Listening for emotions

Sometime ago, I heard a conflict resolution specialist suggest that for the listening step, we can and should listen on three levels: content, emotion, and values. But we (me included) often focus only on the content. In that session, we practiced listening for other things, and it was hard to overcome the default of listening for content!  I’ve written about one part of this, how to listen for values, in my book, Persuade, Don’t Preach.  But I haven’t written about listening for emotion yet.

As I stated before, my resolution for last year was to become more aware of emotions. I have done a lot of work on emotions during 2022. First, I read Brené Brown’s book, “The Atlas of the Heart” slowly, a page a day to let it sink in. From it, I learned that we have many more emotions than we normally recognize.  I also read and talked to people about how they talk about emotions in difficult conversations. 

One of the people I spoke to was Doug Noll, author of the book “De-escalate: How to calm an angry person in 90 seconds or less”, who makes emotions a key part of his work with helping prisoners develop better conflict resolution skills. He suggests saying, very directly, “You are …… (insert emotion)”. He believes that a similar but more well-known technique, Non-Violent Communication, developed by Marshall Rosenberg, which suggests the following: “It sounds to me that you are …. (insert emotion)” ineffective. Doug’s point was that the NVC approach inserts the listener’s interpretation into the conversation and just makes it too complicated. After rereading Rosenberg’s book, I see his point. It’s been a few years since I took the course in NVC and I haven’t found it useful in real life. Another of Noll’s points is NVC really only works with other people who have been similarly trained.

Even though I could see Doug’s point, I was uneasy with Doug’s direct approach.  I found myself much more comfortable with the idea I found in a book by one of my favorite podcasters, Anna Sale. A link to her podcast is here and her book is “Let’s talk about hard things”.

She does lots of interviews with people on very touchy subjects. Her approach is to say, ““This might be wrong, but are you feeling ----- (insert emotion)?”  I loved that!  

What’s the difference?  It fits me. Doug Noll’s approach is more direct, but he can afford to be direct, he’s a white man with power. Women like me probably can’t do that without being perceived badly.  Plus, he is working with prisoners, who probably are also more direct, so it works on both sides. But my focus is on how to rebuild relationships, so it matters what their impression is of me. Having listened to Anna’s interviews, I can feel the trust she starts to build with her interviewees.

As I said in my New Year’s resolution newsletter, I view my resolution for last year as a success. I definitely felt a difference and, at least once, was able to avert a relationship crisis when someone I care about was having a meltdown.  I feel good about what I accomplished. But that doesn’t mean I am done, I still need to practice it! I just had another situation occur when I didn’t name the emotion and I realize that would have made things better.

Do you listen for emotions?  Which approach makes the most sense for you?  What will you do about emotions in your conversations?