One way people become emotionally dehydrated is having noeffective listener present to understand them. From the deepestlevel of their being, people need to be listened to and understood.

I’ve heard that people are 75% physically dehydrated. Are we also75% emotionally dehydrated? If this is so, what impact does this haveon our listening?

Are patients and their families, medical staff, and physicians impactedby emotional dehydration? Of course they are. Just like the restof us, those in healthcare need to be listened to during critical situations.So how do we move beyond this debilitating condition?

Emotional dehydration creates a need for advocacy–promotion ofour ideas and how we want to get things done. In other words, theworld becomes more about us, instead of more about others. We becomeservant leaders (Greenleaf 2002) by listening to the heart andspirit of those requiring understanding. Emotional dehydration createsand almost demands a 90% advocacy style,with listening commanding only 10% or less ofour energy and attention. What would happento our medical environments if we achieved,on average, a 50–50 level of relating to others?At the 50% level of listening, we would be perceivedas servant leaders who are understanding,caring, and effective.

When we ask those closest to us to understandwhere we are, we risk the possibilitythat others might blame us for wanting to beheard. If other people are not listening to us,how can we escape emotional dehydration?Reserving time to be understood by those werespect and trust is so very important to ourself–respect and overall self–esteem.

• When patients and medical staff are telling their stories, what are physicians thinking about?
• Are they formulating responses while others are still talking?
• Are they interrupting others and completing their sentences for them?
• Are physician hurts and concerns interacting with their patient’s?
• Are they using jargon when trying to respond to staff concerns?
• Are they trying to teach when needing to listen?
• Are they giving solutions when understanding might be a more critical need?

These self–imposed roadblocks can be removed if physicians knowhow to correct them.

Focusing on the patient or medical staff gives the physician an opportunityto “show their stuff,” which is understanding/caring at thehighest level.

The greatest barrier to communication is the assumption that it hastaken place. Listening removes or significantly diffuses this assumption.

We underestimate the power of listening and overestimate our skill.Is that because we equate listening with hearing? Hearing is mostly aphysiological function that takes words in without letting others knowthat we understood them as they intended. By contrast, listening providesverbal and nonverbal responses that match the intended messagesof those talking.

Is it possible that we have been told that we communicate more effectivelythan we actually do? What is needed to determine our listeningeffectiveness? Do we ask others for feedback regarding how wellwe listen? How can we help each other listen more effectively?

We seem to be trigger–happy in our comments when someone elsedoes a poor job of listening. What about our responses? Modeling forothers might be a great place to start. When we become emotionallyhydrated, we can ask questions that help others search for a focus thatenables them to listen more effectively.

Some of us were fortunate to have listeningmodels, but most were not. Our parents expectedschool to teach us how to listen, but whatthey did was teach us how to write and talk.School taught us how to regurgitate (repeat informationwithout analyzing or understandingit) content, project ourselves forward, makegood grades, and possibly behave. The few thattaught us how to listen were our great teachers,parents with strong communication skills, andothers who centered us for growth and developmentreasons. These poor listening modelsbecame the backbone of our culture––medical,educational, spiritual, familial, and community.

Ask the patient, staff person or family memberif you can interrupt politely every 20–30 secondsto provide an understanding response.

1. Let others know that you will take a few seconds to organize each response by taking a short listening break.
2. When trying to understand, ask questions of context to minimize assumptions.
3. When formulating a message, be sure that you know the person to whom you are sending comments.
4. Inform others that you are learning to listen better and that you will ask them for feedback regarding your skill after the conversation has ended.
5. Let others know that you will be using laser–like questions and laser–like listening and you would like for them to do the same. This saves time and increases the effectiveness of the relationship.
6. Listening can help people achieve what they envision and express what they value. They need listening, not only to survive, but also to thrive.

Effective listening is a requirement for success in the marketplace.

For more information, read Who’s Listening Anyway?: An EffectiveGuide to Listening by John Lovitt.