How to listen to others who suck at listening to you

Managing your time and energy with narcissistic leaders

I discussed the piece below in a room on the Clubhouse social audio app. You will hear me describing the strategies listed below as well as responding to questions related to the topic of how to listen to those who are tricky to listen to, and the benefits of doing so. Enjoy!

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I’ve had a number of questions from readers about implementing the Gradual Gray Rock technique as well as how to do becoming transactional while remaining warm and friendly as described in #5 of this piece when someone has consistently shown you that their needs matter more than yours. You know this because they have no problem asking for your time and energy but make themselves unavailable to listen to your concerns when it’s your turn. While you can limit who you spend time with, there are some people you can’t avoid.

This person might be your manager, workplace leader, colleague, teacher, friend, parent and countless other relations. You know they’re not listening even after you’ve spent a long time listening to them and their needs and you feel resentful, numb or exhausted after being with them.

The reality is that not everyone has the ability to listen to you, care for your needs and even be interested in your thoughts and feelings.

Listening attentively to another to learn about their needs, values and their understanding of their own issues, challenges and circumstances requires a set of skills that involve giving time, interest, curiosity and patience.

And it’s reasonable to ask, why should I listen to them if they don’t listen to me?

Why do I have to put up with poor communication or their narcissistic listening when it’s clear they can’t do that for me?

One reason is that if you’re in a workplace or community, this attitude contributes to the maintenance of toxic workplace culture. You know that unshakeable feeling of shame that rises up when you’re just as thoughtless and dismissive as the other person. It’s a violation of your own values that will eventually erode your spirit and suck any joy remaining in the workplace.

The expectation that everyone you work with should be an effective communicator because they’re your manager or colleague is unrealistic. People are hired for reasons other than their qualifications and the poor listeners are a symptom of that.

So how do you listen without feeling like your time is being abused or exploited by others? Let’s look at a common scenario first.

The scenario:

You’re avoiding a person at work/in life and you have to see them or speak to them today.

You dread the interaction because you know it will be all about them or worse; they will be give you feedback about what they believe you’re doing wrong. In the past, you'd get stuck listening to their woes unable to find the right moment to interrupt them to eject from the conversation. Or, they would ‘really need to talk to you about something urgent’ only to discover that it’s a drama involving someone else you know or something that isn’t actually urgent. You’re caught in their tractor beam composed of an endless verbal stream of consciousness, wanting to escape, while feigning interest in what they’re saying, because you still want to be polite.

You pray for an interruption or that they would run out of steam so the conversation would end quickly. They would rarely ask about you and if you did start speaking about yourself, they would quickly change the subject or suddenly need to do something else, and you feel like an idiot for thinking - hoping they would care about you. Either way, you haven’t felt in control of these encounters and you wish you could get them over with without ruining your day.

What you would like to be able to do differently is having a structure to contain the unwanted conversation while keeping the encounter as brief and pleasant as possible.

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