Empathic Listening Secrets!

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SUMMARY

• There is a saying by Erasmus of Rotterdam, a Dutch Philosopher and Theologian, which goes like this:
  In the land of the blind, a one-eyed man is the King.
  21st Century world is the land of the deaf because of distraction and multitasking. People are rapidly losing the capability to focus and pay attention to anything, even when talking to people. In the land of the deaf, a one-eared listener is a Ruler!
  Everyone thinks they are good at this superpower, but actually, they are poor at using it. And this is the biggest problem. What is this superpower? It is Empathic Listening. Empathic is the superpower in which you can enter their reality and experience it from their perspective. With empathy, you will understand what it is to be them in their worldview and communicate your understanding of what they are saying and feeling. You will also resonate with that feeling by experiencing the same emotion and reflecting it back to them. Once you can listen empathically, you will build massive influence with anyone of your choice.
  People think they are listening, but actually, they are not. They are doing the following while under the illusion that they are listening.
  Limited hearing with a lot of thoughts around how they must respond
  Miniscule hearing while looking down at their phones
  Assuming they are hearing but just waiting to jump in and offer their opinion.

  Empathy is a skill that will help you reach unreachable people. This is a valuable skill you can learn in this Attention Economy. Here is a secret I want to share with you. If you want to influence others, the first thing you should not do is to persuade them of your point of view. Most people do this - they talk, push for their points to be heard, argue, and try to bulldoze their way into other people accepting their viewpoint. All these attempts will only generate resistance and pushback. You have to listen and make them feel that you have understood them as nobody else has done.

  Your primary task in persuasion is to dissolve resistance and make the person willing to listen to what you are saying with an open mind. This will only happen after you have kept an open mind, sincerely listened, and conveyed that you have lent your ear and understood. You have to go first. You have to role-model it. When you reflect on your understanding of what the other person is telling you and check whether your comprehension is correct, you will get a response: That is right. That is your entry point for persuasion. That is your foot in the door. Continue doing this, and soon you will be invited in.
  How do you listen empathically?

  Learn to master your emotions, especially in stressful and precarious situations

  Consciously pay attention to understanding what the other person is telling you.

  Be aware that listening alone is not enough. You must not only listen but convey to the person you have heard and understood her.

  You must be able to listen and respond at the moment, not later.

  You must also validate whether you have understood what the other person is saying.

  Demonstrate that you have corrected your understanding if you have it wrong

  Show that you see what they are saying, demonstrate your understanding by reflecting on what they said, and reciprocate with the same feeling they shared with you. If excited, you mirror back with your excitement. If sad, you reflect back on your sadness. Do this sincerely. This is the best way to build connection and rapport with a shared understanding of their experience.

  Do this with utter sincerity and interest. Because feigned interest is equal to a negative response.

  No Judgement. No trying to fix things for them. No offering advice

  If you want to help, ask their permission before you do so. An exception for this is while dealing with children. Help them even if they say no. Or in commercial situations where you are selling something.
  There is a need for Empathic listeners as never before. Empathy is the greatest gift you can give to another human. It should start with every one of us. Here is a challenge for you. Make a conscious choice to give this precious gift to others. You lead the way. You choose to be the role model for empathic listening to others.
  Learn to do it correctly and give the gift freely. You’ll never know when you may totally transform the lives of people around you. The world needs your empathic listening.

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Full Transcript of this Episode:

The following is the full transcript of this episode-Empathic Listening Secrets - on our Citrines YouTube Channel:

Hi! Murali here. Today I would like to share with you one superpower you can possess that will change everything. Your business will grow 10X, and your relationship will flourish, thrive, and be fulfilling. More than all that, you will have the power to influence and persuade others to make them do whatever you want them to do.

Everyone thinks they are good at this superpower, but actually, they are poor at using it. And this is the biggest problem. What is this superpower? It is Empathic Listening. Empathic Listening is the superpower in which you can enter another person's reality and experience it from their perspective. With empathy, you will understand what it is to be them in their reality and communicate your understanding of what they are saying and feeling. You will also resonate with that feeling by experiencing the same emotion and reflecting it back to them. Once you can listen empathically, you will build massive influence with anyone of your choice.

As a business owner with empathic listening skills, you can increase sales, build trust, and promote creativity and innovation. You can also retain high-performing employees and enhance employee engagement. The benefits of empathic listening are numerous. However, this skill is rare to find, and there are reasons for that.

The fundamental prerequisite for empathy is listening. Everyone takes this skill for granted, especially business owners, entrepreneurs, sales professionals, and leaders. People think they are listening, but actually, they are not. Despite all the modern technology people using them are tone deaf.

Why is this happening? People are too caught up with distractions from their cell phones which are trivial in most cases, to pay attention to another person. People are rapidly losing their ability to listen deeply and build trust. The Virtual world you are constantly in is blocking out the real world. There is a reason for this. There is a sinister amount of money, millions of dollars, being spent to trap you in the virtual world. Your attention is equal to dollars for many companies. They will do everything to grab your attention and keep it trapped. This is because you are living in an Attention economy. For many companies, you are the product.

Additionally, there are a few other reasons. You have little or no training in listening, leave alone empathic listening.

This is one skill that is grossly neglected. Very few people are taught how to listen empathically. The entire effort to teach communication revolves around expressing effectively. There are a lot of programs:

• Communication skills
• Presentation skills
• Public Speaking
• Presenting with impact

Even traditional selling and negotiation are all about how to get your points across and win. Very few programs emphasize listening. Traditional selling and negotiation programs are all about projecting yourself and your ideas, facts, logic, and data. You are encouraged to cultivate the gift of the gab and use clever sounding words that make you look sophisticated and the go-to person.

Another major reason is the rubber-stamped image of a highly successful person. The stereotype image of a successful person Invariably is a man or a woman standing in front of thousands of people, miked up and talking.

People think they are listening, but actually, they are not. They are doing the following while under the illusion that they are listening.

• Limited hearing with a lot of thoughts around how they must respond
• Miniscule hearing while looking down at their phones
• Assuming they are hearing but just waiting to jump in and offer their opinion.

The results of these factors are devastating.

You can see and hear a lot of talks, but people engaged in them are conversationally deaf. We are already seeing the dire consequence of this problem. In this 21st century, we live in the land of the deaf. There is a saying by Erasmus of Rotterdam, a Dutch Philosopher and Theologian, which goes like this:

In the land of the blind, a one-eyed man is the King.

21st Century world is the land of the “deaf” because of distractions. People are rapidly losing the capability to focus and pay attention to anything, even when talking to others.

So, in the 21st century land of the deaf, a one-eared listener is the ruler.

Poor listening skills are creating an epidemic of low trust or even mistrust. The absence of trust prevents people from sharing their innermost secrets and vulnerabilities and, hence miss out on being valued and respected. Listening has become so rare that people hesitate to ask others to lend their ears. They think it will be onerous for them to listen. They are living lonely lives amidst people, even close people.

Loneliness has reached a level of epidemic proportions. Poor listening is rampant in Gen Z because they are truly digital natives. The result is that many of them are feeling lonely and suicidal. Why is empathic listening so important?

Why is empathic listening so important? It is because we humans are social in nature. That is the way we are wired. Empathy is hardwired into us, and our neurology has what is called the empathy neurons. Empathy neurons are also called mirror neurons. Research in Neuroscience shows that we project ourselves into the world through mirror neurons to feel recognized, cared for, loved, and approved.

Each time we mirror the world, we want that reflection back to us from others. We want reciprocation. We hunger for it. That is why many people tear up even at the slightest show of caring and affection. There is a deficit of this reciprocation in large amounts because of people not listening. That is why an empathic listening skill will be your superpower. If you sincerely fill in this reciprocation deficit, you will rule the hearts and minds of people. You will become highly influential.

People are starving for being listened to. And if you can feed them with your sincere empathic listening then you will have the world in the palm of your hand. When you fill the gap of Reciprocation deficit in another person, you become highly influential with him. They will stop resisting and start paying attention to you.

So this is my message to you. This could be one of the most important messages you will ever hear. No matter who you are, a parent, a CEO, an Entrepreneur, a Leader, a Sales Professional, or anyone, empathic listening can save your world. Your empathic listening can save a child, a company, an idea, an employee, a deal, a marriage, or just make people validated and happy.

Empathy is a skill that will help you reach unreachable people. This is a valuable skill you can learn in this Attention Economy. Here is a secret I want to share with you. If you want to influence others, the first thing you should not do is to persuade them of your point of view. Most people do this - they talk, push for their points to be heard, argue, and try to bulldoze their way into other people accepting their viewpoint. All these attempts will only generate resistance and pushback. You have to listen and make them feel that you have understood them as nobody else has done.

Your primary task in persuasion is to dissolve resistance and make the person willing to listen to what you are saying with an open mind. This will only happen after you have kept an open mind, sincerely listened, and conveyed that you have lent your ear and understood. You have to go first. You have to role-model it. When you convey your understanding of what the other person is telling you and check whether your understanding is correct then you will get a response - That's right. That is your entry point for persuasion. That's your foot in the door. Continue doing this and soon you will be invited in.

How do you listen empathically?

1. Learn to master your emotions, especially in stressful and precarious situations
2. Consciously pay attention to understanding what the other person is telling you
3. Be aware that listening alone is not enough. You must not only listen but convey to the person you have heard and understood her.
4. You must be able to listen and respond at the moment, not later.
5. You must also validate whether you have understood what the other person is saying.
6. Demonstrate that you have corrected your understanding if you have it wrong
7. Show that you see what they are saying, demonstrate your understanding by reflecting on what they said, and reciprocate with the same feeling they shared with you. If excited, you mirror back with your excitement. If sad, you reflect back on your sadness. Do this sincerely. This is the best way to build connection and rapport with a shared understanding of their experience.
8. Do this with utter sincerity and interest. Because feigned interest is equal to a negative response.
9. No Judgement. No trying to fix things for them. No offering advice
10. No Judgement. No trying to fix things for them. No offering advice If you want to help, ask their permission before you do so. An exception for this is while dealing with children. Help them even if they say no. Or in commercial situations where you are selling something.

Empathy, in a nutshell, is shown in this figure:

Do this for both positive and negative experiences. Especially for the positive ones. Search for opportunities to validate positive emotions. This is very important for everyone, especially kids and teenagers. Get into the experience of others and live the experience with their understanding and feeling. Do this along with them making it a shared experience. Please note that the approach I am sharing is not reflective listening taught in old-school communication programs. They sound mechanical and can cause harm. You have to show that you understand the content and connect with their feeling and mirror their energy.

We teach this in our Online Course - ⚡The Secret Code to Sell Anything⚡ and our in-person workshop Extreme Persuasion.

Empathic listening is one of the eight steps in our Advanced Selling and Negotiation Programs.

1. “If we can get man to the moon, we can get man to walk in each other’s shoes.” – Mary Gordon

There is a need for Empathic listeners as never before. Empathy is the greatest gift you can give to another human. It should start with every one of us. Here is a challenge for you. Make a conscious choice to give this precious gift to others. Let it start with you. You choose to be the role model for empathic listening to others.

Learn to do it correctly and give the gift freely. You’ll never know when you may totally transform the lives of people around you. The world needs your empathic listening.