A Conversation Starts With Listening

Why is that so hard today?

In this period of turmoil, what we desperately need to learn is how to have a conversation. We need to learn how to listen ... it is not an innate skill, rather a learned skill that takes years of practice and a tremendous amount of discipline. I believe if we can get back to listening to each other than maybe we can cross the divides that separate and conquer the chasms carved by social media. But we no longer teach students how to listen. Conversations are one sided and texted, conversations are canceled before they even get started. You can’t have a conversation if one person refuses to engage based on a preconceived notion. Too often I am disappointed to hear from highly intelligent people, “Don’t bother to friend or talk to me if you don’t believe what I believe.” The media fans the flames of this poison and has shirked their fiduciary responsibility on all sides of the issues. Medical and scientific journals and societies have been overtly irresponsible with their publications.

We fall prey to a one-sided argument appealing to confirmation biases.

If you want to listen, I challenge each of you to try it today: Ask someone you disagree with a question then listen intently to their answer without thinking what you are going to say, but rather think of another question to ask them to take you deeper so that you can better understand their position in space. As meeting director, frequent conference moderator, and host of Thriving, I have been privileged to interview leading doctors, business executives, and people from all walks of life. And as every interviewer knows it is with listening that you truly begin to understand one another.

I am going to make a wish--that leaders in medicine and retired emeriti long past any agendas come together with a mission to teach how to have a constructive conversation. Perhaps a Master Class is warranted on how to learn to listen and ask fair questions to better understand another and not just attempt to bait for headlines.

No lecturing, no shaming, no bullying rather dispassionate, inquisitive, and sober conversations that can be started in our communities, schools, academic hallways, workplaces, and even within families. This may be what is needed to move forward and circumvent the polarization that pulls us apart.

It’s time to start the conversation ... perhaps before it is too late.

—STEVE DAYAN, MD
Co-Chief Medical Editor