‘You’re Not Listening’: Oh, Do Shut Up
A review ‘You’re Not Listening’, by Kate Murphy; Celadon Books, 2020.
Kate Murphy has written on so many things, and about so many people, that a friend once said she could talk to anyone. She corrected him. No, she said. I can listen to anyone. That small exchange tells you everything you need to know about her book. We care too much about talking, she argues, and not enough about listening. The result is poor conversation — and poor relationships. Her advice is simple. We ought to speak less. Far less.
Of course, we already know this—or at least know what a slog it is to be stuck beside someone who will not, for want of a politer phrase, shut up. To her credit, Kate does not belabour the obvious. She knows we have all met the chatterbox before and so seeks to tempt us with more than the mere promise of social decency. Her pitch is quite seductive: when we truly listen — engage not in the theatrical nodding that passes for listening but do the real thing – people warm to us. They open up. Just by keeping our mouths shut and our ears tuned, Kate says, we becomes magnetic. Such advice flirts with the transactional, but let us not quibble. There are worse things than being quietly irresistible.
We know what a slog it is to have to listen to someone who, for want of more polite phrasing, just won’t shut up.
Murphy peppers the book with interviews, some more revealing than others. The most striking comes from a former CIA interrogator. Sadly, he does not wear a trench coat or peer out from behind clasped fingers. He is not theatrical. His chief skill is, somewhat disappointingly, ‘curiosity.’ He listens with honest interest, he says. That is the trick. One of those he interrogated later said of him that ‘I don’t know what he said, but I liked the way he said it.’ Which is to say that the CIA man said next to nothing at all. The lesson we should take from this is that there is real power in saying less, nodding more, and letting others open up. We become blank canvasses upon which our interlocutors can paint their feelings.
So the secret to being good at conversation, says Kate, is to say less and listen more. But here is the catch: listening properly is difficult. It is to do what the psychologist Carl Rogers called ‘active’ listening, which means paying close attention — not just to what is said, but to what is not said, and what might be hiding behind the words. And we must do all this while the person is still speaking, and then answer in a way that shows we have heard them. So Rogers, and Murphy after him, are asking for us to be fully present. They want us to tune ourselves like a wire and ramp up the empathy. So when someone says, ‘My neighbour is a bloody nightmare, banging on the ceiling fives times a day and complaining about the noise,’ we must hear the real message, not just ‘My neighbour is awful.’ The subtext may well be: ‘I feel attacked’ or ‘I feel watched’ or even ‘I am not sure I am in the right’. And here is the important bit: we must not rush in to ‘fix’ the problem. Instead we must offer understanding.
The book could only have been written by a journalist, and indeed, Murphy is one. This is not a crime, of course: many fine writers have passed through the newsroom. Dickens did. Hemingway, too. Even Marx. But You’re Not Listening has the slightly baggy feel of a Guardian feature puffed up to fill a book. There are a few too many anecdotes and bright quotations. On the other hand, it is thorough. Murphy does her homework. She sets out a whole cast of listeners, many of whom will feel distressingly close to home. Top of the list is the dreaded ‘shift’ listener. You know the type. You mention your trip to a gallery, and instead of asking you a single thing, she launches into a story about her gallery trip. The conversation becomes a sort of narcissistic relay race, with each person waiting for her turn to shine, rather than staying with you. Then there is the rarer ‘support’ listener, who sees your story as an oncoming train and lays more track for you: ‘Which gallery did you go to?’ Or even: ‘What exhibition did you visit?’
The superior ‘support’ listener, on the other hand, recognises your story as an oncoming train and simply lays more track for you.
The book’s most graceful moment comes, unexpectedly, by way of Queen Victoria and her two favourite political fixtures: Gladstone and Disraeli. Both were Prime Ministers; both could command a room. But only one of them won Her Majesty’s heart. Gladstone, she said, made you feel as though he were the most interesting person alive. Disraeli, on the other hand, made you feel like the most interesting person alive. The listener wins by stepping back. He gives up the spotlight and, in doing so, becomes the one that everyone remembers.
Murphy’s larger argument is cast as a gentle and quiet corrective to the cultural noise. You’re Not Listening lowers its voice, leans in, and invites us to do the same. It means to soothe rather than scold. And most of the time, it does. Now and then, it veers toward the slightly patronising — as when it reminds us, a touch too earnestly, that conversation is not a contest — but the heart of it holds. Ours, as is boringly repeated, is an age of carefully curated personas and self-branding, of ‘content’ over connection, etc. etc.. Everyone wants to be heard; no one wants to hear. So goes the complaint, at any rate. Murphy’s advice is not going to change the world, but it might make your next cocktail party rather more bearable.
