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We all like to believe we listen well. We ask questions, we nod with understanding, we tell other people we’re open to hearing their thoughts and opinions—and we believe we mean it.
Sometimes, though, without even realizing it, we do things that cause us to become disconnected from those around us, such as interrupting a friend before they share their idea (or experience) with you.
If you’ve ever questioned how receptive you may be compared to how receptive you believe you are, then it’s an issue worth assessing.
After all, you probably won’t receive an announcement from a friend stating, “You’re unresponsive.”
People close to you begin learning what you’re willing to accept, and over time, they’ll begin providing you with that. Slowly, they will begin to stop expressing their frustrations to you. Meetings become smooth. Conversations lighten—they become easier, but also a bit hollow.
The hardest thing about this is that nothing feels like you’re losing. Everything feels like peace.
If you can relate, here are three habits that you may have that are inadvertently driving people away.
1) Do you say the right things without taking anything in?
Listen to yourself during a disagreement sometime.
Here’s a simple test: After the conversation, see if you can name one thing the other person said that you hadn’t already thought of. Not agreed with—just hadn’t thought of. Most of us come up empty more often than we’d like to admit.
For example: your sister says she’s not coming to Thanksgiving. You’re already halfway into “she’s still mad about last year.” Then she mentions she can’t afford the flight. That’s the thing you hadn’t thought of—and you almost talked right over it.
2) You decide what someone meant before they’ve finished speaking.
This one is hard to catch, because it feels a lot like empathy.
Someone starts talking to you, and somewhere in the middle of what they’re saying, you quietly build a small version of them in your head. You note their mood, their reasoning, and what they’re really getting at. And from that point on, you’re talking to that version of the person instead of the actual one sitting in front of you.
In that instance, what you’re really doing is having a conversation with yourself in someone else’s voice, and walking away even more sure that you understood.
The fix here is almost too simple. Ask them what they mean. Not, “So what you’re saying is . . . ” and then offering your take on it. Just ask what they mean, and then be quiet for a moment. Most of us don’t do that, because asking means we might have gotten it wrong—and by then, we’ve grown a little attached to our own version.
3) You end the conversation right before it costs you something.
You’ll have a hard conversation and mean everything you say in it, too—right up until the point where it starts to cost you something.
And then, something comes over you. You get tired. You get busy. You get very, very reasonable. Let’s park this for now. Let’s come back to it when we’re both fresh. You don’t refuse anything in that case—you just make sure the conversation ends a few steps before the part that might have changed your mind.
This looks like restraint. It’s really just avoidance with better timing. When you do it, you get all the credit for having had the difficult conversation, while quietly making sure it did nothing at all.
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