Often, when our friends come to us for an opinion about someone they have met, interacted with or spent a considerable amount of time, we are left with no choice but to respond to in one of the following manner.
a) Be the patient listener with no response (dud - might work with hysterical women or men complaining about their bosses)
b) Not take them seriously (do this at your own peril)
b) Over-analyze what they say, and perhaps come up with things which they never thought of.
Out of the above, we all know that the ideal spot is somewhere between 70% listening and 30% contributing with your own thoughts or just giving them confirmations or pointers so that they can brainstorm further, drawing a new angle or just highlighting a different point of view and stepping back for them to make up their own mind.
Once we have decided to reply and interact to our friend, the next step is to carefully exercise something known as the "Bread" response.
Consider the following analogy
Slice 1 of the bread is you saying "nice" things about the person your friend wants to discuss with you
Slice 2 of the bread is you saying "analytical" or "potentially negative" things about that person to your friend.
The Butter in the bread is you saying good things your friend did while interacting with that person.
The Jam in the bread is you saying the potential areas of improvement your friend could do while interacting with that person.
What is important to understand is the following consequences.
Even if you do slices 1 and 2 perfectly well, the discussion will still feel like eating dry bread with no flavour.
The flavour part comes in when you use the butter and jam.
And what exactly are they?
I know its rather difficult to split 25% each of your sentences to give equal weightage to all the 4 items. But in general, go with your gut feeling and try to lean in on all 4 of your feets, you will be able to stroll better with you friend and discuss about his experience of the world. your friend will leave you with positive emotions of having had an open-minded, and clear brainstorming sessions.
Always remember - Active Listening is all about helping the other person come to his or her own decisions. Your presence is merely to facilitate a healthy environment of brainstorming, because we can never be objective or get out of the box and look at ourselves, when our personal emotions are involved. This is an important facet of the human mind.
Now,
if you are the one being listened to, dont apply reverse psychology and try to think on behalf of the listener. You will fail miserably because your purpose of chosing someone to brainstorm with is to share your thoughts and ideas, not to judge the listener. So, be yourself and go vent to that beloved friend.
Wish you a happy listening & venting... we all can learn from one another.
