Transcript
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Have you ever been in a situation where you were trying to tell someone something
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very important and they really didn't seem to be listening to you at all? No? Just me?
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There are times when the way we interpret other people's response to us when
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we're speaking to them might be correct, but it might actually be completely off.
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And if you're anything like me, sometimes we get upset and maybe the whole thing
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would go better if we could just understand how they were listening. So let's talk about it.
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Welcome to Mind Your Midlife, your go-to resource for confidence and success, one thought at a time.
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Unlike most advice out there, we believe that simply telling you to believe
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in yourself or change your habits isn't enough to wake up excited about life
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or feel truly confident in your body.
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Each week, you'll gain actionable strategies and, oh my goodness,
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powerful insights to stop feeling stuck and start loving your midlife.
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This is the Mind Your Midlife podcast.
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We're here at Mind Your Midlife because I have an absolute passion to help you and me, I'm in my 50s,
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to help us go through this period of life feeling confident and feeling inspired
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and having fun when we can and dealing with the hard parts in the best way that we can.
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There's going to be hard parts, of course. And so I came across the information
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I'm going to share with you in today's episode.
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When I was in a professional development training.
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So I attended an online training for facilitation, training how to facilitate
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a discussion, how to facilitate an event, what techniques were.
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Would someone use to do that in the best way possible. I love working with groups.
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I love facilitating discussions and events, large and small.
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So I really enjoyed this training.
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And even better, I learned something that I did not know before.
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Now, I used to be a teacher. I taught for 12 years, in fact,
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one year in middle school and 11 years in high school.
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And that meant that many, many times I learned about learning styles.
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So you might lean heavily towards one learning style, or maybe you're a mix
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of a couple of the learning styles, and those are visual, meaning you need to
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see it to really absorb it.
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Auditory, meaning like right now, you need to hear it to really absorb it.
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Kinesthetic, meaning there needs to be some movement for you to be able to absorb information.
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You don't sit still, and it's not required that you sit still to take things in.
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So those are just some examples. Not really our topic for today,
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but point being, I knew those. I had been teaching.
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I had gone to many, many, many teacher trainings and taken teacher courses,
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and learning styles is definitely a thing.
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And by the way, it's kind of interesting to think about the fact that now I
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am podcasting because I am definitely a visual learner.
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I really, really like to see things on paper.
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And I realize that ages us, doesn't it, when we say see things on paper.
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But I am often scribbling on a piece of paper when I'm talking to podcast guests
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or when I'm thinking about ideas.
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My desk has post-it notes all over it. So I don't know if you're anything like
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me, but definitely visual.
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I got into podcasting because I love to speak and because it's so practical.
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You can listen while you're doing a million different things.
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And that's what we're talking about today, listening.
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So I did not know prior to this course that there were very distinct listening
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styles in the same way that there are distinct learning styles.
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And just imagine the tough conversations that you've had in your life.
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We've all reached the point in life where we have had to tell someone something
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they didn't want to hear, or we have had to maybe talk with a child, a teenager,
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a mentee, and either lay down the law or explain something or give a consequence to something.
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And we maybe have...
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Do I want to say escalated the situation because it really looked like they weren't listening?
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Have you ever been in that situation? Have you ever gotten upset,
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not because of the situation, but because of the person's body language or the
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fact that they weren't even looking at you? They weren't even taking in what you're saying.
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Oh, so frustrating. I'm just talking and no one's listening to me.
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I'm wondering if you've been in that situation. I bet if we're being honest,
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we all have been in that situation.
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You haven't reached this point in life without having to have tough conversations.
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I wish for you very few of them, but they're going to happen.
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And I want you to stand up for yourself. So that means they're going to happen.
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Sometimes, though, it might be that the person you were talking to was listening,
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and their style of listening, the way they displayed it with their body language,
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was the miscommunication.
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And I think especially if we're talking to our own kids or to teenagers in general,
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sometimes we sort of have this way deep belief in our subconscious that they're
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probably not listening anyway or that they're kind of antagonistic towards us
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if we're trying to give them advice or discipline.
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So that sort of makes the situation a little tougher.
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But maybe if we knew what it looks like for people to be listening,
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even if it's not what we expected, then we could have a little bit more patience with them.
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And really, I guess even though this is about listening styles,
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it's also about perspective and putting ourselves in the other person's shoes.
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Because we want to assume that maybe people always act the way we do,
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people listen the way we do, but it's not true.
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So here we go. There are four styles of listening that are most common.
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I think you will recognize yourself in one of these.
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However, you probably really are a combination.
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Every time we talk about categories of how we behave or how we think,
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we're all probably a combination of two or three of these.
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But there probably is one that you will recognize yourself. So I'm going to
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give you what they are in the basics, and then we'll go back and talk through
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each of them a little bit more, okay?
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So the list is a connective listener. They're really oriented towards the person they're listening to.
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A reflective listener. They are processing.
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An analytical listener. They want the facts.
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Just the facts, ma'am. And a conceptual listener focused on possibilities.
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So you might have already said, oh, well, yeah, that one was me, obviously.
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Well, don't turn the podcast off yet because let's talk into it a little bit more.
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I want you to recognize yourself, but I also want all of us to understand what
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these mean so that we can recognize other people and at least have compassion
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for them or have perspective where we think, oh, maybe they are listening to me.
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Maybe they weren't just blowing me off.
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So let's talk about a connective listener.
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A connective listener is a type of listener that you're really going to see
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the listening in their body language more than probably any other type.
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They are going to orient themselves physically toward you, and they are listening for feelings.
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They're potentially missing some of the facts in what you're saying.
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They're trying to make a connection with you, however, and so they might be
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nodding, they might be leaning in, they might be making more eye contact.
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They're connecting, and they're looking for an emotional connection with either
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you, the speaker, or with the information.
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So they probably in a classroom would be sitting towards the front of the room,
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they would be ready and prepared and the nodding.
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The nodding is the thing. I know we've recognized that.
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And in many, I have a lot of this in me. I'm a nodder.
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I want to give people feedback that, yes, I am listening. So that's connective.
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And I think the connective listeners are the ones that probably aren't going
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to upset someone speaking to them quite so much.
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They're the ones where we're thinking to ourselves, oh, wow,
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they're really listening to me.
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I can see the nodding, right? And they're leaning in and they're making eye contact.
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These are the type of listeners that probably people don't get upset.
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At you as often if you're this type of listener, because it does look like you're listening.
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So that's great for connective listeners. But if you are a connective listener
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and other people are acting differently when you're speaking to them,
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it might not be that they're not listening. So let's talk about these other three.
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Reflective. So a reflective listener, as I said,
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is processing the information and really letting it run in their heads because
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a reflective listener wants to know,
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how does the information affect me?
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The listener is thinking, how does this affect me?
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They're very focused on the effect on themselves, and they need time to figure
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that out. So they might be leaned a bit more, leaned a bit more back as opposed to forward.
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And they might not be looking at whoever's speaking. And they might,
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they probably wouldn't be nodding.
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They might even kind of look like they're a bit up in the clouds and not paying attention.
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But what they're doing is they're listening for how the information affects them.
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And their brain is processing on that and it takes time. So what is the information?
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How does it affect me? What does that look like? Now, a reflective listener
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could miss the effects of something on other people.
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So if you're a reflective listener, I would encourage you to just keep in mind
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that you want to listen to how something is going to affect you and other people.
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But the key for you speaking to this type of listener is, it's okay that they're leaning back.
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They might be sitting in the back of the room. They might be doodling.
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They might not be looking.
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They're still probably listening. They're allowing their brains to process while
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they're doing whatever it is they're doing with their body.
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Okay, number three, an analytical listener.
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Now, this is a little bit me as well. I'm the connective and the analytical.
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Now, the analytical listener wants the facts, and that makes sense, right?
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We know what the word analytical means. If you're an analytical listener,
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you are almost probably coming across as a little bit impatient with the person who's talking to you.
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And you don't want to hear opinions. You get impatient with opinions.
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You might miss feelings being communicated to you.
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You're grabbing the facts out of what you're hearing.
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And if you're speaking to an analytical listener, it might feel as though they're
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only hearing bits and pieces of what you're saying.
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They're hearing the time that you need them, or they're hearing the item that
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they need to have, or the person that was there, the facts.
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They might not be hearing as easily how you felt about it,
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or how you hope they will feel in the situation, or any of those sort of softer
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items, because they grab onto the facts.
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Unless they take a moment and step back from that.
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So as a speaker to someone like this, it can feel a little frustrating if you're
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trying to express your feelings and they're not seeming to catch it.
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And as the listener, you potentially are missing some really important things
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that are the nuances of the communication.
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So do I have a solution for you, analytical listeners?
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I think that just recognizing that if you tend to fixate on the facts and if
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people who are speaking to you about tough things sometimes get frustrated with you,
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even just recognizing that.
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You could maybe tell yourself, okay, pause.
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Let me see. Am I missing anything?
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Maybe look at the person's expression that's speaking to you. Are they frustrated?
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I wonder why. Just try to just give yourself a little reminder to recognize
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that. And then the last type is conceptual.
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So these are the particularly creative people.
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A conceptual listener is really focused on possibilities, on concepts, and
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They might miss the details because they're looking for the big,
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exciting idea, the big picture.
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They're listening to what's being said, and they're catching the overall concept,
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but maybe not catching the details and the little pieces.
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And it's not because they're not trying to. It's because their style is to grab that big picture,
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like the overall outside of the picture, and then they're not necessarily feeling
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in the middle unless maybe they're reminded to or they remind themselves to.
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The cool thing about this kind of listener is they generate a lot of ideas,
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and they might even interrupt you if you're speaking to them with an idea that
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they just came up with about what you're saying.
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So as the speaker, you want to know that if somebody gets excited about the
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concept, they probably are a conceptual listener.
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And feed on their skill of seeing the big picture.
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Listen to their possibilities and then maybe gently remind them.
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Okay, we have to pay attention to these facts as well.
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It's not that they don't care about the facts. It's not that they don't care
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about the details, which I think is sometimes the way we feel with this type of listener.
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It's that they don't even necessarily catch it. Their brain doesn't catch on to that initially.
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So a gentle prodding, a gentle reminder maybe is good.
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And if you're this type of listener and you know you always go for the big picture,
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again, it's just recognizing it.
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It's just recognizing, Let me see if I can just pull a couple of facts here
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as well. Let me just make sure that I do that. Just a couple.
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None of these are bad ways to listen, and none of these are the right way to
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listen. It's just how our brains work.
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The reason I thought this would be an interesting Mind Your Midlife episode
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is because I think when we speak to people about hard things,
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about tough topics, about frustrating things, or we try to express our feelings
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about something and we feel very vulnerable,
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and we're looking at that person we're talking to and they don't even seem to be listening,
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or they're only catching just the idea, or they only caught a couple of facts
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and they're getting impatient about our opinion, we get upset. potentially.
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And maybe the person we're speaking to really is trying to listen.
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Maybe this is just the way their mind works. And so putting ourselves in the
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other person's shoes, maybe it gets a little bit easier to have that perspective
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if we know, oh, they might not listen the same way I do.
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If she's not nodding her head as I'm talking, that does not mean that she's
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not listening. That was a lot of negatives.
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Somebody can be listening and still leaning back with their arms crossed.
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Now, all that being said, it is very possible that the person you're talking
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to is not listening to you at all.
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And I'm not saying that everyone's always listening and we just need to recognize the differences.
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Maybe they're not. I'm saying if we're aware of these different styles and we're
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aware that people might catch different things,
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maybe it helps us be a little bit more accepting when we're trying to communicate
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with people. And that will make them feel better.
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And that will make you feel better. And it's definitely, definitely, definitely worth a try.
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Maybe we at least just understand each other a little bit better.
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So connective, reflective, analytical, conceptual. You probably have one of
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those as your key listening style.
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And then the others as, you know, one or two of the others as maybe if I'm in
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this situation or that, that's how I listen.
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I wish for you more comfortable and communicative conversations in your future.
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And I also wish for you a really healthy mindset when it comes to communicating
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about money and success.
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Grab the information about my Money Mindset Reset sessions.
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That's at CherylPFisher.com slash Money Mindset. I would love to chat with you.
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I have a couple of openings left.
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I'm loving these reviews coming in. The girl with the vine tattoo says,
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loved episode 10 on sorry.
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This is something I've been paying attention to for many years,
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and I have broken out of saying it mostly, but my old patterns tend to come
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back around family, and she asked for suggestions.
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I think we need an episode on that. C. Lee says, a must listen for midlife women like me.
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I've been following the podcast from the start, and it just keeps getting better and better.
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Her advice and her guest's advice is top notch and easy to digest.
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C. Lee, thank you. You also said that the perspective that real change stems
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not from endless to-do lists, but from reexamining your mindset and emotions
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resonates deeply with you. And that makes me so happy.
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Listeners, if you're listening on Apple, go leave a rating and a review.
00:19:16.575 --> 00:19:20.995
Now make sure you've hit the follow button, because in our next episode,
00:19:21.675 --> 00:19:27.815
we are going to be talking about learning music as a midlife woman.
00:19:27.815 --> 00:19:31.395
It's not just for kids and we
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are going to blow your mind with the
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mental and physical benefits that you could experience i'm so excited to introduce
00:19:41.915 --> 00:19:48.015
you to next week's guest so hit that follow button and i will see you then oh
00:19:48.015 --> 00:19:52.995
my goodness let's keep creating confidence and success one thought and.
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Music.
