The Art of Listening | Simon Sinek

so listening is not the act of hearing the words spoken it is the art of understanding the meaning behind those words and you know when people say you're not listening to me and we simply parrot back the words that they were said congratulations your ears work you know that is the act that is the act of listening um but the art of listening is is creating an environment in which the other person feels heard now you notice what i said there the other person and i used an emotional word feels right i don't want to

know that you heard the words i want to feel i want to feel heard i feel seen i want to feel understood and that is a learnable practical learnable practicable skill so it's uh there are many parts of it it's things like replacing judgment with curiosity right that's a hard thing to do we're a pretty judgy group right to be curious why someone has a point of view it's creating a safe space for someone to as my as my friend dia khan calls it empty the bucket so even if we find what they're saying just

reprehensible right you're never going to be able to actually have dialogue until at least one of the parties gets the opportunity to say everything without judgment and as she calls it emptying the bucket and once a person somebody feels like they've completely said everything then they're more apt to listen to you but usually what we do is we defend or we litigate or we interrupt we point out flaws in logic which is just frustrating and when you point out some flaws in somebody's logic because we're all imperfect when we speak and we all choose the

wrong words at various times and that's not what i meant you know what i meant is what we have to say well what if you know what you meant why don't you say what you you can see how this spirals um uh um but it's things like when somebody says something you know and there's really easy ways to do it things like go on tell me more what else and they keep talking and you go quiet they feel the space tell me more go on and eventually it's all out and then there's a safe space

for you to respond or to and express yourself in a constructive way but but that's correct we we we do not teach listening and listening is the way to create um to build trust with someone you know you make someone feel heard they'll trust you you know it is the way to find common ground in opposition in simple cases in business but in more complicated cases uh in national politics or in global politics or in war you know why do you know we my bill yuri william yuri who wrote getting to yes he talks about

the same thing he goes we have talk shows but we don't have listen shows he says we have peace talks but what we really need is peace listens you know and and he who's been at the table of the highest levels of peace negotiations he said people show up and start demanding what they want and that's how the negotiations begin nobody starts by saying so tell me why you came here there's a great documentary that i recommend to learn this it's called white right meeting the enemy by dia khan in a nutshell dia is a

muslim woman living in the uk who was trolled by white supremacists to the point where the police got involved because her life was at risk they told her stay away from open windows that's how bad it got the way dia responded was by moving to the united states and going to meet the white supremacists and she brought her cameras i mean you can see it all happen in this documentary and basically she gave them a safe space to feel heard now that sounds mad like why should she give them a safe space to feel her

they should give her a safe space yeah fine good you know like it's never going to happen dear sits down with these white supremacists and she gives them a safe space to feel heard it's extreme listening um and i say it's extreme because i mean they hate her you know they don't just disagree with her uh they want her off the planet um and uh and she lets them empty their bucket as she calls it and then conversation begins and because they feel heard they start to trust her and as i start to trust her

she becomes a friend and then what it creates this paradox where i'm supposed to hate this woman but i trust her and consider a friend and what you see is one by one these white supremacists these die-hard white supremacists start dropping out of the movement because they can no longer reconcile their beliefs with reality and if if it can happen in this extreme environment then it can happen anywhere and um all that is required for us to cross political divides or you know disagreements at work and things like that is one of the parties has

to learn how to listen it doesn't even require both parties to learn the skill that's the amazing thing and uh it is it is one of the most remarkable remarkable skills that anyone can learn the power of listening yeah so the documentary is a great extreme example of what it can do