Communication · Listening · Empathy

Like a Human...

Listen to hear, for your personal, professional and leadership life

Dr. Greg Moody · October 10, 2026

You feel connected over a good meal. Watching a movie you both like (or the group likes) together. Going to Disneyland, a sporting event, a Broadway play, or even a team that's off to a battle. All of those, during and when they're over, are connecting human experiences.

Why? Because we share and experience the same thing. The more significant the experience, positive like watching the Suns finally win a championship, or dangerous like a battle, the more connecting it can be.

Researchers who studied military veterans, football fans and martial arts students found that people who'd been through something painful together were more likely to fuse with their group (researchers call it identity fusion), where the group starts to feel like part of who they are (Whitehouse et al., 2017). A Yale study found that even eating a piece of chocolate is more intense when somebody next to you is eating the same chocolate at the same time... and it works the same way for unpleasant experiences (Boothby et al., 2014). Sharing it makes it bigger... that's the bond!

Talking Is Supposed to Connect Us

Now let's take basic human connection... speaking to each other. While this seems like it's connecting, a large part of us are talking but not connecting.

How large? A University of Chicago study had people try to get an ambiguous message across to their spouse or close friend, and to a stranger. Everybody assumed the spouse would understand them better. The spouses did no better than the strangers (Savitsky et al., 2011). The closer we are to somebody, the more we tend to assume they got it, so we check less. John Gottman (the University of Washington psychologist who spent decades watching couples argue in his lab, and got famous for predicting which ones would split up from a few minutes of conversation) found that about 69% of the problems couples argue about are perpetual... the same argument, for years, never resolved (Gottman & Silver, 1999).

That's because the usual communicating experience together is like I was watching a play and you're watching a basketball game. Instead of taking turns hearing each other, understanding and showing empathy (even if we didn't agree), it often turns into a battle of whose position is more important.

Princeton researchers put a speaker and a listener in scanners and found that when the listener actually understood, their brain activity started to mirror the speaker's, sometimes a beat behind and sometimes a beat AHEAD, anticipating. When the listener didn't understand, the coupling disappeared (Stephens et al., 2010). LITERALLY connecting or… NOT.

I tell people all the time: listen like a human. I mean that we actually listen and hear and make sure they know we heard them. Like we actually are trying to absorb and understand. To treat others like they are human too, with all the frailties, challenges and problems we all share, and that in this moment you're all about comprehending their experience. We do that through validation.

Validation is: you hear what the other person is saying and make sure they know that you heard it... not by saying "I hear what you're saying, BUT" (which is just a way to retort), but by reflecting, paraphrasing, asking important questions, working to fully understand. This doesn't mean agreeing, it means making sure they know you understand.

Why We Communicate Badly…

If connecting feels this good and everybody wants it, why do we turn a conversation into a battle? A few reasons, and every one of them happens all the time.

We were taught to talk, not to listen. Nobody gave you a class in reflecting. You got graded on speaking up, having an answer, making your point. Do that for years and talking first becomes the reflex.

Talking about ourselves is rewarding. Literally. A Harvard study found that disclosing your own thoughts and opinions lights up the same reward regions of the brain as food and money, and people would give up money for the chance to talk about themselves (Tamir & Mitchell, 2012). Your turn to talk isn't just your turn... it's a treat, and you're waiting for it.

We think we already understood. Here's how I put it in my conflict resolution seminars: we're so busy figuring out our next statement and next retort that we don't listen. We think we know what someone is saying because we've heard it 15 million times. "Okay. I processed that. I understood it. I know exactly what she's saying." And then you just barrel ahead without validating what's going on. The closer the person, the worse this gets (that's the Chicago study above).

Emotion runs ahead of logic. I often talk about how Vulcans couldn't exist, because emotion is almost always in front of logic. I WANT my position to win, so I come up with the "logical" reasons to justify it. Once that's running, the other person's words are just fuel for my rebuttal.

A button got pushed. If your emotion is out of proportion to the actual event, a button got pushed. Buttons are learned adaptations, usually formed young, and they fire like reflexes. Once a button fires you're usually defending something that happened years ago, and the person in front of you has no idea. By the way – spouses and family members are really good at pushing them…

Understanding feels like losing. People confuse understanding with agreeing. If I reflect your position accurately, some part of me thinks I just gave it to you. I didn't. Validation is not agreement (more on that below). People who get this can hear almost anything without getting defensive but if you miss this skill, get ready to always be in adversarial situations.

What Bad Communication Looks Like

"I hear what you're saying, but..." From my conflict resolution work: the number one phrase people make a mistake with is "I hear what you're saying, but..." Whenever you say the words "I hear what you're saying, but," or "I hear what you're saying" and then go on to say something else, nobody heard what anybody was saying. It's just a retort. Pay attention to what happens in your body when it's said to you... you brace, because you know what's coming.

The three conflict traps. Most adults run into one of these without knowing it:

• Loud. Buttons get pushed, the volume rises, and the fight ends only when everyone is exhausted. Nothing resolves.
• Silent. One person withdraws. Stops calling, stops showing up, says "I'm fine." No visible blow-up, and the resentment compounds. This is the most dangerous one in a business because it looks like things are fine until the customer or the employee is already gone.
• Mixed. One escalates while the other withdraws, then they swap.

The Four Horsemen. Gottman's research found four patterns that predict a relationship ending: criticism (attacking character instead of behavior), contempt (sarcasm, eye-rolling, name-calling... the most corrosive of the four), defensiveness ("it's not me, it's you"), and stonewalling (the silent treatment, walking away) (Gottman & Silver, 1999). Every one of them is a way of not hearing the other person.

The sentences that feel like listening and aren't. These are the everyday versions. People say them may think they're trying to help or are just riding the wave of their poor skills.

What you say (trying to help)	What it says to them
"I hear what you're saying, but..."	"Here comes the rebuttal."
"At least..."	"Your feeling is too big for the facts."
"I know exactly how you feel."	"No you don't."
"The same thing happened to me..."	"This is about you now."
"It'll be fine."	"Stop feeling this."
"Have you tried...?"	"You think I haven't thought of that?"
"Why did you do that?"	"You're on trial."
"Don't be upset."	"Your reaction is wrong."
"Calm down."	"Your reaction is a problem for me."
"You always... / You never..."	"I'm being scored."

About "at least." I hate this one. "At least you still have your job." "At least the kids are OK." Every "at least" says their feeling is too big for the facts (often without you meaning it that way), and it ends the conversation. Brené Brown's research on empathy makes the same point: an empathic response rarely begins with "at least," because "at least" is an attempt to put a silver lining on something instead of getting in there with the person (Brown, 2013, 2021). She separates empathy, which is feeling WITH somebody, from sympathy, which is feeling FOR them. "At least" is sympathy. My version: sympathy is the safe distance talking.

One that really hit me hard was when my mom died. I was at the funeral and one of her friends said "at least you got to have fun with her when she was alive!" It's not that she was wrong… mom was fun (especially at Christmas), smart and cared about all of us, however at the moment what that felt like was "you don't need to feel bad because 'you got to have fun with her when she was alive'". In other words judging that I felt bad. Look, I completely realize she meant well and during times like these it's tough to figure out what to say. I tell this story to illustrate sympathy vs. empathy. This is a great example of her trying to show sympathy. Empathy would have looked more like: "Losing your mom is hard no matter how old you are" or "There's nothing I can say that makes this okay. I'm here." Or even just a hand on the shoulder or a hug, and no words at all.

The Tools

Four jobs, in order: hear and understand, validate (make sure they KNOW you understood), express empathy so it's felt, and then encourage. Most people (me included) try to do them in the wrong order, or skip straight to the last one.

Hear and Understand

In the Communication chapter of The Life Skills of Leaders we teach the listening continuum (Moody, 2023):

1. Ignoring
2. Pretend listening
3. Selective listening
4. Attentive listening
5. Empathic listening

Selective listening is where most of us live. You're listening for the thing you can respond to. Your partner says a bunch of things and you hear the one you disagree with, because that's the one you have an answer for. It's habit, and you've been rewarded your whole life for having a comeback ready.

Empathic listening, the top of the continuum, means getting inside the other person's frame of reference before you respond. Carl Rogers built an entire approach to therapy on it and argued it was one of the conditions that lets a person change at all (Rogers, 1957).

Six tools, from the book, with one everyday example run all the way through. A friend says: "I'm so done with my sister."

• Encourager: nod, wait.
• Reflect: "You're done with your sister..."
• Paraphrase: "She's worn you out."
• Inquiry statement: "I'm wondering what happened this time."
• Supportive: "I can't say I blame you. That's been going on a long time."
• Advising: "Most people I know in that spot end up setting one rule and sticking to it."

Advising is LAST. Five moves happen before anybody suggests anything, and by then you know what "done" means. Done with the phone calls? Done with the money? Done being the one who always drives to Mom's? Three different problems that all sound like "I'm done with my sister."

1. Minimal encouragers. "Go on...", "hmm", a nod, silence. The book lists silence as an encourager, and it may be the one people use least. Why does silence work? Because people fill it. Wait a beat longer than feels comfortable after "I'm done with my sister" and most people keep going. They'll tell you which kind of done!

2. Reflecting. Say back what they said, in their words. "You're done with your sister." That's it. It sounds too simple, and it does two jobs: it confirms you heard the right thing, and it makes them hear their own sentence. People often realize the sentence didn't say what they meant (Moody, 2023). "Well, not done exactly, it's that every time she calls it's about money..." Now you're somewhere.

3. Paraphrasing. Condense it into your words. "The money is the part that's wearing you out." The book gives three reasons for it: you can interrupt a long story without generating resistance, it lets you guide the conversation, and it lets the other person modify what they first said. In Motivational Interviewing the reflection is the core skill (Miller & Rollnick, 2013), and their working guideline for clinicians is more reflections than questions... about two to one.

4. Inquiry statements. An inquiry statement is a statement that leaves the door open, and for a lot of people it works better than a question. "I wonder how long that's been building." "It sounds like something happened this week." "I'm not sure what the hardest part is." The book has a device I use all the time: start a list out loud ("There's the money, the phone calls...") and then stop talking and let them fill in the rest. Questions can feel like probing, a statement usually doesn't, and people still answer it.

5. Supporting. "I can't say I blame you." "I know it can be hard." You're telling them they have a right to feel that way. You don't have to agree with them, and you don't have to agree with what they're about to do.

6. Advising. NOW you suggest something, if they even want a suggestion (ask). Your advice is about the real problem, because you found out what it was.

The questions that get the story. Two things make a question work. It's a follow-up: a series of studies on conversation found that people who ask more questions are liked more, and follow-up questions were the ones doing the work (Huang et al., 2017). The follow-up is the second question, and it's the one that PROVES you heard the first answer. It's open: "Is it the money?" gets a yes or a no and stops. "What's the part that gets to you?" gets a paragraph, and the paragraph has the real thing in it. One more from counseling training... go easy on "why." "Why did you say that to her?" sounds like an accusation even when you mean it kindly (Ivey et al., 2018). "What was going on for you when you said it?" gets the same information without the courtroom.

The full toolkit. Counseling training, motivational interviewing, dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), police interview training and hostage negotiation all teach overlapping tools with different names. Here they are sorted by what each one is FOR.

Attending: everything before a word comes out.

Tool	What it sounds or looks like	Where it comes from
Listening position	Phone down, body turned, eye contact, open posture, lean in a little	Egan's SOLER (Egan, 2014); our White Belt "listening position" (Moody, 2023)
Silence	Three to five seconds of nothing after they stop	Counseling microskills (Ivey et al., 2018)
Minimal encouragers	"Go on...", "hmm", a nod	Ivey et al. (2018); Moody (2023)
Match their pace and volume	If they're quiet and slow, you're quiet and slow	FBI negotiation training (Voss & Raz, 2016)

Following: proving you tracked it.

Tool	What it sounds like	Where it comes from
Reflecting	Their words back: "You're done with your sister."	Rogers & Farson (1957); Moody (2023)
Mirroring	Repeat their last one to three words as a question: "...done with her?"	Voss & Raz (2016)
Paraphrasing	Your words, shorter: "The money is the part that's wearing you out."	Ivey et al. (2018); Moody (2023)
Reflection of feeling	Name the emotion under the words: "You sound hurt more than angry."	Ivey et al. (2018)
Complex reflection	Say the part they didn't say: "And you feel guilty for being done."	Miller & Rollnick (2013)
Double-sided reflection	Hold both halves: "Part of you is done, and part of you can't stand the idea of cutting her off."	Miller & Rollnick (2013)
Summarizing	Every few minutes, the whole thing in three sentences	Ivey et al. (2018); Miller & Rollnick (2013)

Asking: getting the whole story.

Tool	What it sounds like	Where it comes from
Open questions	"What happened?" not "Did it go badly?"	Miller & Rollnick (2013)
Inquiry statements	"I wonder what changed." (a statement, not a question)	Moody (2023)
TED prompts	"Tell me about... Explain... Describe..."	UK police PEACE interview model (Milne & Bull, 1999)
Calibrated questions	"How" and "what" questions that make them think out loud: "How would I even do that?" "What's the hardest part?"	Voss & Raz (2016)
Report everything	"Tell me the whole thing, even the parts that don't seem important."	Cognitive Interview (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992)
Avoid "why"	"What was going on for you?" instead of "Why did you do that?"	Ivey et al. (2018)

Understanding: all the way in before you respond.

Tool	What it sounds like	Where it comes from
Reflection of meaning	"So what this is really about is being taken for granted."	Ivey et al. (2018)
Interests, not positions	Their position is "I'm cutting her off." Their interest is "I need to stop being the only one who shows up." Ask for the interest.	Fisher et al. (2011)
Observation, feeling, need	"When she calls about money (observation), you feel used (feeling), because you need it to be a two-way street (need)."	Nonviolent Communication (Rosenberg, 2015)
Check your understanding	"Let me make sure I've got this..." then summarize, then "Did I miss anything?"	Ivey et al. (2018)
The 2:1 rule	Two reflections for every question. If you're asking more than you're reflecting, you're interrogating.	Miller & Rollnick (2013)

Validate: Make Sure They Know You Understood

This is the step that can't be skipped. EVER.

Empathy is about validation. The validation skill requires a lot of reflection and paraphrasing on both sides. Before you can resolve anything, everyone needs to be heard. That means both people need to rephrase, reflect what the other person said, and all parties feel comfortable that the other parties understood them. Sometimes this is exceedingly difficult because we've been taught to talk, not to listen.

I remember one couple who would just not do this part. They couldn't reflect what each other said nor hear what the other said. I'll never forget it. I worked with them on reflecting, listening and tried to practice with them. No luck… Finally, I said "Okay, let's try it with you and me."

She had a water bottle in front of her.

I said, "Can you just rephrase what I say? All I want you to try is to repeat exactly what I say… nothing else, OK?" She smiled, agreed and said she was ready.

"I would like you to give me the water bottle. Just repeat that after me. Just say, 'I'd like you to give me the water bottle.'"

At this point you'd expect someone to reply with "I'd like you to give me the water bottle," right? I mean how specific could I be?

She said: "Here!" and she handed me the water bottle.

Wow! OK, I tried again... I gave her the bottle back. "Let's try again, this time, hold on to the water bottle. I'd just like you to say the words just like I am saying now: 'I'd like you to give me the water bottle.'"

She said, "Here's the water bottle." She just handed me the water bottle.

This was going nowhere fast... I had to try something else. "Okay, let me see if you can do it the other way. Would you ask me for my water bottle?" She said, "Would you give me your water bottle?" I said, "Okay. What you'd like is for me to give you my water bottle?" She said, "Yes."

"Great!! That's reflecting. Didn't have to do anything except say back what you said." "Now let's give you a turn." "Now. I'd like you to do exactly what we just did." Then I said it back to her: "I would like you to give me your water bottle."

She handed me the water bottle.

It took about 25 minutes for her to reflect one sentence back to me, just with me, let alone her husband. This is a very difficult thing for people. In business it shouldn't be quite as hard... except it IS.

Reflecting it back, making sure they understand that you're connected with them... this piece can't be skipped. They have to hear what they said back to them (you have a variety of tools to use), or they're never going to feel like you connected or cared. This doesn't mean you agree or are going to give them what they want! You're just making sure they are heard. It's making sure they know: I may disagree, but I understand your position.

This is how it works even in high-level diplomacy. When two countries negotiate a treaty, one side states its proposal, the other side reflects it, and they go back and forth on only the first side's proposal until it's fully understood. Then the other side gets a turn. They know that whether they agree or completely disagree, they need to know clearly what the other side is saying.

A real example is Camp David in 1978. Egypt and Israel had fought four wars in thirty years, and their leaders got along so badly that the Americans spent most of the summit meeting with each side separately. The American team used what Roger Fisher calls the one-text procedure: the mediators wrote a single draft, then went to each side and asked what was wrong with it. Each side's answers went into the next draft, and the next draft went back to both sides. After thirteen days and about twenty-three drafts, the United States had a text it was ready to recommend (Fisher et al., 2011). Neither side had to agree with the other along the way... each side just had to be satisfied the draft got their position right before anyone signed.

Carl Rogers suggested the same rule for any argument in a 1951 talk, later published in On Becoming a Person: each person gets to speak up only after restating the ideas and feelings of the previous speaker accurately, to that speaker's satisfaction (Rogers, 1961). He said if you actually try it, you'll probably find it's one of the hardest things you've ever done.

The six levels of validation. DBT training lays validation out as a ladder, easiest to hardest (Linehan, 1997). Most of us (me included, on a bad day) stay at level 1 or 2.

Level	What it sounds like	What it does
1. Be there	Eye contact, nodding, not multitasking	"I'm paying attention"
2. Reflect accurately	"You're worn out by this."	"I got the words right"
3. Say the unsaid	"You're probably wondering if you're a bad sibling for feeling this way."	"I got the part you didn't say"
4. Make sense of it from their history	"After the last three years, of course this is where you are."	"Given your life, this is reasonable"
5. Make sense of it as normal	"Anybody in that spot would be done."	"You're not broken"
6. Be real	Drop the technique voice. Talk like a person. "That's awful. I'd be done too."	"I'm a human talking to a human"

Supporting statements from the book live here too: "I can't say I blame you." "I know it can be hard." (Moody, 2023). The labeling move from hostage negotiation... "It sounds like you're afraid this is going to end badly"... is levels 2 and 3 in one sentence (Voss & Raz, 2016).

Express Empathy So It's Felt

You can feel a great deal for somebody and have none of it reach them. A lot of people who think they're bad at empathy are (in my experience) fine at feeling it and bad at TRANSMITTING it, and that part you can practice.

Why does it matter that it reaches them? A meta-analysis of 82 studies on therapy found that clients did better when they rated their therapist as empathic, and the effect was largest when the CLIENT rated the empathy, not when the therapist did (Elliott et al., 2018). Therapists rated their own empathy too, and those ratings predicted outcome less well than what the clients said they felt. Researchers who study close relationships call this perceived partner responsiveness (Reis et al., 2004): feeling understood, validated and cared for by the other person. It's measured on the receiving end.

A concept analysis in the nursing literature broke empathy into four parts: seeing the world as the other person sees it, staying out of judgment, recognizing the emotion they're feeling, and communicating that recognition back (Wiseman, 1996). The first three happen inside your head, and the other person can't see any of them... they only get the fourth.

Say the feeling out loud. "You're exhausted." "That scared you." "You're furious at them and you don't want to be." Saying the emotion out loud is probably the fastest way to make somebody feel understood, and it's the one people are most afraid to do because they might get it wrong. Get it wrong! They'll correct you ("not furious... more like hurt"), and now they've told you the real feeling, which is the whole point.

Do not fix yet. The urge to fix is strong, and what they hear is "please stop feeling this so I can be comfortable." A person who's upset can tell when you're trying to make the feeling go away so you can relax. Sit in it with them first. The fix can usually wait ten minutes and it'll be a better fix.

Do not compare. "At least..." (see above). "I know exactly how you feel" (you don't, and they know you don't). "The same thing happened to me" followed by your whole story (now the conversation is about you).

Self-disclosure is different, and it works. There's a version of "the same thing happened to me" that connects instead of hijacks. When someone tells you a struggling thing, and you share your own similar experience to show that you understand, you connect through the common struggle... the same way veterans, football fans and martial arts students bond over something hard they went through together. Counselors are trained to do it and the research on it (Hill & Knox, 2002) points to three things: keep it short, make it about their feeling and not your story, and hand the conversation back. "I went through something like that after my dad died, and I couldn't sleep for a month. Is it hitting you at night too?" That's twenty words about you and then it's theirs again. The hijack version is two hundred words about you and they're now listening to you.

Turn toward the small stuff. In couples research the moments that mattered were small bids for attention... "look at that bird," "ugh, this email"... and whether the partner turned toward them or kept scrolling (Driver & Gottman, 2004). Couples who turned toward the small bids handled their arguments better, with more humor and affection in the middle of a fight. That research suggests the habit you'll need in a fight gets built (or not) over years of ordinary moments when nothing was wrong.

Your body has to agree with your words. The book puts it the way our training does: words carry about 7% of what gets communicated, voice about 38%, and body language about 55% (Mehrabian & Ferris, 1967; Moody, 2023). Those figures came from studies of feelings and attitudes, so I wouldn't stretch them to "words don't matter." What the research does support is that when your words and your body disagree, people believe the body. "That sounds hard" said toward a phone screen is worse than saying nothing. Put the phone face down. Turn the chair. That's most of the skill... seriously!

Encourage and Motivate (After the Empathy, Never Before)

"It'll be fine" usually lands as a request that they stop feeling what they're feeling so you can move on, and most people can hear that. Real encouragement comes AFTER empathy is communicated, and it sounds different because it's specific.

The difference:

Fake encouragement	Real encouragement
"It'll be fine."	"I have always seen you kick butt at this."
"You've got this!"	"You handled the last two of these when you thought you couldn't."
"Don't worry about it."	"You're really worried about this one... and you're the one I'd bet on."
"Just stay positive."	"What's the part you already know how to do?"

Three rules from motivational interviewing on this (Miller & Rollnick, 2013). An affirmation names something TRUE about them, a strength or an effort you actually saw, never a generic pep line. Motivation that comes from them usually works better than yours, so ask for it: "When have you gotten through something like this before?" and let them say it. The order is fixed: they have to feel understood first. If you encourage before you've reflected, it sounds like you didn't listen (and you probably didn't).

In The Life Skills of Leaders the fourth level of communication is exactly this: using everything above to motivate and educate somebody (Moody, 2023).

The Sentences Again, With the Alternatives

Now the table from the top with two more columns: what to say instead, and what to say when you're the one on the receiving end.

What you say (trying to help)	What it says to them	Say this instead	If someone says it to YOU
"I hear what you're saying, but..."	"Here comes the rebuttal."	Reflect first: "You feel like I never back you up in front of your parents." Then wait.	"Can you tell me what you heard me say? Then I'll listen to yours."
"At least..."	"Your feeling is too big for the facts."	"That's a lot."	"I know you mean well. I don't need the bright side yet... I just need you to hear this part."
"I know exactly how you feel."	"No you don't."	"I can't say I blame you."	"It's different for me. Can I tell you how?"
"The same thing happened to me..." (and then the whole story)	"This is about you now."	"Something like that happened to me, and it wrecked me for a while. Was it like that for you?"	"I want to hear yours, I do. Can I finish mine first?"
"It'll be fine."	"Stop feeling this."	"You're really worried about this one."	"It might be. Right now I'm scared, and I need that to be OK for a minute."
"Have you tried...?"	"You think I haven't thought of that?"	"Do you want ideas, or do you want to vent? Either is fine."	"I'm not ready for ideas yet. Can you just listen for a few minutes?"
"Why did you do that?"	"You're on trial."	"What was going on for you when you did it?"	"I'll tell you. Just don't cross-examine me."
"Don't be upset."	"Your reaction is wrong."	"You're upset. Tell me."	"I am upset. Can we start with that?"
"Calm down."	"Your reaction is a problem for me."	Lower your own voice. Sit. Wait.	"I will. It'd help if you sat down with me."
"You always... / You never..."	"I'm being scored."	"The last two times, it felt like..."	"Can you give me the last time it happened? I can work with one time."

When somebody hands you "at least," you're already hurting, and now you have to teach them how to talk to you. Do it anyway, and do it kindly. Most people who say these things are trying to help, and nobody ever taught them another way (we were taught to talk, not to listen).

The Same Conversation, Both Ways

Your partner says: "You're on your phone every night. I feel like I'm living with a roommate."

The reflex version

Partner: "You're on your phone every night. I feel like I'm living with a roommate."

You: "I hear what you're saying, but I'm on it for work. You know how much is going on right now."

Partner: "It's always work."

You: "That's not fair. I put it down when you ask."

Partner: "Forget it."

Five lines, and nobody learned anything. You defended, they retreated, and "I feel like I'm living with a roommate" (the actual message) never got touched. That's the play and the basketball game: two people in the same room, watching two different things. It may come back next week, louder.

The listening version

Partner: "You're on your phone every night. I feel like I'm living with a roommate."

You: (put the phone face down, turn toward them) "Like a roommate..."

Partner: "Yeah. We're in the same room and we don't talk."

You: "It's not really the phone, then... it's that we're not talking."

Partner: "It's both. The phone is where the talking goes."

You: "I'm wondering when you started feeling that way."

Partner: "Since your schedule changed. We used to have the hour after dinner."

You: "We did! I miss it too, and I didn't realize it went away. Do you want to figure out how to get it back, or do you just need me to know?"

What do you know now that you didn't know a minute ago? It isn't the phone, it has a start date, and it's about a specific lost hour. You haven't agreed to anything yet. You haven't defended yourself. Your partner feels heard, which was probably most of what they came for.

(Nobody in this example is real. The moves are the ones we teach.)

Same Tools, Four Conversations

These tools work the same way whether you're selling something, enrolling a family in a program, sitting across from the principal about your kid, or standing in the kitchen with your spouse. The words are different in each one, but you use the tools in the same order every time.

Vanessa Van Edwards, who runs the human behavior lab Science of People, explains why the order matters (Van Edwards, 2022). She builds on Susan Fiske's research showing that people size each other up on two questions, warmth and competence, and answer the warmth question first (Fiske et al., 2007). Warmth is "Can I trust you?" Competence is "Can I rely on you?" Her team coded 495 pitches from the TV show Shark Tank and found the pitchers who got deals showed warmth early and competence after (that's her lab's analysis, not a peer-reviewed study). The first five listening tools are mostly warmth. Advising is competence, and it usually works only after they've decided they can trust you.

The sales call

They say: "We're having some financial trouble right now."

The reflex is "No problem, we have a payment plan." You're answering before you know what they mean. "Financial trouble" can mean a job loss, a spouse who hasn't been told yet, a bill due on the 15th, or "I'm not sure this will work for me" said as money.

The listening version starts with a nod and a wait. Van Edwards teaches a slow triple nod after the person stops talking and says it can keep people going three to four times longer (Van Edwards, 2022). That number is hers (I couldn't find the original study), and the nod costs you nothing either way. Then reflect: "You're having some financial trouble right now..." Most people fill the gap: "My hours got cut. Probably for a few months." Now you know it's temporary and it has a date on it, and the advice you give is about that.

The enrollment

A parent in an enrollment conversation says: "I need to talk to my spouse."

DON'T say: "Sure! When's a good time for me to follow up?"

SAY: "Of course. What do you think they'll say?"

The first one hands the decision to somebody who isn't in the room. The second one gets you the objection that person is going to raise, while the parent who's sitting with you can still answer it. A lot of the time it turns out to be the schedule ("They'll say we already have soccer three nights a week"), and that's a conversation you can have right now.

The principal

This one runs the other direction. You're the parent, and the principal says: "Sam has been having some trouble at recess."

The reflex is to defend: "Sam says the other kids start it." Most parents do it, and it's understandable. It also puts you and the principal on opposite sides.

Try a reflection instead: "Trouble at recess..." Then wait. The principal will usually fill in what actually happened, which you need anyway. Follow with an inquiry statement: "I'm wondering what you've seen work with kids who get into this." Now you're two adults working on the same kid, and the principal has a reason to call you first next time. Listening works when you're the one who feels judged, maybe better, because the other person usually expects a fight.

The spouse

Your spouse says: "I'm so tired of being the one who handles everything."

The reflex: "I do plenty! I did the dishes last night." Now it's a scoring contest and you're both keeping count.

The listening version: "You're tired of handling everything..." "Every appointment, every form, every birthday present." "It sounds like it's the keeping track of it all, more than the doing." "Yes. That's exactly it." That "yes, that's exactly it" is the moment they know they were heard. Now you can offer something: "Do you want me to take over a whole category, like the kids' appointments, so you don't have to track it at all?"

(Sam and everyone else in these four examples are made up, and the moves are the ones we teach.)

The four, side by side

The conversation	They say	The reflex	The better move
Sales call	"We're having some financial trouble."	"We have a payment plan."	Nod, wait, then "You're having some financial trouble..."
Enrollment	"I need to talk to my spouse."	"When's a good time to follow up?"	"Of course. What do you think they'll say?"
Enrollment	"I'll think about it."	"Great, I'll send you some info."	"What's the part you want to think about?"
The principal	"Sam's been having trouble at recess."	"Sam says the other kids start it."	"Trouble at recess..." and wait
The principal	"We'd like to have Sam evaluated."	"There's nothing wrong with my kid."	"I'm wondering what you've seen that made you think of that."
Spouse	"I'm tired of handling everything."	"I do plenty!"	"You're tired of handling everything..."
Spouse	"Forget it, it doesn't matter."	"OK."	"It sounds like it does matter. I'm listening."

Every one of the better moves gets the other person talking instead of arguing, and that's usually where the real issue shows up.

This week: pick the one of these four conversations you have most often and reflect what they said before you give any advice.

Understand First Is Only the Starting Point

Understand first. Be understood second. That's the line from The Life Skills of Leaders, and it's a great starting point. It comes from Stephen Covey, whose Habit 5 is "Seek first to understand, then to be understood" (Covey, 1989).

A starting point is all it is. I rail against the meme-simplification of things that are complicated. Einstein's version, from a 1933 lecture, was that the goal is to make the basic elements as simple and as few as possible without giving up an accurate account of a single piece of experience (Einstein, 1934). The popular paraphrase, "as simple as possible, but no simpler," is the part people remember. The second half is the part they forget. "Understand first" is the part everybody remembers. Everything above is the "no simpler" part, the actual doing.

One Tool a Week

There are a lot of tools here, and every one of them has to become a habit before it's yours. Nobody does that in a day. We'll do one a week and work on doing it better.

The practice:

1. Pick ONE tool for the week. Reflecting is the easiest to start with.
2. In every conversation where somebody brings you a complaint, a worry, or a feeling... use the tool before you say anything about your own side. Once.
3. Count. Keep a tally on your phone: how many times you reflected before answering, and how many times you said "I hear you, but."
4. The target is 5 reflections a day, 25 for the week. The "I hear you, but" target is zero.

Do that for a week and watch what people tell you. Week two, add "say the feeling out loud." Week three, the water-bottle test: before you answer anything that matters, rephrase their position until they say "yes, that's it." Week four, encouragement, and only after the first three.

The six, in the order you use them:

Tool	What it sounds like	Job
Encourager	"Hmm." A nod. Silence.	Keep them talking
Reflect	"You're done with your sister."	Confirm it, and let them hear it
Paraphrase	"The money is the part that wears you out."	Condense it and guide the conversation
Inquiry statement	"I wonder what happened this time."	Open the door without probing
Support	"I can't say I blame you."	Keep the door open
Advise	"Do you want ideas, or do you want to vent?"	LAST. Now you know the problem.

The people who listen like a human aren't doing anything mysterious. They reflect before they respond, they say the feeling out loud, and they wait longer than is comfortable before offering a fix (that last one is the hard part).

Try 25 reflections this week. The version we teach kids in leadership class is in The Life Skills of Leaders, and you can always reach out to us.