On a recent broadcast, Ms. Peck snagged my attention with a piece of advice she offers parents seeking to improve communications with their teens: “Listen with your face.”
“Listen with your face” is Ms. Peck’s catchy way of telling us to communicate with the young by means of our whole physical being and not just with words. When a teenage son or daughter asks us for some help or attention, she recommends that we drop whatever we’re doing, sit down with them, and give them our undivided attention.
It immediately hit me that this counsel applies to countless other circumstances as well. If we’re washing the dishes, for example, and a spouse says, “I need some help,” we drop the sponge into the sink, wipe our hands on a towel, and say, “I’m here for you.” If an employee asks for a few minutes of our time, we put away our phone rather than sitting at our desk texting or browsing the screen while that person is trying to draw our attention to a problem in the workplace. Ditto for a friend whose mother has just passed away and who comes to us seeking consolation.
Listening with the face, deliberately making ourselves physically available in the moment without distractions, signals to the speaker that we’re present and that we’re opening a door to their opinions, confessions, and confidences. It also makes us more aware of what they are saying, allowing us to read their faces and body posture—those physical expressions that so often underline the spoken word.
And once we understand that someone really needs our attention, the guidelines for this “whole body listening,” as a friend once called it, are pretty simple. We put away our cellphones and resist glancing at our watch or the clock on the wall. We don’t slump in our chairs, cross our arms, and stare into space as if bored out of our skulls. We react naturally to whatever is said, nodding in agreement or raising an eyebrow if those gestures are part of our equipment. We should never feign interest by way of our facial expressions. For one, our listener will likely discern that we’re acting a part and so detect our insincerity. For another, we are then focused more on our own artificial reactions rather than on what the person is telling us.
By listening with the face and by making use of other frequently mentioned listening skills, such as avoiding interruptions and asking questions rather than offering snap judgments, we will find ourselves in that select company known as good listeners.
