How to Tell if Someone is Actually Listening to You (Ep. 15)

0:00 Have you ever been in a situation where you were trying to tell someone something very important and they really didn't seem to be listening to you at all? No? Just me? There are times when the way we interpret other people's response to us when we're speaking to them might be correct, but it might actually be completely off. And if you're anything like me, sometimes we get upset and maybe the whole thing would go better if we could just understand how they were listening. So let's talk about it.

0:42 Welcome to Mind Your Midlife, your go-to resource for confidence and success, one thought at a time. Unlike most advice out there, we believe that simply telling you to believe in yourself or change your habits isn't enough to wake up excited about life or feel truly confident in your body. Each week, you'll gain actionable strategies and, oh my goodness, powerful insights to stop feeling stuck and start loving your midlife. This is the Mind Your Midlife podcast. We're here at Mind Your Midlife because I have an absolute passion to help you and me, I'm in my 50s, to help us go through this period of life feeling confident and feeling inspired and having fun when we can and dealing with the hard parts in the best way that we can.

1:41 There's going to be hard parts, of course. And so I came across the information I'm going to share with you in today's episode. When I was in a professional development training. So I attended an online training for facilitation, training how to facilitate a discussion, how to facilitate an event, what techniques were. Would someone use to do that in the best way possible. I love working with groups. I love facilitating discussions and events, large and small. So I really enjoyed this training. And even better, I learned something that I did not know before.

2:22 Now, I used to be a teacher. I taught for 12 years, in fact, one year in middle school and 11 years in high school. And that meant that many, many times I learned about learning styles. So you might lean heavily towards one learning style, or maybe you're a mix of a couple of the learning styles, and those are visual, meaning you need to see it to really absorb it. Auditory, meaning like right now, you need to hear it to really absorb it. Kinesthetic, meaning there needs to be some movement for you to be able to absorb information. You don't sit still, and it's not required that you sit still to take things in.

3:04 So those are just some examples. Not really our topic for today, but point being, I knew those. I had been teaching. I had gone to many, many, many teacher trainings and taken teacher courses, and learning styles is definitely a thing. And by the way, it's kind of interesting to think about the fact that now I am podcasting because I am definitely a visual learner. I really, really like to see things on paper. And I realize that ages us, doesn't it, when we say see things on paper. But I am often scribbling on a piece of paper when I'm talking to podcast guests or when I'm thinking about ideas. My desk has post-it notes all over it. So I don't know if you're anything like me, but definitely visual.

3:51 I got into podcasting because I love to speak and because it's so practical. You can listen while you're doing a million different things. And that's what we're talking about today, listening. So I did not know prior to this course that there were very distinct listening styles in the same way that there are distinct learning styles. And just imagine the tough conversations that you've had in your life. We've all reached the point in life where we have had to tell someone something they didn't want to hear, or we have had to maybe talk with a child, a teenager, a mentee, and either lay down the law or explain something or give a consequence to something.

4:43 And we maybe have... Do I want to say escalated the situation because it really looked like they weren't listening? Have you ever been in that situation? Have you ever gotten upset, not because of the situation, but because of the person's body language or the fact that they weren't even looking at you? They weren't even taking in what you're saying. Oh, so frustrating. I'm just talking and no one's listening to me. I'm wondering if you've been in that situation. I bet if we're being honest, we all have been in that situation. You haven't reached this point in life without having to have tough conversations. I wish for you very few of them, but they're going to happen.

5:26 And I want you to stand up for yourself. So that means they're going to happen. Sometimes, though, it might be that the person you were talking to was listening, and their style of listening, the way they displayed it with their body language, was the miscommunication. And I think especially if we're talking to our own kids or to teenagers in general, sometimes we sort of have this way deep belief in our subconscious that they're probably not listening anyway or that they're kind of antagonistic towards us if we're trying to give them advice or discipline. So that sort of makes the situation a little tougher. But maybe if we knew what it looks like for people to be listening, even if it's not what we expected, then we could have a little bit more patience with them.

6:17 And really, I guess even though this is about listening styles, it's also about perspective and putting ourselves in the other person's shoes. Because we want to assume that maybe people always act the way we do, people listen the way we do, but it's not true. So here we go. There are four styles of listening that are most common. I think you will recognize yourself in one of these. However, you probably really are a combination. Every time we talk about categories of how we behave or how we think, we're all probably a combination of two or three of these.

6:59 But there probably is one that you will recognize yourself. So I'm going to give you what they are in the basics, and then we'll go back and talk through each of them a little bit more, okay? So the list is a connective listener. They're really oriented towards the person they're listening to. A reflective listener. They are processing. An analytical listener. They want the facts. Just the facts, ma'am. And a conceptual listener focused on possibilities. So you might have already said, oh, well, yeah, that one was me, obviously. Well, don't turn the podcast off yet because let's talk into it a little bit more.

7:42 I want you to recognize yourself, but I also want all of us to understand what these mean so that we can recognize other people and at least have compassion for them or have perspective where we think, oh, maybe they are listening to me. Maybe they weren't just blowing me off. So let's talk about a connective listener. A connective listener is a type of listener that you're really going to see the listening in their body language more than probably any other type. They are going to orient themselves physically toward you, and they are listening for feelings.

8:23 They're potentially missing some of the facts in what you're saying. They're trying to make a connection with you, however, and so they might be nodding, they might be leaning in, they might be making more eye contact. They're connecting, and they're looking for an emotional connection with either you, the speaker, or with the information. So they probably in a classroom would be sitting towards the front of the room, they would be ready and prepared and the nodding. The nodding is the thing. I know we've recognized that. And in many, I have a lot of this in me. I'm a nodder.

9:06 I want to give people feedback that, yes, I am listening. So that's connective. And I think the connective listeners are the ones that probably aren't going to upset someone speaking to them quite so much. They're the ones where we're thinking to ourselves, oh, wow, they're really listening to me. I can see the nodding, right? And they're leaning in and they're making eye contact. These are the type of listeners that probably people don't get upset. At you as often if you're this type of listener, because it does look like you're listening. So that's great for connective listeners. But if you are a connective listener and other people are acting differently when you're speaking to them, it might not be that they're not listening. So let's talk about these other three.

9:50 Reflective. So a reflective listener, as I said, is processing the information and really letting it run in their heads because a reflective listener wants to know, how does the information affect me? The listener is thinking, how does this affect me? They're very focused on the effect on themselves, and they need time to figure that out. So they might be leaned a bit more, leaned a bit more back as opposed to forward. And they might not be looking at whoever's speaking. And they might, they probably wouldn't be nodding.

10:33 They might even kind of look like they're a bit up in the clouds and not paying attention. But what they're doing is they're listening for how the information affects them. And their brain is processing on that and it takes time. So what is the information? How does it affect me? What does that look like? Now, a reflective listener could miss the effects of something on other people. So if you're a reflective listener, I would encourage you to just keep in mind that you want to listen to how something is going to affect you and other people. But the key for you speaking to this type of listener is, it's okay that they're leaning back.

11:17 They might be sitting in the back of the room. They might be doodling. They might not be looking. They're still probably listening. They're allowing their brains to process while they're doing whatever it is they're doing with their body. Okay, number three, an analytical listener. Now, this is a little bit me as well. I'm the connective and the analytical. Now, the analytical listener wants the facts, and that makes sense, right? We know what the word analytical means. If you're an analytical listener, you are almost probably coming across as a little bit impatient with the person who's talking to you. And you don't want to hear opinions. You get impatient with opinions.

12:01 You might miss feelings being communicated to you. You're grabbing the facts out of what you're hearing. And if you're speaking to an analytical listener, it might feel as though they're only hearing bits and pieces of what you're saying. They're hearing the time that you need them, or they're hearing the item that they need to have, or the person that was there, the facts. They might not be hearing as easily how you felt about it, or how you hope they will feel in the situation, or any of those sort of softer items, because they grab onto the facts.

12:45 Unless they take a moment and step back from that. So as a speaker to someone like this, it can feel a little frustrating if you're trying to express your feelings and they're not seeming to catch it. And as the listener, you potentially are missing some really important things that are the nuances of the communication. So do I have a solution for you, analytical listeners? I think that just recognizing that if you tend to fixate on the facts and if people who are speaking to you about tough things sometimes get frustrated with you, even just recognizing that.

13:26 You could maybe tell yourself, okay, pause. Let me see. Am I missing anything? Maybe look at the person's expression that's speaking to you. Are they frustrated? I wonder why. Just try to just give yourself a little reminder to recognize that. And then the last type is conceptual. So these are the particularly creative people. A conceptual listener is really focused on possibilities, on concepts, and They might miss the details because they're looking for the big, exciting idea, the big picture.

14:07 They're listening to what's being said, and they're catching the overall concept, but maybe not catching the details and the little pieces. And it's not because they're not trying to. It's because their style is to grab that big picture, like the overall outside of the picture, and then they're not necessarily feeling in the middle unless maybe they're reminded to or they remind themselves to. The cool thing about this kind of listener is they generate a lot of ideas, and they might even interrupt you if you're speaking to them with an idea that they just came up with about what you're saying.

14:51 So as the speaker, you want to know that if somebody gets excited about the concept, they probably are a conceptual listener. And feed on their skill of seeing the big picture. Listen to their possibilities and then maybe gently remind them. Okay, we have to pay attention to these facts as well. It's not that they don't care about the facts. It's not that they don't care about the details, which I think is sometimes the way we feel with this type of listener. It's that they don't even necessarily catch it. Their brain doesn't catch on to that initially. So a gentle prodding, a gentle reminder maybe is good. And if you're this type of listener and you know you always go for the big picture, again, it's just recognizing it.

15:36 It's just recognizing, Let me see if I can just pull a couple of facts here as well. Let me just make sure that I do that. Just a couple. None of these are bad ways to listen, and none of these are the right way to listen. It's just how our brains work. The reason I thought this would be an interesting Mind Your Midlife episode is because I think when we speak to people about hard things, about tough topics, about frustrating things, or we try to express our feelings about something and we feel very vulnerable, and we're looking at that person we're talking to and they don't even seem to be listening, or they're only catching just the idea, or they only caught a couple of facts and they're getting impatient about our opinion, we get upset. potentially.

16:24 And maybe the person we're speaking to really is trying to listen. Maybe this is just the way their mind works. And so putting ourselves in the other person's shoes, maybe it gets a little bit easier to have that perspective if we know, oh, they might not listen the same way I do. If she's not nodding her head as I'm talking, that does not mean that she's not listening. That was a lot of negatives. Somebody can be listening and still leaning back with their arms crossed. Now, all that being said, it is very possible that the person you're talking to is not listening to you at all. And I'm not saying that everyone's always listening and we just need to recognize the differences.

17:06 Maybe they're not. I'm saying if we're aware of these different styles and we're aware that people might catch different things, maybe it helps us be a little bit more accepting when we're trying to communicate with people. And that will make them feel better. And that will make you feel better. And it's definitely, definitely, definitely worth a try. Maybe we at least just understand each other a little bit better. So connective, reflective, analytical, conceptual. You probably have one of those as your key listening style. And then the others as, you know, one or two of the others as maybe if I'm in this situation or that, that's how I listen.

17:50 I wish for you more comfortable and communicative conversations in your future. And I also wish for you a really healthy mindset when it comes to communicating about money and success. Grab the information about my Money Mindset Reset sessions. That's at CherylPFisher.com slash Money Mindset. I would love to chat with you. I have a couple of openings left. I'm loving these reviews coming in. The girl with the vine tattoo says, loved episode 10 on sorry.

18:32 This is something I've been paying attention to for many years, and I have broken out of saying it mostly, but my old patterns tend to come back around family, and she asked for suggestions. I think we need an episode on that. C. Lee says, a must listen for midlife women like me. I've been following the podcast from the start, and it just keeps getting better and better. Her advice and her guest's advice is top notch and easy to digest. C. Lee, thank you. You also said that the perspective that real change stems not from endless to-do lists, but from reexamining your mindset and emotions resonates deeply with you. And that makes me so happy.

19:12 Listeners, if you're listening on Apple, go leave a rating and a review. Now make sure you've hit the follow button, because in our next episode, we are going to be talking about learning music as a midlife woman. It's not just for kids and we are going to blow your mind with the mental and physical benefits that you could experience i'm so excited to introduce you to next week's guest so hit that follow button and i will see you then oh my goodness let's keep creating confidence and success one thought and.

19:52 Music.