Summarizing What It Is to Listen Authentically-
To listen authentically is to listen with no evaluations or judgments about what the speaker is saying, letting the speaker say everything they have to say until they have nothing else to say about what they were saying. And, listening without even any subtle resistance to what they are expressing – like some opinion in your listening that you have about the person speaking, or adding anything in your listening to what they are saying, or your being “I already know what you are saying”, and with no listening from it’s merely what’s real “for them”.
“The problem is we don’t listen to understand, we listen to respond.” -Werner Erhard
In the Being A Leader Course your capacity to listen this way will be enhanced. This is a not-well-understood phenomenon, to the point of being nearly unbelievable, to this kind of listening. See Disappearance.
I have practiced this for a long time and I am still surprised that when I allow the speaker to say everything there is for them to say without any judgement or evaluation, just listening until there is nothing left to be said. Occasionally I say: “Is there anything else about that?” Or “What else about that?” Invariably, whatever they were dealing with disappears. And they ‘Lighten-up’. Now, my friends have brain patterns that not only that this happens, they expect it to happen and it takes little effort. It requires less time and in a pinch, firing off a text alleviates some upset they were dealing with. Don’t believe me? Schedule a call.