ACTIVE LISTENING
TO ACCOMPLISH THE GOALS OF THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS
WE COMMUNICATE FOR A REASON!
WHAT IT TAKES FOR A COMPLETED COMMUNICATION
Active listening is the practice to engage in to do the gap closing.
It is simple.
The Sender sends the message.
The Receiver listens without interruption and is not busy thinking of answers or any "response". He is simply trying to "get" the message, while knowing that the sender will not be perfect at it, but wanting the sender to get the benefit the sender intends.
The Receiver nods and looks the receiver in the eye. He may, as long as it is ok with the sender, ask whether he might ask a clarifying question and then does do that if the answer is yes. True, this is an interruption in a sense but it is more of a stitching together information so that it forwards the purpose of the communication.
When the Sender is finished with the whole thing (or each segment if the communication is likely to be too long for the Receiver to recall and recount it sufficiently), repeats back in his own words what he understands to have been communicated. The sophisticated Receiver also lets the Sender know how he understands how the Sender might be impacted/affected by that - that is what is called a validation of the emotions of the other so that it doesn't feel like the emotions are dismissed as meaning nothing or very little. (When a Sender feels "not gotten" and that his/her emotions are invalidated, the Sender is prone to emotional outrage as it feels like a stick in the eye and a diminishing of the other person.)
The Sender says if he/she "got" that the other person understood what was said. If not, the Sender might clarify and then ask if that was clear AND ask the other person to feed it back so that the Sender can see that it is understood. (The Receiver must not ever object to what the Sender does or insist that the Sender should have "gotten" that he/she has "gotten" that the Receiver has "gotten" that which is to be "gotten"!)
The process is repeated until the Sender "gets" and acknowledges that the Receiver has "duplicated" the message that he/she tried to convey.
They then thank each other for the communication success or do some kind of gesture of appreciation.
REMEMBER!
YOU are responsible, no matter which side you are of the communication, for noticing the repeating and then engaging in the active listening process. (You can figure out how to make the request.)
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I saw Harville Hendrix (see references to him and his books on this site) do this onstage with a feuding couple self selected from the audience. They had to be coached a little, but soon, the wife felt heard and they went from hostile to loving and smiling. It works. Use it!
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If the other person is an interrupter who can't wait for you to stop talking, you can use a "talking stick" or the equivalent. Have a stick or some object that a person holds when he is talking. Only that person can talk, until the object is held by the other person.
You can do the same thing by saying "I have now completed." And so forth, passing the verbal baton back and forth after finished with your part of the conversation.
