Well said, but then - I listened. Or did I read? :-) Forums blur the line between reading and listening, don't you think? (Your books don't talk back.)
I stumble across stuff, tuck it away, and sometimes it bobbles up to the surface in time to be useful. So, two related thoughts:
1. The most important part of communicating is listening.
2. The person most likely to get satisfaction from a negotiation is the one who is best at listening.
(Negotiation can be anything. I will offer the young person who smoked pot in his room and needed to do some quick thinking as a good, recent example of a negotiation. I think he would have done even better than just continuing to be tolerated by his parents, who are, after all, somewhat hardwired to be tolerant regarding offspring, had he
actively listened to what they were carrying on about.)
Second part: Active listening. Can you listen as well as you read? Yes, but it is a participator sport, not a spectator sport. When you read, you're thinking. When you're listening, you should be thinking, too, specifically thinking up questions that you will then speak out loud. People will elaborate if asked a question. You need to do that by offering back to them what they just said. Example and analysis:
Your friend: "I'm getting a Dodge pickup for my birthday."
You: "That's a truck?"
Your friend: "A leg up on a business, actually. I can use the truck on weekends to do hauling jobs."
You: "You're going to haul things?"
Your friend: "Not just anything. I'm going to go to estate auctions. Somebody's always buying stuff they then find out won't fit in the minivan."
You: "How will they know you're available?"
Your friend: "Magnetic signs that say "I haul cheap," with my cell phone number. I put them on the truck, park it on the entrance to the estate sale, and then walk around checking out neat stuff until the phone rings."
You: "How do you even know how much to charge?"
Your friend: "Good question. Any ideas?"
See, that's just using active listening for no real purpose except having a conversation. But you could, if you found what you learned to be intriguing, now negotiate your way into helping him out sometimes by coming up with a typical INTP process-related way to work out a fair freight charge based on the value of the item, the size of the item and the distance it has to be hauled. Include enough for him getting some help loading up the armoires. Now you have a not-too-demanding weekend gig.
But active listening also helps when it is important for you to understand something from an arrogant or otherwise reluctant conversational partner. When I was a reporter I found it often helped to act stupider than I was, kind of like Peter Falk playing the seemingly dull detective "Columbo" on television. And the problem I'd have wasn't necessarily not understanding, it was getting the person to say what I needed them to explain in their own words, so I could use their words as direct quotes to readers rather than paraphrasing. God's mouth to my reader's ears, in a sense. So if the woman I'm interviewing about her new business servicing other businesses is having a fine time dropping allusions she knows I don't get because I don't know her, I don't know her business, and I'm not one of the in-crowd, OK then. "So," I say, "You're saying you think the business will last at least six months under those conditions?" "No, you dolt, I didn't say that at all. I said it won't even take me six months to make this business sail." "Oh," sez I, "well if it's going to fail, why bother?" "Sail, I said sail, not fail." Now she's getting worried that a hearing-defective Forrest Gump is interviewing her. "Look," sez she, "I'm offering these businesses a service that combines ongoing operational advice with an annual tax preparation. I'm helping them run their business in ways that I know will make sure they don't overlook deductible items and I'm directing them in the act of keeping records that will support their tax return. They'll make more money and pay less in taxes."
"Thank you," sez I, closing the notebook. "It's been a pleasure."
It's been pulling my own teeth without anesthetic. So I lied. But I got the story.
And that's when the chameleon part of INTP can be put to use in active listening.
Holy shit, you had a great post and this could be a useful thread. A lot of times we get into the discomfort zone because people mistake our silence for the act of listening. We're usually not. We're usually thinking, and not necessarily about anything going on in the room with us. When the truth is revealed, we are mildly despised as aloof, self-centered and probably arrogant and condescending. On the occasions when that's a concern, active listening is the answer.
