Each month, from now until the Routledge publishing date, I’ll be sharing small sections of my book. Using Head Heart & Hands Listening in Coach Practice. Here’s the first one.
Chapter 10: Building Trust in a Dangerous World
My father was a decorated Marine. He was too young and skinny to fight the Nazis in WWII, but by the time the Korean “Conflict” blew up, he was trained, fit, focused and ready. He rose to the rank of second lieutenant, in charge of a platoon in the brutal Korean winter.
Like so many men of his generation, he did not speak of his time in battle, but he did say this: “I learned the importance of listening with more than my ears, and that kept me alive”. He became adept at interviewing prisoners, not because he understood the language (he had an interpreter for this), but because he could read facial expression, gestures, and body language well enough to accurately discern truth from lies about the enemy’s positioning, their resources, their plans.
Our world doesn’t focus much on listening as a critical skill in hostile and dangerous situations. Consciously or unconsciously, we turn to guns, knives and pepper spray to make us feel safe.
Full Disclosure
A note here before we dive in. I offer this chapter as an exploration. I have no experience in negotiating with anyone about to commit suicide, nor can I claim to be an undercover CIA operative. I’ve worked with no clients in either field. But I am curious to explore just how far Heart listening can extend as a critical skill into fields with very high stakes, life or death consequences. I also understand that this kind of listening is something we all use as a way to extend our “radar” in unfamiliar situations, such as a new job, or meeting a significant other’s family for the first time, or in trying to keep someone from taking their own life.
Empathy – a Life Saving Skill
Mark Goulston, in his book “Just Listen” begins with a story: “Frank is sitting in his car in a large mall parking lot, and nobody is coming near him because he’s holding a shotgun to his throat”. Frank is in his 30’s, suddenly unemployed, homeless, and alone as his wife and children have left him. The situation has spiraled down to this point – a shotgun at his throat and a SWAT team at his back. It’s been this way now for a few hours. The conflict negotiator first on the scene has gotten nowhere with his pleas to Frank to embrace “another way out.”
Enter Detective Kramer, trained in the deep and empathic listening espoused by Goulston and at the heart of Heart listening. “’I’ll bet you feel that nobody knows what it’s like to have tried everything else and be stuck with this as your only way out, isn’t that true?” Notice the empathy in that statement, as if the speaker were verbally sitting right beside Frank and looking at life through his frantic and red-rimmed eyes.
After he gets over his initial shock that someone may possibly understand his point of view, he responds. “Yeah, You’re right! Nobody knows, and nobody gives a f***ck!” This is progress.
Kramer continues “And because nobody knows how bad it is and nobody cares and because nothing goes right and everything goes wrong, that’s why you’re in your car with a gun wanting to end it all. True?”
For the first time, there is a hint of calm in Frank’s response. “True”.
Then comes the invitation from the detective. “Tell me more.” And Frank complies, he lists off all his agonies. Frank is then asked to be specific about his feelings: “All this has caused you to feel…” angry, helpless, hopeless, frustrated, overwhelmed…? Frank quietly responds with “Fed up.”
What Just Happened Here?
Frank has experienced, for once, and in too long a time, what it’s like to be listened to, empathized with, deeply heard. He’s been asked to step outside his experience long enough to name his emotions. This provides a small pause in mental desperation long enough to access what the Buddhists call “a second attention”, and what Positive Intelligence labels as the Sage Mindset. Once this happens, Frank can calm down enough to consider possibilities other than violence. But before he could get to that place, he had to experience being deeply heard. He had to experience Heart listening.