A simplistic application of active listening behaviours can become a barrier to genuine listening. At its worst, the performance of active listening can be a deliberate or unintentional form of deflection and control. Like a multinational corporation’s customer service bot, rather than dealing with substantial issues, we assure people that we “value their feedback”.
Most pastors and ministry leaders learn about active listening in practical ministry subjects during their Bible college years; the principles are reinforced at various conferences and workshops related to pastoral care, marital counselling, conflict resolution, leadership and so on. But a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. A poor grasp of the full application of active listening, especially if coupled with low emotional intelligence, character flaws and indwelling sin, can have frustrating, counter-productive and even destructive effects.
Don’t Ignore the Facts Because of My Feelings
Sometimes people say or do things for hidden reasons. Active listening can sympathise with underlying emotions and ask probing questions to draw them out. Sometimes they really just want to be ‘heard’—by which they mean, they want to be understood and acknowledged. It is true that a partner in a marriage, a member of a band or a pastor in a church can soothe a great deal of friction simply by being attentive to the feelings of their partner, bandmates or congregation. The same can be true in evangelism: a complaint about a purportedly loving God’s tolerance of evil is sometimes an existential cry from the heart, not a philosophical argument. Sometimes people don’t want solutions, they want sympathy.
But whether in personal relationships, pastoral care or evangelistic conversations, we would be very foolish to be one-trick ponies. And listening is not an end in itself; more is usually required of us. To furrow your brow, nod your head slowly and say “Hmm… hmmm…” when the bass player is genuinely worried that the guitar is drowning out the vocals is simply rude. To offer a poetic description of Jesus’ identification with us in our suffering to someone who is mounting a logical case against the coherence of theism will understandably come across as evasive and weak-minded. If congregation members are agitated because they have genuine concerns about a leadership decision, to point out their emotional state and probe at their motivations for what’s ‘really’ going on, functionally becomes a manipulative deflection tactic.
A simplistic application of active listening can avoid necessary healthy conflict around the facts, issues of substance.
True Active Listening
None of this is the fault of active listening itself. For true active listening does not beg the question about what the other person is thinking or feeling, it doesn’t presume to know better what the real issue is. Often, we need to ask questions to clarify what a person is seeking to achieve in a conversation, we need to carefully probe to get to the heart of their concern. Sometimes this will not be easy for the person with whom you are talking to put into words, you will have to make an informed guess.
In seeking to clarify the issues and goals of a conversation, we must be very careful not to jump to conclusions, not to put people into pre-conceived boxes in our head, not to stereotype particular scenarios and complaints and treat them, like a customer service bot, within a rigid framework. We need to be willing to revise our initial interpretation of a conversation part-way through–maybe it was about something else entirely, or two or three things at once.
Yes it is a simpler world if we can defuse all problems and criticisms by reflecting back what people are saying, identifying their emotional state and expressing empathetic concern. But sometimes we need to lean in to deep and difficult matters, riding the waves of emotions as well as the technicalities of claims and accusations, until we reach a point of agreement, compromise, change of mind, apology and forgiveness, or even disciplinary action.
