e-liz

I've been meaning to post a crucial follow-up to my earlier discussion of improv at the office, inspired by Nick's first comment on that post. He pointed out something so fundamental (both on stage and at work) that I neglected to mention it - listening:

I feel it would be worth noting the flip-side of the "great public speaker" coin: being a "great public listener." Though this idea is implied by "trust," I feel it's worth it to mention just how important listening is in improv and how good a listener you become through practicing the art.

Of course. Listening is good, right? Everyone loves a good listener. But what makes someone a good listener instead of a bad one? When improvisers talk about listening, what are we really talking about?

It's about not not listening.
Most of us can easily spot the absence of listening by its etiquette-related hallmarks: someone interrupts another arbitrarily, offers a response that isn't relevant to what was just said, or diverts their gaze away from the speaker for a prolonged period. I think the majority of people, when accused of being a 'bad listener,' focus on fixing this part. They learn to put away their cell phones during a conversation, make eye contact, stay quiet until it's their turn to speak, and then call it a day. This doesn't make them good listeners, but everybody has to start somewhere.

It's about awareness.
Here's where improv really comes in. When a scene starts, how do two people reach a mutual understanding of what's going on? Part of it is strictly verbal. One scene partner initiates with the line, "Clarence, I brought you a sack of potatoes for the stew." The other partner now knows that he is named Clarence, and that he is either in the process of making - or about to make - a stew (see? Improv is so easy!). But if he's a good improviser, he's also probably intuited several other things based on his partner's tone of voice, facial expression, and physical stance: how big the sack is, whether the two characters are a married couple or just friends, whose kitchen they're in right now, what time of day it is, whether making stew is something they do every day or have never done before, what historical era they're living in... or countless other pieces of shared information. From just eleven words uttered over the course of a few seconds.

What improvisers are doing when they build scenes together is practicing the type of "whole" listening that people use with each other all of the time, to varying degrees of success. In improv, you can tell pretty quickly when you've done a good job of picking up on the things that were suggested or implied by your partner - the scene will feel effortless and smooth, as opposed to strange and clunking. In the real world, it's not always immediately apparent whether you've been successful at listening to what isn't being said. Which makes there less of an incentive to try, if you're not used to doing so. Because improvisers exercise this type of listening every time they step on stage, they are able to apply it with ease in their working relationships.

It's about making others feel heard.
The idea of reflective listening is probably familiar to anyone who has ever read a self-help book, or watched any movie or TV show in which a therapist takes a deep breath and then says, "What I hear you saying is..." In fact, if you search for that exact phrase, in quotes, Google will return over 12 million hits, most of them discussing exactly how much people hate that phrase!

No, compulsively restating everything someone else says does not count as 'good listening.' But the idea here, and in fact the reason reflective listening is so widely taught and broadly attempted, is that people want to feel heard. They want to feel like those around them are interested, paying attention, and understanding what they've just said. Unsurprisingly, "what I hear you saying is..." is not the best way to get this across. It sounds like what it is: a shortcut. A prescription. A form letter.

So what is the best way to communicate that you've heard someone? Obviously... to respond to them in a way that acknowledges the nuances of the information they've just given you. Our scene partner, "Clarence," might do this in a number of ways. He can accept the mimed sack of potatoes, giving the imaginary object the same shape, size, and weight that his partner endowed it with. He can address her by a nickname in accordance to the relationship she implied that they have. He can acknowledge the attitude given by her tone, by either mirroring it himself, or adopting a tone in intentionally sharp contrast.

All of these responses go a step further than "what I hear you saying is..."; they say, "I hear you. I understand the universe that you're living in... and I'm living in it, too." This is the message that radiates from an exceptional listener. "We're in this together." Which, yes, just like Nick says, is connected to the idea of trust.