Kate Murphy > Quotes

“To listen does not mean, or even imply, that you agree with someone. It simply means you accept the legitimacy of the other person's point of view and that you might have something to learn from it. It also means that you embrace the possibility that there might be multiple truths and understanding them all might lead to a larger truth. Good listeners know understanding is not binary.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Good listeners have negative capability. They are able to cope with contradictory ideas and gray areas. Good listeners know there is usually more to the story than first appears and are not so eager for tidy reasoning and immediate answers, which is perhaps the opposite to being narrow-minded...In the psychological literature, negative capability is known as cognitive complexity, which research shows is positively related to self-compassion and negatively related to dogmatism.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“If someone is dull or uninteresting, it’s on you. You’re not listening.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“When you leave a conversation, ask yourself, What did I just learn about that person? What was most concerning to that person today? How did that person feel about what we were talking about?”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“How long would you want to stay with someone who insisted on treating you as if you were the same person you were the day you two met? This is true not just in romantic relationships but in all relationships. Even toddlers object to being treated like the infants they were just months earlier. Offer a two-year-old a helping hand with something they’ve already learned how to do and you’ll likely get an exasperated, “I do it!” Listening is how we stay connected to one another as the pages turn in our lives.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“My need to show what I can do is keeping me from finding out what other people can do and what we can do together.”
― Kate Murphy

“We actually all tend to make assumptions when it comes to those we love. It’s called the closeness-communication bias. As wonderful as intimacy and familiarity are, they make us complacent, leading us to overestimate our ability to read those closest to us.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“To listen does not mean, or even imply, that you agree with someone. It simply means you accept the legitimacy of the other person's point of view and that you might have something to learn from it. It also means that you embrace the possibility that there might be multiple truths and understanding them all might lead to a larger truth.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“When someone listens to you it can feel so much like love, some people may not know the difference. Part of being a good listener is knowing your limits and setting boundaries. Not listening because you don’t agree with someone, you’re self absorbed, or you think you know already what somebody will say makes you a bad listener. But not listening because you don’t have the intellectual or emotional energy to listen at that moment makes you human. At that point it’s probably best to exit the conversation and circle back later. If you half-listen to someone or listen as if you are skimming through a book, the other person will pick up on it.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“If people seem simple and devoid of feeling, that only means you don't know them well enough.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Thinking you already know how a conversation will go down kills curiosity and subverts listening, as does anxiety about the interaction.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“But among those 150 people, Dunbar stressed that there are hierarchical "layers of friendship" determined by how much time you spend with the person. It's kind of like a wedding cake where the topmost layer consist of only one or two people—say, a spouse and best friend—with whom you are most intimate and interact daily. The next layer can accommodate at most four people for whom you have great affinity, affection, and concern. Friendships at this level require weekly attention to maintain. Out from there, the tiers contain more casual friends who you see less often and thus, your ties are more tenuous. Without consistent contact, they easily fall into the realm of acquaintance. At this point, you are friendly but not really friends, because you've lost touch with who they are, which is always evolving. You could easily have a beer with them, but you wouldn't miss them terribly, or even notice right way, if they moved out of town. Nor would they miss you.

An exception might be friends with whom you feel like you can pick up right where you left or even though you haven't talked to them for ages. According to Dunbar, these are usually friendships forged through extensive and deep listening at some point in your life, usually during an emotionally wrought time, like during college or early adulthood, or maybe during a personal crisis like an illness or divorce. It's almost as if you have banked a lot of listening that you can draw on later to help you understand and relate to that person even after significant time apart. Put another way, having listened well and often to someone in the past makes it easier to get back on the same wavelength when you get out of sync, perhaps due to physical separation or following a time of emotional distance caused by an argument.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Listening can be particularly challenging for introverts because they have so much busyness going on in their own heads that it's hard to make room for additional input. Because they tend to be sensitive, they may also reach saturation sooner. Listening can feel like an onslaught, making it difficult to continue listening, particularly when the speech-thought differential gives their minds occasion to drift.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“I think it's an issue trusting you can be imperfect in the conversation," [Monica Bill Barnes] said. "Listening is a matter of you deciding you don't need to worry about what to say next, which then allows someone else's opinions and ideas to get past your border defenses.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Listen to the opposing side as if they were going to have to write a newspaper or magazine article about them.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Silence is like white space in design, it surrounds what's important!”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“[i]t's important to remember that what you know is a persona, not a person, and there's a bid difference. There's more than you can imagine below the surface.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“More encompassing than touch, our entire self vibrates with the sounds that are the expressed thoughts and feelings of another.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Research by Graham Bodie, a professor of integrated marketing communication at the University of Mississippi, shows that people are more likely to feel understood if a listener responds not by nodding, parroting, or paraphrasing but by giving descriptive and evaluative information. Contrary to the idea that effective listening is some sort of passive exercise, Bodie's work reveals it requires interpretation and interplay. Your dog can "listen" to you. Siri or Alexa can "listen" to you. But ultimately, talking to your dog, Siri, or Alexa will prove unsatisfying because they won't respond in a thoughtful, feeling way, which is the measure of a good listener.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“People tend to regret not listening more than listening and tend to regret things they said more than things they didn't say. It seems giving people a piece of your mind isn't all it's cracked up to be. While you may feel a sense of urgency to tell people how you feel it's not always helpful. You are putting your ego ahead of the other person's vulnerability. This doesn't mean you have to be dishonest or self-effacing, but you do need to listen enough to know when the other person is ready to hear what you have to say. Not everything needs to be said as you are feeling it. In fact, sometimes it's better to wait until you aren't feeling it quite so strongly.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Research by Graham Bodie... shows that people are more likely to feel understood if a listener responds not by nodding, parroting, or paraphrasing, but by giving descriptive and evaluative information. Contrary to the idea that effective listening is some sort of passive exercise, Bodie's work reveals it requires interpretation and interplay. Your dog can "listen" to you. Siri or Alexa can "listen" to you. But ultimately talking to your dog, Siri, or Alexa will prove unsatisfying because they won't respond in a thoughtful, feeling way, which is the measure of a good listener. People want the sense you get why they are telling you the story -- what it means to them, not so much that you know the details of the story.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“The world is easier to navigate if you remember that people are governed by emotions, acting more often out of jealousy, pride, shame, desire, fear, or vanity than dispassionate logic.”
― Kate Murphy

“Listening to the “other” is what reminds us of our common human vulnerability and fragility, and it imposes the ethical imperative, or duty, to do no harm.”
― Kate Murphy

“To listen well is to figure out what’s on someone’s mind and demonstrate that you care enough to want to know. It’s what we all crave; to be understood as a person with thoughts, emotions, and intentions that are unique and valuable and deserving of attention.”
― Kate Murphy

“It's helpful to think of listening as similar to meditation. You make yourself aware of, and acknowledge distractions, then return to focus. But instead of focusing on your breathing or an image, you return your attention to the speaker.”
― Kate Murphy

“[Nichols] said, "Listening well is a matter of continually asking yourself if people's messages are valid, and what their motivations are for telling you whatever they are telling you.”
― Kate Murphy

“Information is only as useful as how it is collected and interpreted. Algorithms are only as good as the scope and reliability of the data sets to which they are applied.
So too, the findings of a qualitative researcher are only as good as that individual's neutrality, perceptiveness, and skill at eliciting anecdote and emotion. In other words, how well the qualitative researcher listens.
At best, a quant can give you broad brushstrokes while a qual can provide finer detail. Both approaches are valid, and when used in concert, can be extremely revealing.  But when it comes to human interactions, and divining individual's unique motivations, proclivities and potentials, listing is so far the best and most accurate tool.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Everybody is interesting if you ask the right questions. If someone is dull or uninteresting, it's on you.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“But not listening because you don’t have the intellectual or emotional energy to listen at that moment makes you human.”
― Kate Murphy

“In our increasingly disconnected society, people have gotten notably more conspicuous and vocal about their affiliations, particularly their political and ideological affiliations, in an effort to quickly establish loyalties and rapport. These affiliations provide a sense of belonging, and also the kind of guiding principles once provided by organized religions, which have correspondingly been losing adherence. Moreover, when people feel insecure or isolated, they tend to overdramatize and espouse more extreme views to get attention.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters