Listening should occur more often than speaking

Listening well is a skill that can be learnt and should be practised often

What does it mean to be a good listener?

Author and journalist Kate Murphy has asked hundreds of people that question while researching for her book, You're Not Listening.

The overwhelming response, or the lack thereof, surprised her.

"I would get this deer in the headlights look. People wouldn't be able to tell me," Kate Murphysays.

"But they'd be able to tell me very clearly and very quickly what it meant to be a bad listener like looking at your phone, interrupting, responding in an illogical way."

She also sought out those who listen for a living, including priests, interrogators, focus group moderators and bartenders.

She spoke about this experience at a lecture presented at this year's Brisbane Writers Festival. What she learntmade her realisethat when it comes to good communication, listening is often more powerful than talking.

And it's something thatmade her question why people don't actively do more of it.

"I really think part of [not listening] is just what we've been conditioned to, but also we want people to like us. And so, there's this urgency let me tell you why I'm valuable," she explains.

Murphy says we've been conditioned to place more value on what we project such as telling our own story and being the centre of attention rather than what weabsorb.

"And to really connect with another person, it works the other way," she says.

Learning from professional listeners

Someone who has learnt to connect to people by listening isDetective Senior Constable Nicole Whelan, an Australian Federal Police officerwho works in child protection operations in NSW.

For instance, in her role, she's mindful of the different ways she phrases questions to children versus those she asks adults.

"Children have a disposition to want to please whoever they're speaking to. So [research has shown] that they can easily be led by questions that we ask of them," she says.

"Our entire listening technique is around having that child produce their free narrative of events. We essentially insert ourselves as little as possible we essentially let them run the dialogue."

When she does ask the children questions, she has to use an open-question technique, which involves asking questions that can't be answered with a simple yes or no.

When it comes to interviewing suspects, the detective says it's crucial to create a non-judgemental environment, so they feel comfortable sharing their version of events.

"It's challenging to not have a reaction to something that you find yourself quite morally challenging, but if you can keep those non-verbal cues and if you can keep that dialogue flowing with that person, you gather so much information," she explains.

Both Murphy and Senior Constable Whelan say listening is a skill that can be improved with practiceand they had a few helpful tips.

Communication bias

Murphy says something to be aware of is communication bias. This is when you don't listenbecause you're predicting what someone might say instead.

Familiarity can breed complacency, she warns.

"While you might think the person that you love the most is the person that you would listen to the most ... in fact the opposite is true," she says.

"What it comes down to is, as wonderful as intimacy and connection is with another person, it leads to complacency.

"So you have this idea of 'I already know what you're going to say', and so you stop listening [and]your brain moves on to something else."

Our brains try to conserve energy through prediction, says Murphy. But the problem with prediction is that people are always changing.

Murphy found many people felt like they weren't listened to by their loved ones.

"If you stop listening to someone that you love dearly, you will eventually lose touch with who that person is," she says.

Don't shiftthe conversation

If you want to become a better listener, Murphy recommends being aware of the shift versus the support response.

"The shift response is when someone says something and then you shift the conversation back to yourself," Murphy explains.

This is the more common of the two responses.

"And people often do that in the mistaken idea of 'let me show you how I relate', but it's really 'let's talk about me now, enough about you'."

Instead Murphy suggests embracing the support response by asking follow up questions.

"So if you start shifting the conversation and talking about you, what have you gained? Nothing," she says.

"Whereas if you have that support response and you ask questions, you've gained so much, not only about the other person but maybe something that you've learnt from the conversation."

Sitting in silence

Another technique is to embrace silence at least for a moment.

"When people are uncomfortable with silence, they are thinking about what they want to say immediately when the other person stops speaking, so they have missed a good chunk of the conversation," Murphy says.

Instead, pause for a moment after someone has finished speaking, take what they've said, really consider itand then respond, she says.

Senior Constable Whelan knows firsthand the benefits of embracing silence in her role.

"When I first went into policing,[silence] was something that I noticed as a technique that was incredibly effective," she recalls.

"People really are uncomfortable with that dead air.

"[They] want to fill that because to a degree they are wanting to appease their audience."

Take a break

Senior Constable Whelan has learnt that there is only so much effective listening you can do in one day, so sometimes it's worth taking a break.

"[Listening] is quite an exercise in concentration and to listen welland to be able to understand exactly what somebody's telling youand to gather all that information is an incredibly exhaustive process," she says.

According to her, there's a limit on how much you can listen.

"Everyone needs a cup of tea and a piece of chocolate by the end," she adds.

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Kate Murphy's role as a journalist also involves a lot of listening, so she's aware that she, too, can only do so much listening in one day.

"And it is okay to tell the other person, 'I really want to hear what you have to say, but I've run out of steam, let's circle back later and talk about this'," she says.

"Because it's better to do that than to half-listen or listen when you are totally burned out because the other person is going to pick up on it and you are not going to get as much out of the conversation."