Later, I began to put together what I knew about the January workshop. He had been hired to lead a workshop on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. Most of the time each day would be free for sun and play. How disappointed he must have been to learn the workshop was cancelled. I also remembered my friend had been very upset that he overscheduled himself that winter. He hadn’t left enough time for rest, solitude, and friends. This large chunk of open time would enable him to get caught up with his work and enjoy a free period for solitude and friends. Very probably my friend experienced both of those feelings at the same time—sad that he couldn’t go on the cruise; glad he had time to get his life squared away.
I never found out. I never gave him the encouragement to tell me how he felt about that situation. Though I didn’t say it in so many words, and certainly didn’t intend it, my way of listening encouraged him to relate facts and not feelings. It was as though I had said to him, “Stick to the facts. All I want is the facts.”
When listening does not encourage disclosures of feeling, we tend to miss the speaker’s personal reaction to the events she is describing—her joy, sorrow, frustration, anger, grief, ambivalence, and so on. Since, as William James put it, “Individuality is found in feeling,”4 we miss the uniqueness of the other person when we have a low level of awareness of the other person’s emotions.
If a speaker is talking about a problem, the reflection of feelings helps her understand her own emotions and thereby move toward a solution of the problem Data is all around us. Feelings are the energizing force that help us sort our data, organize it, and use it effectively as we shape and implement relevant action steps.
Improving the Capacity
To “Hear” Feelings
Though it is uncommon to reflect feelings in a conversation, each of us has, in the course of our maturation, learned to “read” the emotions of others. No doubt we could improve that skill. Still, it is important to realize that we are more accomplished at it than most of us realize. There have probably been times in your life when you were talking to individuals or groups and quickly realized that the listeners were bored. Interesting, isn’t it, that you could identify their feelings when they never said they were bored or tuned out? You often know when a person is angry with you even when she doesn’t say anything about it. Remember those times when people didn’t mention it, but wanted something from you—and you figured out what they were really after? Then, too, there are those people that like you a lot but may never say it in words—yet you know. Sometimes a person may have been saying one thing to you but you were aware that she was thinking and feeling something very different. Psychiatrists and psychologists, with their years of training and intuition, are often able to understand or guess the gut reactions of people. What is remarkable, however, is that people with little formal education and no training in modern communication skills are able to decode much of what other people are feeling. How did this come about? How did you develop this incredibly complex ability?
Professor Norman Kagan, who teaches communication skills at Michigan State University, says there may be some inborn sensitivity that derives from heredity, but beyond that:
You’ve probably had a lifetime of looking at other people and many reasons to have taught yourself well to recognize their moods…. As a child you had to learn to recognize your parents’ mood. You learned to recognize when you could ask for something and when you could not. You learned to sense your parents’ mood and to predict what they might do next. You learned to recognize when food was on its way or was not on its way to you. Throughout your entire life, you have learned to pay attention to other people’s affect [emotions]. The first time you got punched by the class bully, because you didn’t recognize the cues of another human being about to lose his temper, you certainly had good reason to learn next time to recognize the symptoms of anger. At school and on dates, you had to attend to some of the subtle messages you received or you suffered. The human mind is a fantastically complex nerve center. It would take volumes to write all of what each of you already knows about identifying the “vibes” or feelings of other people.5
While it is true that each of us has enough emotional sensitivity to immediately begin to reflect feelings with some sense of accuracy, that is not the whole story. Judging from the thousands of participants in our communication skills training programs, the typical listener is apt to focus more on content than on feelings and frequently has some difficulty figuring out what the speaker is feeling, even when the emotions are quite obvious to the trained observer.
Sigmund Freud explained how some of our emotional insensitivity developed. Freud noted that if everyone acted on impulse and expressed feelings spontaneously, society would be disrupted. To prevent this disturbance, every society, to a greater or lesser degree, conspires against the expression of emotion. Our own highly organized society has especially strong sanctions against too free an expression of feelings. Major institutions like the home, school, business, and church or synagogue all tend to squelch the expression of emotion. The result of this pervasive conditioning is that many people find it relatively difficult to tune into and reflect the feelings of others. Yet the reflection of feeling lies at the heart of effective listening.
As I see it, each of us has a partially developed capacity to understand the feelings of others. In this important and difficult skill, no one starts from scratch. At the same time, living in an emotion-squelching society has blocked some of our sensitivity and made it more likely that people will feel awkward reflecting feelings in a conversation.
As they try to reflect feelings, most participants in our courses want to know how they can become more aware of the speaker’s feelings. We teach them to concentrate on four things:
Focus on the feeling words.
Note the general content of the message.
Observe the body language.
Ask yourself, “If I were having that experience, what would I be feeling?”
Listening for Feeling Words
If the goal is to reflect emotions, one obvious way to do this is to identify the verbally expressed feelings in a conversation. People occasionally put their feelings directly into words.
A young career woman confided to her best friend:
I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying my job. And I’m into a lot of fun things outside of work. I’m so busy I hardly have time to think. But when I’m alone I get tense because I have to face how lonely I am when all the activity stops.
Now reread that statement and note the words that most directly communicate the emotions that she was describing. I noted the words enjoying, fun, and lonely. A reflection of feelings, then, might be worded like this:
“Even though you’re having lots of fun, there’s loneliness, too.”
Such feelings are easier to pick out when they can be read and reread on a printed page than in the give and take of a conversation. Even when the words are expressed as clearly and directly as in the above example, people may not notice them. We tend to get so absorbed in the facts that we overlook the verbal clues about feelings.
When the speaker gives verbal statements about her feelings, and when these are congruent with her body language, the reflection of feelings is the same as paraphrasing except that it focuses on the feeling words the speaker used.
Since our culture tends to thwart emotional expression, the verbal clues may not be nearly as clear-cut as in the above example. A mother asked her daughter how she enjoyed her date last night. The daughter replied, “Oh, it was OK.” The word indicative of feelings was “OK.” But what did that word mean in the context of the conversation? It may have meant “I am irritated that you are probing into my personal affairs.” Or it could have meant that on a continuum between awful and great, the evening fell into the middle and was another of those acceptable but not very exciting times. The daughter’s body language may have disclosed what she really meant.
Inferring Feelings
from th
e Overall Content
Because the suppression of feelings is so widespread in our culture, the speaker may not use feeling words at all. However, the overall content of what she is saying may give you clues about what she is feeling.
Read the following statement and guess what Eric’s feelings are:
Eric: That customer sure led me down the primrose path. He had me come to his company for three appointments. Spent hours of my time going over every detail of my recommendations for a changeover in production methods. Then he purchased my competitor’s line and won’t even see me on sales calls now.
Eric probably felt angry at his customer and/or at himself. However, he could have been experiencing some other emotions like discouragement. Checking out Eric’s body language would help the listener appraise Eric’s emotions with greater accuracy.
Observing Body Language
One of the most effective ways of understanding what another person is feeling is to observe her body language. Because the reflection of feeling is so important to effective listening and because the observation of facial expression, tone of voice, gesture, and posture give such important clues to a person’s feeling state. Chapter 6 is devoted to this topic alone.
What Would I Be Feeling?
As the listener notes the speaker’s feeling words (if any are used), “reads between the lines” for feelings that might be implied in the general content of what is said, and observes the body language, she asks herself, “What would I be feeling if I were saying and doing those things?” Since each person’s emotional experience is unique, we can’t be sure we know what the speaker is feeling. The best we can do is to understand our own inner reactions and guess at the other’s emotions. On the basis of this “guestimate,” the listener reflects her understanding of the other’s feelings. Normally, the speaker will automatically let us know whether or not we heard correctly—by nodding her head, saying “Yes” or “Right,” or correcting what we said.
REFLECTING MEANINGS
When feelings and facts are joined in one succinct response, we have a reflection of meaning. For example, Marge, who is middle-aged, says to her husband Rob:
Marge: My supervisor keeps asking questions about my personal life. I wish she’d mind her own business.
Rob: You feel annoyed that she won’t respect your privacy.
Feelings are often triggered by specific events. Note how my feelings in the left column of the following list are related to specific events listed in the right column:
Feeling Event (Fact)
Happy
Prentice-Hall awarded me the contract for this book.
Sad
A good friend is moving away.
Irritated
The agreements we reached last week are not being observed by some of the other people involved.
Frustrated
The photocopy machine has broken down for the third time in three days.
We have seen how important it is for the listener to tune in to the speaker’s feeling. We also noted that it is very helpful to understand the factual content of her message. As Robert Carkhuff says, things that we can frame in our minds are easier to act on than those which we only feel in our gut.6 When we respond to the speaker’s meanings—the feelings that paralyze or motivate and the content to which the feelings are associated—our listening is often most effective.
Once a person knows how to reflect feeling and content separately, it is relatively easy to put the two together into a reflection of meaning. When first learning to reflect meanings, people often find it useful to use the formula “You feel [insert the feeling word] because [insert the event or other content that is associated with the feeling].”
Let’s take a look at how the “You feel … because …” formula works in some actual situations:
Earl: What a change! I feared I wouldn’t get a promotion, but it came through. Our new home is just super. And Marie and the kids seem more content than they have ever been.
John: You feel happy because things are going well in all parts of your life.
Or:
Wilma: My husband drives me crazy. First he says we’re doing fine and don’t have any financial worries. The next day he blows up when I buy something for the house.
Harriet: You feel anxious because he is so inconsistent.
The formula “You feel … because …” is not very intrusive in a conversation. It helps people remember to reflect both the feelings and the content and it is an aid in keeping the responses brief. It is far different from encumbering conversations with jargon phrases like “What I think I hear you saying is….”
Many people have strong negative feelings about using this formula for reflective listening. Actually, the formula is like scaffolding on a house that is being constructed. It can be very helpful to use it for awhile, but when it is not needed any longer, it may be removed from one’s repertoire of responses. After using the “You feel … because …” formula until the brief reflection of meaning becomes second nature, you may wish to use more “natural” ways of reflecting meanings. The word “are” can be substituted for the word “feel.” Words like “by,” “since,” “about,” and “that” can be used in place of the “because” of the formula. With variations like these, the responses may sound less stilted.
“You are confused by his mixed messages.”
“You are elated that things are going so well in your new job.”
“You’re angry about the recent schedule revisions.”
“You are discouraged by his unresponsiveness.”
In the rapid interchange of actual conversations, it is impossible and undesirable to use reflections of meanings continually. Reflections of feelings, reflections of content, minimal encourages to talk, active silence, and other responses will be orchestrated with the reflection of meaning. In some conversations, it may be most helpful to stress the reflection of feeling. Occasionally, it may be most appropriate for the listener to concentrate more on the reflection of content. In many situations, however, the most facultative listener will rely heavily on reflecting meanings.
Sometimes a reflection of meaning is appropriate even though no words are exchanged. Norma, an office manager, has just taken on a new task for her company. She works hard all day long, but at the end of the day the stack of work to be accomplished seems just as high as it was at the beginning of the day. Barbara, an executive secretary in the same office, says to her, “You feel discouraged that you worked so hard and yet there is still so much to do.”
The reflection of meaning is usually best when it is honed to a single succinct sentence. The shorter the better. A rambling response impedes communication.
SUMMATIVE REFLECTIONS
A summative reflection is a brief restatement of the main themes and feelings the speaker expressed over a longer period of conversation than would be covered by any of the other reflective skills. It may tie together a number of recent comments or highlight feelings and/or issues by concisely recapping them. The conversational landscape can become littered with bits of information that are useless until the most important fragments have been put together in a meaningful way. Sometimes the speaker gets lost in a welter of confusing thoughts and feelings. What a difference between the puzzle when it is only a jumble of parts in a box and when it is a compact picture on the table. Similarly, an effective summary can enable a speaker to see the fragments of her utterances gathered together in a meaningful unity. A summative response helps the speaker gain an integrated picture of what she has been saying. It states the important emphases that have been repeated over and over again or that have been stated with the most intensity.
Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychotherapist, told a colleague about his first visit with Sigmund Freud in the year 1907. Jung had much that he wanted to talk about with Freud, and he spoke with intense animation for three whole hours. Finally Freud interrupted him and, to Jung’s astonishment, proceeded to group the contents of Jung’s monolog
ue into several precise categories that enabled them to spend their remaining hours together in a more profitable give-and-take.7
A summary can help a speaker understand herself more clearly. Gerard Egan gives this example:
Counselor: Let’s go over what we have so far. You’re down, depressed—not just a normal slump, but this time it’s hanging on. You worry about your health, but this seems to be more of a symptom than a cause of your depression. There are some unresolved issues in your life. One is the fact that your recent change in jobs has meant that you don’t see much of your old friends any more. Geography has made a big difference. Another issue—one you find painful and embarrassing—is your investment in trying to stay young. You don’t want to face the fact of getting older. A third issue is the way you overinvest yourself in work—so much so that when you finish a long-term project, suddenly your life is empty.
Client: It’s painful to hear it all that baldly, but that about sums it up. I really have to look into my values. I feel I need a new life style, one in which there is more immediate involvement with people.8
This kind of summary has elements of confrontation in it. The listener must carefully judge whether the speaker is emotionally prepared to handle a somewhat confrontative summary.
Summaries are useful in situations where there are conflicts of needs or where problem solving is required. Bill was talking with his father about going on to graduate school or taking a year off from formal education a while to get some practical experience. After talking together for forty-five minutes, the father says:
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