • tone of voice, 
  •  vocal stress, 
  • clothing, e.g. the degree of ‘casual’ vs ‘professional’, 
  • adherence or non-adherence to the ‘dress code’ that the social situation would like to impose (e.g. not wearing a tie in a formal interview is a form of ‘independence’ message), 
  • the body, muscular tones, body shapes, postures, 
  • what ‘your environments’ communicate, what is on the wall, how your home is furnished. The communication of environments, like any other form of holistic communication, becomes an ’emanation of the Self’, 
  • the watch you have, its type, “adventure” watch filled with features, barometer, altimeter, depth gauge, compass, etc., vs. classic watch with hands. Plastic, gold or steel? 
  • the glasses, their shape and brand, the fact that they are – by shape and frame – “tactical” or “understated”? Indicators of ‘understatement’ (wanting to be noticed little) or ‘overstatement’ (wanting to be noticed for an object)? 
  • what films you watch, what programmes you prefer, what social media you use, how you appear on your social profiles if someone who does not know you or someone who does know you observes you, 
  • the “informational mental infiltrations” or “memetic infiltrations” that we possess, e.g. knowing a piece of news that occupies our mental ram without having intentionally learned it, knowing that “George Clooney slipped on a motorbike in Sardinia but was not hurt” without ever having gone looking for that news (tells us that you have frequented public environments, such as a bar), 
  • the strength and conviction with which you express a message, 
  • your skin, its condition, the marks it has and doesn’t have, the degree of care, the ‘word of the body’. 
  • The ‘names’ you give to things or animals or objects, dense with connotative meanings that reverberate your way of being and your personality and apply it to the objects, animals and things around you. 

 

Holistic communication therefore includes listening to ourselves, and leads us to an increased awareness of the enormous variety of means, channels and tools that emit messages. 

It serves us to be more aware of all the tools we have and sometimes do not use, or the sources from which perception comes, listening to others, and to the things that tell the story of who we are. 

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

 3-step exercise.  Locate 1) aspects that characterise us, 2) our “tags”, 3) our “targets”. 

If listening well to others is difficult, listening to oneself is even more so. We can approach listening to ourselves in many ways. The first is a meditative way, lying down and listening to the voices or rather the intrapsychic dialogue, the one that “buzzes” in our head, especially when we ask ourselves the question “who am I”. These are very valid techniques but they must be guided by a Master, coach or Counselor. 

A possible alternative is more ‘active’ work. In this we ask questions about: 

  • my personal identity, the “who am I”. 
  • descriptive “tags” of my identity, the words or adjectives or phrases that characterise my identity, 
  • the “significant others”, the people who matter to me and to whom I want to communicate my identity. 
  •  

Example 

  1. Who am I? 
  2. Which keywordscharacteriseme, related to identity? Which keywords would I put to describe myself?  
  3. Do significant others perceive these tags or states of my identity or not? 
  4. What is my target audience? Single or multiple? To whom do I want to communicate? Towards whom do I want to produce communicative effects, effects deriving from my holistic communication mix, of messages that emanate?
  5. Can we create a perception of truth, and therefore reliability?

 

Let us examine the question of ‘tags’ or labels. What does a robot see of us? This is an example of the tags detected by a search engine against all my videos on my main YouTube channel. 

 

communication, training, coaching, emotions, daniele trevisani, freedom, sales training, corporate training, personal growth, communication analysis, counselling, psychology, human communication analysis, dott. daniele trevisani, incommunicability, emotional backgrounds, human communication, communicating in public, personal development, communication courses, communication training, expressive potential, public speaking, anxiety, well-being, cultural evolution, emotional states, mental cleansing, mind maps, memetics, clothing, outward appearance, tattoos, channels, heightened awareness, emanation of the self, communication of environments, environments, body. 

 

It is a vision – partial, reductive, synthetic – in which I nevertheless find myself. It speaks of me. This map of meanings gathers elements even from the last video I just uploaded, in which the tag “meaning of tattoos” even appears, and whether I like it or not, this is how the software sees me, this is how it characterises me, and most likely, these are the “things” that people who do not know me, especially through YouTube, think of me. After 3 weeks, I repeat the analysis and I find these tags, some coinciding, some not. 

 

daniele trevisani, coaching, freedom, communication, training, life, personal growth, emotions, sales training, corporate training, master in coaching, empathy, humanistic psychology, export, Italian creativity, leadership and values, leadership training, coaching training, trainer training, conscience, human values, personal coaching, existential analysis, role psychology, role, corporate mission, personal mission, meaning of life, business coaching, leadership, corporate roles, self-realisation, living, awakening, empathic listening, modelled listening, psychology, active listening, counselling, sales courses. 

 

This version is also about me, but it is more up-to-date, more reflective of the topics I have covered in recent weeks, for example the word “empathy” appears, and “active listening”.  

The question now becomes a difficult one: can I, through my listening, catch the changes in myself?  

If we look in the mirror every single day, we will probably not see ourselves changing. But if we take a photo from 20 years ago, we will see ourselves as having changed.  

So, listening to oneself wants to strengthen our ability to read ourselves and our variations. 

With respect to the outside world, the factor we want to ask ourselves is how much listening to ourselves is reflected on the outside.  

Are we for others the same person that we see in ourselves?  

Curiously, and most probably, no, or at least there will be 20 different images of us in a room with 20 other people watching or listening to us. 

Whether I am perceived as an authoritative source (high source credibility) or a low source credibility (low source credibility) has a major influence on the processing of the message, its reception, and whether the persuasion effect is high or low or nil. Message processing is not so much based on the message I ‘think’ I have given but on the holistic reception of all the messages that exude from me, my being, my identity, my ‘distinguishing marks’. 

The ‘perception of truth’ is one of the effects that communicators seek, beyond the message, the fact of being perceived as communicating in a ‘true’ way. These perceptions characterise my way of communicating and alter it 

Not being able to have a time machine to know who I really was before and my true story, message receivers eagerly hunt for communicative dissonances, inconsistencies, vocal stress signals, embarrassment, concordant or discordant signs and symbols that I as a communicator ‘give off’, even of my car or PC or phone. 

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

The world of the listener and the world of the speaker are two different worlds

They are two different stories, they have different pasts, friends, relatives, different experiences, different bodies, different sensitivities. Active and empathic listening can perform the miracle of creating a bridge between these two worlds. 

Each of us has different mental images for every word that exists, even for the word ‘tree’, if we could create a drawing of it, 10 different trees would emerge out of 10 different people, ranging from palm trees to pines, with a great variety. Let alone when we talk about concepts like ‘love’ or ‘friendship’. 

 

Two people say ‘I love you’ to each other, or think it, and each means a different thing, a different life, even perhaps a different colour or a different aroma, in the abstract sum of impressions that constitutes the activity of the soul. 

(Fernando Pessoa) 

Imagine the difference between a senior basketball coach and a basketball player in his early twenties. There are huge differences, in age, in height, in physical performance, or in outlook on life.  

But if the player does not learn to listen, he will never get anything out of it, no juice, no teaching, and will remain at his level or maybe even get worse or not participate in the team game. 

There is something fundamental about listening, wanting to enter the world of the other, if only for your own interest. 

“If you listen and learn, you will win basketball games and, gentlemen, winning in here is the key to winning out there! ”  

Samuel L. Jackson – Ken Carter 

And for the coach, it’s no different. Listening to a complaint or a suggestion about a different position on the court to take, and understanding, can make the difference between a player who is comfortable on the court, and a player who quits the sport because he is forced into a role that is not his own, which for so long he has been trying to get the coach to understand. Listening, once again, is at the root of whole chains of events. 

 

“I hate man-marking, I’m a creative person, I like to create play, I’m not a puppet who has to stick to a guy and follow him even if he goes to the bathroom. If this continues, if the coach doesn’t stop putting me on man-to-man, I’ll quit football. I’ve told him 50 times, he doesn’t listen, he doesn’t understand, he hasn’t understood that I won’t be there next game. In fact, from now on, I’m not going to be a dummy.” (real testimony of a youth football player) 

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

Use of vocalisations that show interest in the “story” and simplify expression – e.g. guttural speech sounds and whispery voice such as “Uhm”, “Oh”. Giving a written report of these expressions is not possible, but if we listened to a person that “listens well”, we would notice that they make careful and particular use of paralanguage and sounds during essential parts of the speech. Paralinguistic techniques – together with visual non-verbal techniques – aim to provide phatic signals (contact signals), so that the interlocutor understands that we are listening, we are understanding and we are focused and interested. 

Non-verbal active listening techniques 

Non-verbal active listening techniques use body language to express interest: 

  • Open and leaning forward posture to express willingness; relaxed body posture; 
  • Proxemic (approaching and moving away): reducing the distance from the interlocutor during moments of great interest, moving away in moments of loosening; 
  •  Facial expression: vigilant, careful and caring – not doubtful, ironic or aggressive; 
  • Vigilant and direct gaze; 
  • Eyebrow movement combined with key points of the interlocutor’s speech; 
  • Nods – approval or rejection; 
  • Soft, slow and rolling gestures to communicate a feeling of relaxation and to encourage moving forward; 
  • Non-verbal metaphors: use of body language to show comprehension of what the interlocutor is saying. 

In terms of non-verbal level, it is important to consider that many cultures restrain non-verbal expression of emotions (e.g. Asian culture), but this is also a communicative stereotype – it has a probabilistic value and does not provide certainty. 

In short, the main techniques for effective listening are: 

  • curiosity and interest; 
  • paraphrase: the listener repeats what they understood (that does not mean agreeing with what the person is saying); 
  • summary and recap: rephrasing what the interlocutor said in order to gather information; 
  • targeted questions (conversational refocusing) in order to clarify unclear parts of the speech; 
  • avoiding personal questions until a solid relationship has been established; 
  • offering the speaker the opportunity to figure out whether what they understood is correct, accurate or, on the other side, twisted and incomplete; 
  • listening not only words, but also feelings and non-verbal signals in order to assess feeling and moods; 
  • checking for correct understanding of both feelings and content and not ignoring the latter; 
  • do not tell people how they should feel or what they should think (during the listening phase, it is essential to just draw information, without teaching or judging). 

One must not judge men as we judge a painting or a statue, to a first and unique look; there is an interiority and a soul that must be deepened. 

(Jean de La Bruyère) 

 

These attitudes are essential and they determine the quality of the listening phase. Yet, regarding business listening phases, they should not be confused with the goals of a whole negotiation (that includes listening and propositional phases and statements – which sometimes are harsh or assertive). 

During a negotiation, modifying what other people think (cognitive and persuasive restructuring) or how they feel (emotional action) is possible – this is one of the strategic goals –, but this goal can be pursued only once the negotiator has succeeded in actively listening, using empathy in order to understand the situation in which they are working. 

Listening is not only a technique, but it is also expression and connotation of a state of attraction and love – that can also be just an idea, not necessarily a person. Stopping listening means that something between that idea and us broke and we have to choose between mending that relationship by listening again, or letting it go forever. 

“Love ends when listening does.” 

Enrico Maria Secci

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

Active listening is linked to paralinguistic and non-verbal communication and it includes: 

  • verbal active listening techniques; 
  • paralinguistic active listening techniques; 
  • non-verbal active listening techniques. 

These techniques will be examined in the following paragraphs. 

Let’s underline now an essential aspect of empathy: 

  1. the person who is talking must be aware that they will not be judged. They also should not be ashamed of what they are feeling or saying, no matter how odd or serious things are – from their point of view; empathy is a special area in the space-time continuum – a person can say everything they want, without facing any negative consequences; 
  1. the person who is talking must be aware that they can start making some progress and moving forward only when they have accepted themselves as they are, not matter what they did or what they thought, whether they like it or not. 

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am,  

then I can change”. 

Carl Rogers 

Verbal active listening techniques 

Verbal listening techniques focus on the use of all those words that express attention and willingness to understand. 

  • Open questionswho, where, when, how, why, with whom, how long and other questions that broaden and clarify the conversation. 
  • Closed or clarifying questions: they verify parts of the speech through “yes–no questions”, or other general answers (“a lot/a little”, “before/after”). “It happened just before meeting Angela” “How long before it happened? One hour? One day?” or “Are you happy with your car?” 
  • Mirror technique (reflection of content): repetition of sentences – or parts of sentences – the speaker said, without modifying or altering them. The mirror technique comes from the empathic listening methodologies used in the Rogerian4 therapeutic interview. It is a psychotherapeutic technique that allows the speakers to deepen their thoughts – and to express themselves. “So, you are telling me that…” 
  • Paraphrase: use of “as if”. Trying to understand what has been said by using metaphors or examples that are useful to figure out whether we really understood the deep meaning of what the other person is saying. “You are telling me that it seems like they poured water into your jug without realising it was already full, am I right?” 
  • Factual and historical overview, summary: repetition of what has been said by summarising the main points of the “story”. “If I got that right, what happened could be summed up by saying that…” 
  • Verbal encouragement: e.g. “good”, “interesting”, “yes”, “okay”. 

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

Give your absence to who does not value your presence.
(Oscar Wilde) 

 

Empathy is a value and it generates value. Therefore, it is good to see what some of the indications from the world of research have to say about this. Empathy, practicing it well, requires a well-functioning mind1. This means for us, that the empathic communicator has to take care of himself, his health, the state of his mind, e.g. he/she must be rested, don’t abuse substances, eat and exercise – in short, we are dealing with athletes of communication and athletes of the mind. 

Of course, it can be argued that some psychotherapists manage to be extremely good at active listening and empathic even at the age of 80, or with a sick body, but let us not forget how much experience is supporting them, and therefore, let us do our personal homework diligently to find our best shape and have a body-mind that supports and helps us.  

Taking care of oneself helps empathy. Having personal, physical, bodily, mental, motivational energy helps empathy. If you don’t have energy, you will never really listen to anyone in depth. 

Other evidence: when the subject of active and empathic listening is a distress2, having a methodological school behind you, for example humanistic psychology, Bioenergetic Counseling, or others, is a helpful factor, because you are no longer alone in listening, you are only alone physically, but the presence of the ‘school’ helps you to proceed well. However much good will you have, having a school behind you gives structure, helps, supports morally. 

The ‘school’ can also be an association, club or group of people where people meet and discuss about methods and work, cases or models, and this discussion is of enormous professional enrichment. Whether it is a circle of leaders, a circle of Counselors, a training school, moments of “unwinding and realignment” like those of supervision are fundamental, even in the non-clinical context. Indeed, think how much better it can be in a company to have interviews with employees by a leader, knowing they have a Mentor and then being able to discuss them with a supervisor, rather than leaving them in the dark. 

Finally, an important reflection. Empathy is a concept that is interpreted in literature in many, sometimes incompatible ways3. 

The substantial distinction is between two extremes, an emotional type of empathy, which is primarily experience-centred, i.e. based on feeling and reflecting the feelings of the speaker, and a cognitive type of empathy, based on reflecting and understanding the reasoning of the speaker. 

Our vision is that empathy is a concrete form of mental presence in communication, a conversation in which the End State (point of arrival) to understand a person in their full physical, bodily, intellectual and emotional nuances. 

In our method, therefore, empathy must be both emotional and cognitive. It means being able to understand a situation or a piece of life from the point of view of the person who is experiencing it, and this requires shedding light on both emotional components (understanding emotions and their nuances) and reasoning (understanding values, beliefs, actions, structured thoughts). Only the union of the two components can lead to true empathy, at least as far as empathic listening is concerned. 

The empathic ‘way of being’, which means constantly living with attention and sensitivity to the emotions of others, is a different matter, but this is outside the scope of the technique of active and empathic listening and is certainly not to be condemned, but neither is it to be forced.  

I think it is right to leave it up to the free will of each person how to lead their lives. Certainly, however, when we enter into an active or empathic listening session, being able to tap into this sensitivity is needed. 

 

Difference between empathy and sympathy 

Empathy and sympathy must be distinguished. Empathy means to understand. For example in the company, to understand why a customer postpones a purchase or wants a low-priced product, why a customer arrives late for an appointment, whether it is because of strategy or real impediment, or why a customer tells us about a certain specific problem, what is behind it. Sympathy, on the other hand, means appreciating, sharing, agreeing. Selling requires the application of empathy and not necessarily sympathy. The same applies to a coaching, a counselling or a leadership interview. 

Active listening and empathy should not be confused with acceptance of others’ contents or values. A Decalogue of active listening is not to be confused with blind acceptance of other people’s content. These are merely methods of allowing other people’s thoughts to flow as freely as possible in order to gain openness and useful information. 

The phase of inner judgement on what we hear, which is inevitable during negotiation, must be ‘relegated’ to our internal processing, held for later stages of negotiation, and must not interfere with the listening phase.  

When our aim is to listen, we must listen. 

To do this we will have to: 

  • suspend our judgment; 
  • give signals of assent and presence (contact signals, phatic signals); 
  • try to stay connected to the flow of the discourse; 
  • ask questions whenever an aspect seems worthy of investigation; 
  • avoid ‘anticipating’ (e.g.: I am sure that you…) and avoid making statements that are ‘stances’; 
  • simply rephrase the key points of what the other person said; 
  • do not interrupt inappropriate. 

We should reserve our judgement or make clarifications only after having listened in depth and inside an appropriate negotiation frame. The aim of empathic techniques is to encourage the flow of other people’s thoughts, and to collect as many ‘information nuggets‘ as possible that the interlocutor can give. Empathy, if well applied, produces “empathic flow“, a flow of data, factual, sentimental, experiential information, of enormous usefulness to the negotiator. 

The opposite behavior (judging, correcting, affirming, blocking) breaks the empathic flow, and risks stopping the collection of valuable information prematurely.  

 

Few people think, but they all want to judge.
(King Frederick the Great) 

 

There is a moment when the negotiator has to stop the flow of the other person’s discourse (turning point) but in general it is good to let it flow, until one has really understood who one is dealing with and what the real objectives are, and all other necessary information. Empathic techniques are also helpful in curbing the premature tendency towards informational self-disclosure: the giving of information, the inappropriate or premature leaking of data about ourselves. Giving the customer information and data that could be counterproductive has a boomerang effect. Any information must be given with extreme caution.  

The empathic attitude is extremely useful in focusing the negotiator’s mental energies on listening to the other person and curbing our own inappropriate interference. 

Let us also remember another point. Listening is a gift. Giving the gift of listening, today, in a materialistic world, is among the most precious gifts one can give, provided that the person who has to be listened interests us and we want to give this gift. Human time is precious and limited, and listening well, takes time. For this reason, dedicating a moment of life to someone full of quality listening, and doing it with passion, must be done for work, or for love. 

 

“Loving means above all listening 

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.