Trying… to listen. Properly listen

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

It is a skill I promise you. Actually hearing what someone says. And not spending the entire time formulating your response. I have been speaking to a lot of different men over the last week - in a bid to learn and listen. Four years at Woman’s Hour with a largely female guest list also means I have some catching up to do.

From conversations with male guests at parties - to those men protesting outside of abortion clinics, as laws banning such protests within 150 metres of these centres were enacted in England and Wales.

I am often struck at how hard listening is and can be. I see people lose interest in what is being said to them because they are so desperate to get out their point or tell their story. In many ways that is totally natural but it is something to work on. You are missing out. Believe me. Because we all don’t know what we don’t know.

Certain much older people worry about forgetting their point so they race to their own. This, I understand. Especially after years on mind-altering hormones during seven rounds of IVF. I had to have a pad next to me while broadcasting as my double insurance in case the dreaded brain fog descended and I lost my next point in the mental mist.

But in most cases, I prescribe trying to tune into what is being said; what is being asked and not what you think is being said or asked. Often there are chasms between. And that’s where the gold lies.

And letting yourself open up to the possibility of uncomfortableness. I know it’s different for me; I am in the business of conversation. Live radio and TV thrives on the uncomfortable moments; the spaces in between. But even I have pushed it pretty far in those public spaces just to see and let something be as natural as possible.

I will never forget interviewing Baroness Hale, when she was the Supreme Court President, and prompting one of the longest on air silences as she pondered how to answer the question whether the role of Lord Chancellor should always be filled by someone with legal training. It was a very sensitive one for someone in her role to answer but after judges had been declared enemies of the people by the Daily Mail during the Brexit Article 50 era and she had ruled against Boris Johnson’s suspending of Parliament (remember learning what proroguing meant?), it was important to ask. And even more important to await her answer.

The silence was so long, many listeners thought we had fallen off air

Eventually, she stated: “I don’t know that I want to express a view one way or another about that. It is the character and personality of the individual that matters more than the professional qualifications.”

It was an example of where the silence spoke volumes compared to the long-awaited answer, which said very little.

Or the other time - I think it was 12 seconds of silence - again a lifetime on air - when I asked someone trying to become an MP a question about the controversial conduct of a fellow MP and what their take was. It spoke directly to the character of both individuals and their views. Sitting in a shopping centre’s cafe, broadcasting our BBC Radio 5 Live programme from there in the run up to the 2017 election, my producer caught my eye, imploring me to break the deadlock by saying something, anything, as my guest frantically tried to think of what to say. But I refused to budge - captivated by someone thinking about what they should or could say. The ambient sound of the cafe helped our listeners know we were still there - as opposed to the deathly silence of a studio. And yet, the experience was full-on. As was holding her gaze. Eventually something tumbled out. But again, the silence told the bigger story.

Listening well though doesn’t mean being supine. Far from it.

You can be primed and muscular in response if needs be. But having properly heard what someone has said means your responses can be even better - you just need to have your wits about you and to go for it.

This week, one of my most memorable conversations was with a man who didn’t want to be described as “right-wing” - a point I found fascinating in itself. He felt the connotations of a man being described like that to be highly negative and bound up in being seen as “far-right”. A point I only learned when I asked why he looked fleetingly uncomfortable when I described his politics as thus in passing after he told me he supported Donald Trump - ahead of the result. It was a key detail in building a picture of someone I was enjoying listening to.

But after a spirited to and fro about the merits of Donald Trump appearing on this man’s favourite podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, we arrived at a totally new and unexpected point I have been pondering ever since. And felt he would be too.

He strongly believed Kamala Harris should have accepted the invite of Joe Rogan, now a Trump endorser, to also appear on his hugely popular pod. Whether it would have made a difference or not - one cannot say. This keen listener assured me that Rogan would have given her the same treatment and style of questioning. Again - we cannot know but only hope. But my question back, gave him pause: would she have been heard in the same way?

Do some men listen to women in the same way as they do other men? For instance do they laugh the same if a woman tells the exact same joke as a man has? Do they extend the same generosity?

Having heard a woman ardently profess this week that “women are just not funny”, in agreement with her extremely misogynistic husband who believed that view to be a cast iron fact, it is shaky ground by all accounts.

Do we listen to women and men differently? Do we hear them the same?

What both sexes are saying needs to be good enough and tested rigorously - especially when running for public office. But my conversation wasn't about that. It was about whether you listen and receive women and men differently, especially when you are a man, claiming otherwise.

And to that I don’t have one answer. And neither did the man I was talking to. But the question of it, which he definitely heard, left him and me thinking.

Now that's proper listening.

What do you think? Do men hear women the same as men?