Go In Deeper: The Art of Connection

​I think Oprah was the one that said it... Everyone wants be heard and be validated. Everyone certainly wants to feel they are special and truly valued.  It's important to feel understood and have deep connections with others. You want this for yourself and for the people you love.  You also want to connect with new people as they become friends.  Life is truly enriched through our engagement with others.  It's great for holistic health!

Sometimes our skills in interacting with others can be improved to make the experience more meaningful.  This is true whether you're meeting someone new or with someone you've known forever.  Effective communication can help us to learn something new about someone else, their perspectives, and understand their feelings and thought processes.  Listening to "old" stories is a great way to get to know someone better.  People like to talk about themselves, and that's great. Asking effective questions is a way to engage in great, meaningful conversation.  Be willing to share your experiences, perspectives, and feelings, too.

These skills can be used at home with your spouse, parents, or kids. Try them the next time you are at  family get-together, at work or school, meeting someone new, or anytime!  You'll find that you will enjoy other's company more and they will get to know you better, too.  The benefits are mutual!

​Active Listening

Active listening involves giving full attention and expressing compassion so the person you're with feels truly heard.  It confirms with them that you have understood them and is crucial in order to establish good rapport, trust, and to show empathy.  It's also helpful in avoiding arguments, due to better understanding and insight into the other person. 

A person is an effective active listener when he/she:

• Has eye contact with the other person
• Pays careful, close attention to body language and emotional cues
• Listens to learn about strengths, weaknesses, fears, anxieties, and their physical/emotional/mental state
• Maintains an open perspective 
• Does not think much while listening or get lost in their own personal internal dialog
• Validates the other person by nodding or other affirmations, including paraphrasing back to foster mutual understanding
• Interrupts carefully, for the purpose of clarification
• Asks related questions for deeper understanding

​Asking Effective Questions

Asking proper, relevant questions with a clear purpose will bring about better understanding for both you and the person you're speaking with. 
  
Closed ended questions elicit a yes/no answer or a short response.  The questions commonly begin with the words “is”, “are”, “was”, “were”, “have”, “had”, “do”, “does”, or “did”.  They serve the purpose of getting a succinct answer.  However, this type of question might influence them by suggesting there is a right/wrong answer.  In addition, they rarely bring about an expansion of ideas or conversation.  

Open ended questions allow for more freedom and elaboration.  They often begin with “what” or “how”, and are inherently less judgmental than closed ended questions.  This type of question communicates interest, fosters curiosity, and subsequently generates trust between you and the other person. Answers to open ended questions are usually in sentence form and may answer more than one question at a time.  Sometimes this can get the the conversation off on tangents, which can be fun.  Using an open ended “why” question can be problematic and put someone on the defensive.  Although, sometimes a "why" question is a wonderful opening to further deeper understanding.  Funneling questions are useful when taking a broad topic and narrowing it down to smaller details.  They have a sequence that comes to a conclusion.  Similarly, clarifying questions spur on further understanding by suggesting “please tell me more.”

It is important to also allow for silence; to be thoughtful and ponder about what was just said or asked, and to absorb new information.
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My dad, Bernie, and me, on the St. Croix River, WI

​How I put this into practice:

This year I spent a week up in Wisconsin taking care of my dad, who just had knee replacement surgery.  I did need to ask him many closed questions about his medications, needs, meal requests, etc.  However, I decided to take advantage of this week alone with my dad to get to know him better.  To distract him from the pain he was in, I asked him open-ended questions to spur on dialog and nicely pass the time.

We have a very happy, close-knit family, but I didn't know a lot about my dad’s childhood or young adult life.  My dad likes to watch a lot of old TV shows like Gunsmoke and war documentaries on the history channel.  (Being in recovery, the TV was on a lot.) This was a great opening for me to ask him about life in the “old days”.   He told me about how he was drafted to Vietnam, why he chose the Navy, what he did over there as a medic, and how he chose his eventual career path.  Being a soldier in Vietnam was a very stressful experience (to say the least), but he shared me details I’d never heard before.   It also took him back to happy times how he met my mom, their courtship, and how we all lived with my great grandma when I was a baby.  I asked about our distant relatives that I barely remember, and I listened to lots of great stories about his family.  My grandpa George (his dad) died when I was young, and I asked about his life.  I learned about how he met my grandma,  his time in WWII, and how he caught malaria and never felt healthy after that point.  My dad also shared some of the greatest and saddest times he had as a parent of my siblings and me.  

The whole experience was wonderful, and I will cherish the week I spent with my dad because of these conversations.

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