Yes, to sticking to your guns, but with the understanding that you can also let them go, too. As Rae Shanahan said to me in my podcast interview with her, it’s about holding your ideas lightly. The other consideration - or paradox - is the need to balance your willingness to listen and learn, and having the flexibility to change your own mind, versus having a conviction, owning a coherent and congruent point of view that you feel the urge to defend. In other words, how can one person speaking to another create a third and ideally superior presence. One of the key ideas I’ve learned about in the development of Dialogos has been the idea of thinking about ‘us’ when considering a conversation with another.

But what of holding a longer conversation with someone, friend or stranger, on a topic that is not banal and where the other person holds an opposing point of view? This requires a more concerted effort, in that it requires self-monitoring, deep listening and keeping a meta perspective.

Even in these less consequential encounters, empathy can be most pertinent. For example, it could be the short exchange you might have with a cashier or the first greeting in the morning with your partner. For starters, there are many forms of conversations. Thus, it occured to me that it might be interesting to define what it means to hold an empathic conversation. I need to reflect on the situation and rein myself in, in order to focus better on the individual in front of me. In other words, it doesn’t come naturally. Bringing empathy into any conversation, at least for me, is an active principle. There are times when you are more up to the task than others. Writing about and practicing empathy is a 24/7 process, a little like life itself. I don’t know about you, but I can sometimes get caught up in a testy conversation without even realizing it.

Empathic listening meaning