Can I Be Frank?: The Fine Art of Not Listening

From a very young age we are told to “listen”.  Listen to your parents, your teachers, your coaches.  Later in life we are forced to listen to more people; professors, bosses, spouses.  Listening is an inherent and necessary part of our lives.  Listening is a learned skill that takes practice and attention which is probably why it is instilled in us from the time we are children.  While it does not seem like a complicated ability to master, listening is a lot harder than it seems on the surface.

Why?  Listening is no fun.  None.  Zero.  Zilch.

When someone tells you to “listen” the odds are the following words are about to come out of their mouth; orders, instructions, lessons, preachings, personal opinions or details about some subject you likely do NOT care about.

Some examples…

“Please listen class.  Open you text books to page 64,”  BOO!

“Listen up, we are down 29 points, but here is how we are going to turn this game around,” Hey Coach, we lost and you stink.  I am going to grab a hot dog.

“Listen here, men, single file as you head back to your cells,” Yes, sir, warden. (Hopefully none of you have heard this one) 

Unless you are listening to the lottery call your winning numbers or the broadcaster screaming that the Red Sox have won the World Series, I am honestly not that interested most of the time.

However, I have outlined a few simple techniques that can ensure a listening-free experience that will allow your thoughts to wander in the breeze while your partner in conversation believes you are completely enthralled with their words of boredom.

Grab a pen and paper… 

Eye contact:  It is imperative you maintain eye contact with the subject whom you are not listening to.  The biggest tell-tale sign you are not listening to someone is when your eyes wander to the person behind them, the sign on the wall or that bumble bee that just flew by.  Not easy…but a must

Head nods:  Frequent…but not too frequent.  Head nods are a reminder to your lunch date, Bordy McBoringson, that you are fully digesting his never ending story of abspetos removal from his attic.  

Face touching.  Every few minutes, touch your face as if you are pondering the creation of man.  This technique should be reserved for conversations when is explaining something complex. 

Eye brow control.  The movement of your eye brows is a story within itself.  A raised brow can express surprise, amazement, and shock.  A strong and intentional furled brow lets the other person know you are serious, interested, sympathetic and whole other litany of possible empty emotions.

Let me walk you through a case study from just this past week. 

I met an old colleague for dinner under the guise that we would simply catch up on life.  What I was really there for was to see if he could influence some buying decisions at his new company that would ultimately benefit Mr. Frank.  We met.  We sat.  We caught up on all the blah, blah blah of life and so on.  Once I got through that torture, I saw an opening to discuss how he could help me out.  After explaining things to him, he basically informed me that he did not see a need for these services but maybe next year.  My initial (and completely fraudulent) reaction was, “No problem at all, man.  I totally understand.  Tell me more about your new job”.

And 3, 2, 1…Goodnight and God Bless. From that point forward, my brain shut down and did not hear a word he uttered for the next hour.  For all I know he was confessing the Kennedy assassination, but I followed the rules:

I was staring into his eyes like a possessed serial stalker.

My noggin was like a bobblehead doll.

The brows were bouncing around like Groucho Marx.

I was practically slapping my own face. 

But the one thing I was not doing?  You guessed it; LISTENING.  Not a syllable.

In truth, I have been caught not-listening on many, many occasions by friends, family, bosses, doctors, clergy, corrections officers, and the homeless, but that does not mean I am giving up my mission to block out as much of the world’s noise as one man can.

Listen…you heard it here.