Generous listening is all about listening in order to understand. It is about focusing on the person talking with you, and listening with your body and more importantly with your mind. Do this and you will ooze generous listening. If, however, you are just waiting for the words to stop so that you can say what you want to say, it is not generous to the other person. We call this stingy listening. If you are wondering where you are going to go out for dinner later, or you ‘know’ what they are going to say anyway, or you are also trying to listen in on another conversation, this stingy listening will be noticed, Not directly maybe, but you will be seen as not listening. To listen generously or to listen powerfully is to listen with your whole self. To listen with the desire, a wish if you like, to understand what is being said.
All of this sounds really easy, but to get really good at powerful listening you will need to practice. Even then, it is easy to slip into stingy listening. One great way of keeping in check is to be aware of when you are listening well and when you are not. Myles Downey in his brilliant book “Effective Coaching’ advises us that “awareness is curative”. This is a really neat little trick that you can do to yourself. Simply be aware of how generous or stingy your listening is at the time will improve your listening skills. You can actually apply “awareness is curative” to anything. It really does work.
So in a nutshell, having a state of mind that is intent upon getting to understand what the other person is trying to say and listening with all of your being, will result in powerful and generous listening. Enjoy.