Active Listening

My best friend for nearly 30 years launched his own consulting firm a couple of years back. Its focus is to help companies evaluate their existing business models and take better advantage of their strengths and minimize whatever weaknesses they might face. He has a natural gift of putting people at ease, shrugging off things and people that cause the rest of us to line up at the local pharmacy to buy antacids and is annoyingly, effortlessly good looking. He truly loves his wife and two daughters and, aside from my partner, is the most reliable person I have ever met. Of course, his life has not been perfect by any means, including issues with parents, siblings and, more notably, not always being taken as seriously as he should be. Some skip over the Ivy League education, the resume, the hard work and succumb to jealousy and treat him like the classic dumb blonde. With those blinders on, they don't realize why he knows he is going to sell them on his approach. He is actively - very actively - listening to them. They have no idea what is cooking inside of his head because they are too busy trying to figure out why they are drawn to him. Some will never know.

I see some parallels in our philosophy today that I did not see until recently. We both place a great deal of value in listening closely to what others say, how they say it and why. When I launched this little blog, it grew out of a desire to start conversations on topics that are often political and controversial. (I haven't done a thing to advertise it and have no idea if it would be popular if I did.) This post is more about foundation, principles and style than who wins the argument or sells his product.

Recently, we were writing back and forth about intelligence, social grace and how it is that each of us are in the early stages of starting our own practices (mine in law, his in business realignment) that have been, so far, gratifying and objectively successful. He suggested that what I consider to be my own oddities might actually be gifts. He always manages to say something no one else would think about, much less articulate, and turn (at least my) oddities into attributes. He believes I am much more socially graceful than I think I am and believes I am empathetic or sympathetic, intelligent and humbler than I do. He is also an expert in telling me I am full of crap when I lament my shortcomings. That's what good friends do.

To some extent, I think he is right and I would tell him the same thing about himself. I am usually polite and can summon up the energy to exhibit some social grace although I think politeness and social grace bleed together and for a person who is as generally shy as I am, I cannot say that whatever social grace I have is primarily rooted in shyness or something else. I like leaving very light footprints wherever I go although I don't always achieve it.

For me, trying to be more polite and actively listening to others is about avoiding conflict, especially in my personal life, because my professional life is almost always about dealing with conflict even when I am not the person at the center of the conflict. If intelligence plays a role, I'll take the compliment but I think it is not so much about native intelligence. If I had a nickel for every intelligent person who lacked a molecule of social grace, I would be happily working for free. At least for me, it is mostly about two things that I think are often underappreciated - truly active listening and having read enough books to turn an otherwise unsatisfying conversation into something distracting and interesting.

When I am able to tell someone that despite their troubles they remind me of a character in a novel where everything works out fine in the end, I walk away thanking my mother for telling me to read everything I could get my hands on. Doing that, appreciating the sincere efforts of others without regard to their immediate success and keeping an open mind make life a great deal easier. Let's not forget smiling and making the person with whom you are speaking feel like they are the only person in the room. It's not phony. It's smart.

We both go to a fair number of rubber chicken dinners with rooms full of people we barely know. 20+ years ago I would have been terrified. Today, all I truly dislike about those events are the bad food and mean drunks. I have been asked many times about my background when at these sorts of gatherings and have learned to keep it to a couple of sentences. To the extent I am perceived as "lucky" in my solo practice, the people with whom I speak seem to think I have some social or class advantage. Note to parents: I think it has more do with having decent table manners and what people consider to be my unaccented English which, of course, is silly because what I believe they really mean is that I sound far more patrician to them than I actually am and it is generally because I have a relatively flat, Midwestern accent. All English speakers have an accent. Mine just happens to sound more standard on television.

I continue to believe my best skill is to leave an event after speaking to 5-10 people in any depth never having revealed very much about myself. I don't think the people with whom I speak at these events even realize they learned nothing very personal about me because they are hungry to be heard or, more specifically, are hungry to have someone really listen to them. Those I know very well already have all the personal information they need about me and if they need more, they ask. Whether I tell is another story. One colleague who knows me pretty well, including aspects of my private life, asked me, quite audibly - at a table of 10, nine of whom were perfect strangers - whether gay men in long-term relationships were generally monogamous. I was more than a bit shocked at first but I knew it was not meant to embarrass me. I deeply value my privacy but would never hide my sexual orientation because I believe it is important that people understand that every profession includes lesbians and gay men and am a firm believer in being out and moving on quickly to a more interesting topic. I answered the question at the same volume he asked it, told him I could not speak for others but that I was monogamous after 17 years with the same guy and then we talked about other things. No one at the table flinched. Perhaps it was because my colleague is far, far more prominent than I am in my field and if he felt comfortable with me and was my friend, they should be, too. If I am right, I am delighted. If I am wrong, that's fine, too.

Ironically, the best conversations I have with strangers start with professional discussions and end, if they ask, with the person finding out I am gay. They are the people more likely to contact me on a professional basis. Merit first; irrelevant personal information second. If you flip the conversation around, the entire thing becomes about me and the focus is completely different. I don't want any conversation to be entirely about me. We cannot tackle any issues or solve any problems if all that I am is a member of a small demographic group with a decent resume.

If you have read this far, thank you. If you have a business in need of realignment, my best friend is your guy. He's an excellent listener and radiantly energetic and smart.