This may not be true in every law school, but at my school, things are a little quiet right now. Some students and professors are on campus for the brief winter term, but the entire community will not return until the spring term begins in February. The students are just now getting their fall grades, so the students who are around and have come looking for me have all wanted to talk about them — whether they were surprised or disappointed or content, and what their grades might mean for the future.
I cannot help but be reminded by this combination of relative quiet and conversationally-motivated students of the importance of listening. Like many teachers — and many lawyers — I revel in talking. I like explaining things to people; I enjoy the performative aspects of a well-delivered lecture; I am fond of delivering spontaneous oracular pronouncements to my advisees. And, aiming to communicate complex information in a useful way, I spend a fair amount of time fretting about the content of what I say and the manner in which I say it. This is entirely appropriate: our students' expectations are high, their goals are ambitious, and their needs are great. They deserve to hear wise and engaging words coming out of our mouths.
Still, nobody wants to be nothing but a bunch of talk. If that's all you've got, you might as well just throw books at your students. Listening is the complementary skill that helps to make sure that what we say possesses the value that our students need. It's how we determine precisely which beautiful insights we choose to articulate.
As with many skills, people are not always good at judging how well they listen. Those to whom it comes naturally may underestimate how talented they actually are. Others may mistake mere silence for listening, or may assume that they are listening well because they are quickly assessing and generating responses to what they are hearing. One way to more accurately judge — and, if necessary, improve upon — one's listening skills is to consider whether you are achieving any or all of these three outcomes:
- Determining what is troubling the speaker. In many or even most cases, this is ostensibly the reason we are talking with our students in the first place. They come to us with an issue or a concern, and we introduce conversational probes to figure out what the source of the problem is. Ironically, though, the better and more experienced we get at our jobs, the easier it may become to jump to quick conclusions. This speed, borne of experience, can be valuable, but we must take care not to confuse our satisfaction at having identified a likely issue with the student's confidence that they have actually conveyed the concerns they had. Watch their facial expressions and body language. Do they appear relieved, as if they have gotten something off of their chest, or are they still holding on to some tension? Listen to the tone of their voice — do they sound unsure? Do they seem to want to interject more into the discussion? Try not to judge how well you have listened for their concerns by how you feel about the conversation, but by how they appear to feel. When in doubt, before making any definitive declarations of diagnosis, reflect the conversation back to them. Statements like "It sounds like you feel you do not understand the law correctly" can be non-threatening ways to offer the speaker a chance to clarify what they mean to say, and you may find that there are more or different issues from what you had first suspected.
- Encouraging the speaker to dig deeper. Sometimes students do not come to us entirely of their own free will; they are advised or even required to meet with us, and they just want to get it over with. Other students may come anxiously to us, fearing complicated bad news and hoping instead to hear a quick fix. Students like these might be content to give a brief synopsis of what they assume is the problem, in hopes that we will take over the conversation and get to the end as quickly as possible. Such situations provide great opportunities to use your listening skills as active conversational tools. Simply maintaining eye contact and keeping silent will prompt a speaker to continue to speak, sometimes revealing additional information in their stream-of-consciousness monologue. If silence is not enough, a brief reflective question, based on what you have already heard, may help. Even non-reluctant students can benefit from this kind of prompting. If a student makes an assertion that sounds too pat or incomplete, attentive listening can encourage them to keep pressing on to try to get to the critical facts or to their real emotions. Personally, I think every student conversation of more than just a few minutes should include at least one instance of focused, silent attention on the student, to give them the opportunity to elaborate on a point or to bring up a new one.
- Developing the speaker's trust. Trust is valuable currency in our job, and like Bitcoin, it can take some time to generate. It is great to be trusted for our sound advice, but that is not the only way to build trust. Listening is another great way, and this illustrates why good listening is not mere passive silence but is actually active participation in the conversation. A good listener demonstrates that they are hearing the information being conveyed by reflecting back some of what they've heard and by following up with questions that build off of that information. What is also just as important, and in some cases is even more so, is that we attend to our student's affect as well — not just the information, but the emotion. Students can bring to Academic Success some intense feelings — excitement and hope, when things are going well, or anxiety, sadness, and anger when they are not. Acknowledging these sometimes uncomfortable feelings in a non-judgmental way, through our own facial expressions and responses, can help a student feel not only that are you listening to all they are saying, but also that your office is a safe place to experience and express those feelings. This is a sure way to develop the trust that is often needed to get students to buy into your plans for their success.
These outcomes are noteworthy not just because they are the effects of good listening, but because they are specifically effects that are valuable to our work in Academic Success. Even when things get hectic and tiring over the next few months, try to make a point of asking yourself, after every student encounter, if you are seeing any of these outcomes arising from your conversations.
[Bill MacDonald]
