How to Become a Better Listener

In 1983, in Frederick, Maryland, musician Daryl Davis closed out a set with his country band, and an audience approached him, impressed with his silky smooth game on the piano. 

"I've never heard a black man play like Jerry Lee Lewis." the man said. 

Davis replied, "Who do you think taught Jerry Lee Lewis to play?"

The men laughed, and the patron offered to buy Davis a cocktail.

As they began to interact, the man admitted, "I've never had a conversation with a black man before." 

"Why is that?" asked Davis.

"I'm a member of the Ku Klux Klan." 

Davis sat in disbelief as the man showed him his Klan card.

Daryl Davis had a lifetime full of racist experiences. The question he couldn't shake was, "How can you hate me when you don't even know me?" 

That conversation led Davis to spend the rest of his life fighting racism and discrimination. And Davis' strategy wasn't to fire off tweets from his couch, set up a $20 monthly donation to the ACLU, or buy a cleverly worded tee shirt showing his stance. He went right into belly of the beast.

Davis actively sought out and engaged with active KKK members. He started at the top by seeking out the Imperial Wizard of the KKK in Maryland, Roger Kelly. He got a meeting with Kelly on the front that he was writing a book on the Klan and knew the Klan members wouldn't assume he was a black man taking interest in their organization.

That first meeting was tense, to say the least. But Davis' unique strategy for activism worked similarly to the man he shared a drink with in Frederick, Maryland, in 1983. After some time, Davis and Kelly became friends. A friendship so strong that years later, Roger Kelly eventually quit the Ku Klux Klan, gave Davis his robes, and invited Davis to be his granddaughter's godfather.

Since that interaction in Maryland, Davis has attended Klan rallies, invited Klan members to his shows and home, and visited with a Grand Dragon of the KKK at his home in Maryland. Davis is said to have persuaded 200-some white supremacists to leave the KKK and other extremist groups (they often give him their robes, which he keeps as trophies of some sort). And he did it by using techniques that most of, at best, have let atrophy and, at worst, ignore altogether. 

I've spent my career trying to persuade people to do things that they actually want to do – eat their vegetables, use their PTO, or build a habit of exercise. Meanwhile, this dude is out here swaying people from one of their most vicious and deeply held biases. Biases towards him nonetheless. 

We believe that to influence, we need to be louder, smarter, more relentless, or more convicted in our beliefs, but as Davis shows us, this is the completely wrong approach. 

The Key to Persuading Others

A little girl was in a diner with her father. The server approached the table and asked, "What would you like for breakfast, young lady?" The girl immediately sits up straight and says, "I'll have cookies, please!" 

The father looked up from his phone and said, "No, she'll have the eggs and some toast." The server looks at the father, looks back at the girl, and says, "Would you like milk with those cookies, sweetie?"

After the server walked off, the little girl looked at her dad, eyes starting to well up, and said, "She thinks I'm real!" 

I've worked with hundreds of people over the past decade, and you start to realize that many of us are still that little girl as grown adults. We just want a little proof that we exist. That we matter. That when we speak up, people listen to us. That somebody understands us.

The great Dale Carnegie once wrote, "You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you."

This was the approach that Daryl Davis took. He sat with KKK members and listened to the things they believed and why they believed them. He asked questions. He didn't interrupt them or tell them how they were wrong. He was present, curious, and quiet.

After years of this work, Davis said, "The most important thing I learned is that when you are actively learning about someone else you are passively teaching them about yourself. If you have an adversary with an opposing point of view, give that person a platform. Allow them to air that point of view, regardless of how extreme it may be. And believe me, I've heard things so extreme at these rallies they'll cut you to the bone. Give them a platform. You [can] challenge them. But you don't challenge them rudely or violently. You do it politely and intelligently. And when you do things that way chances are they will reciprocate and give you a platform. So he and I would sit down and listen to one another over a period of time. And the cement that held his ideas together began to get cracks in it. And then it began to crumble. And then it fell apart."

In short, he led by genuinely listening to others, and over time, he began to wield influence. 

The Power of Listening

Ironically, when I start talking about listening skills, people stop listening. Even more curious, those who need it the most are the ones who've probably stopped reading at this point. There's a great study where researchers talked with managers rated as the worst listeners by their employees, and 94% rated themselves as good or very good listeners.

Self-awareness is hard, isn't it?

In another study of people-who-are-clueless, researchers surveyed 3600 people from 36 countries, and 96% of respondents said they were good listeners.

Yet what percent of people in your life would you say are good listeners?

At the risk of putting you to sleep with more statistics, a study revealed that 47% of our waking hours were thinking about something other than what we're doing. A completely different study showed that we spend 44% of our time in conversations listening to others.

I'm no mathematician, but if I spend 5-out-of-10 hours day dreaming and 4-out-10 hours in conversation listening. Why don't we call it a day and say when others are talking, we're thinking about cooking up a homemade lasagna for dinner. 

According to Wharton professor and psychologist Adam Grant, to be a truly great listener, there are four components: 

1. Cognitive– your ability to hear and remember what's being said. Long-term listeners of Take Care Radio know that the test for this is "being bad with names." When people say this to me, I don't assume they have the "bad-with-names" gene but that they simply aren't great listeners.  

2. Behavioral– the capacity to engage and behave in ways associated with good listening. I was once at an event where a speaker literally said, "It's your job to be more interesting than my phone." I'm not even sure what his point was, but he somehow said the only thing worse than "I'm bad with names." When you're listening, don't be this guy. Put your phone away, close your computer, and minimize distractions when you're with somebody. Be present, lean in, and ask relevant follow-ups.
3. Affective –grasping the meaning, tone, and emotional content of the conversation. If you've ever been in love, you've heard your partner say, "I'm fine." This explicitly means that they are, in fact, not fine. Their words say, "I'm fine," but every other aspect of their being says, "I will end you, punk." This is the essence of affective listening. Pay attention to somebody's tone, body language, and facial expressions, and for the love of god, if they say "I'm fine," do not say "sounds good," and meet up with the boys for a beer. 
4. Ethical –listening without judgment. The worst kind of listeners are those who have a sense of superiority – like they're smarter or more morally stout than you. One thing we know about human behavior is that, in all likelihood, when placed in similar circumstances, we'd all likely act the same way. You would likely have been pro-slavery as an American landowner in 1798. You might've drank the poison in Guyana with Jim Jones if you were raised by the same parents or exposed to the same influences. And you would certainly attend bingo every Thursday if you lived in a retirement home. The least we can do for one another is give each other the benefit of the doubt for the humanness we all share. Listen with curiosity. Listen with compassion. Listen with the understanding that in the same situation, you may have behaved in an identical way. 

In a world where nobody listens to anybody, you can stand out by being the one to give another the time of day. They call it paying attention for a reason. One study showed that many people would be willing to give up money to be listened to for just a moment. When you give others your attention, you're dolling out one of the most precious resources you have.

And people feel that. It's like emerging from being trapped underwater, inhaling oxygen at the surface. 

Research shows that when people feel truly listened to, they become less anxious, less defensive, more open to opposing ideas, more optimistic, resilient, and even see a reduction in physical pain.

That's right, truly trying to understand another is a tonic for the soul and Tylenol for the body. 

In an era of iPhones, Tik Toks, and 24-hour news cycles, people are dying to be seen. They're craving to be understood. 

Be the person to give them that, and you'll carry all the influence and power.  

Daryl Davis did it with and for people who frankly didn't deserve it, and he made his fingerprint on the world. He had influence to the nth degree. 

This is true power and influence in leadership, coaching, and life in 2024. As author Ralph Nichols once said, "The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them."