The Art of Listening: A natural ability or a learned skill?

As a counselor, I spend much of my time listening. I deeply enjoy listening to women wrestle through the complexities of life, and I still find myself in awe that this is my job!

Growing up, I often found myself in the role of listener. It’s always come easily to me because of my personality type. At the same time, I have also had to work at it. In graduate school, I had to refine my listening skills through much reading, practice, and self-exploration.

Recently someone asked me if being a good listener is a natural ability or a learned skill. I think that’s a fascinating question worth exploring.

The short answer is that I believe both are true. I think some people’s personality types make them more inclined to want to listen more than talk. At the same time, I think we all have an innate capacity to listen well. The difference lies in the degree to which we have tapped into that capacity.

Some of this has to do with your family of origin. What kind of listening - or lack of listening - was modeled for you by the people around you growing up? Some people have consistent experience of being listened to deeply by others, so they are easily able to offer others such presence. Others may not have had such experiences, but they may have learned to listen well as a way to survive a broken family.

The good news is that, regardless of what your story is, you can develop the skills to both tap into your natural capacity and refine these skills practically in the real world. This starts with learning to listen to yourself - being genuinely curious about what you are experiencing at any given moment. The more you can listen to yourself in this way, the more you will be able to hold space for other people.

Helping you learn to listen to yourself is one of the most important (and exciting!) things I help women do in the counseling room. The natural outgrowth of this is that you will become a better listener to others by default in the real world - friends, family, significant others, strangers…

This is yet another reason why counseling is such a powerful, enriching, and rewarding process, and why I do what I do!