Chinese Characters and Listening
I had the privilege of living in China for 23 years. One of the things I loved about China was learning Chinese characters. There is so much wisdom in them.
Allow me to geek out with you for a second. Characters are always made up of smaller characters called radicals. These tell us something about the sound or the meaning of the word. For example, this character is the character “Ting”, which means to listen. It’s made up of a bunch of radicals which tell us some wisdom about what it means to listen.
This bit in yellow is the radical “er” or ear. It means that an important part of listening is with our ears, obviously. That’s actually all we think it involves, but the character shows there is much more to it.
This next bit is “mu” or eye. It means that a really important part of listening is to actually look at the person you are listening to. How many times do we keep staring at our phone and not actually hear? True listening means to give the person our full attention by turning to them and looking at them.
This final bit is “xin” or heart. This is actually the most important part of true listening. It means that will not only give our ears and eyes, but our heart as well. We get emotionally involved with what they are saying and give them empathy. This is what truly makes a person feel listened to.
Empathetic listening is one of the most important skills of a friend, a spouse and a leader. It’s the main thing that distinguishes a person that people enjoy being and working with. Best of all, this is a skill you can learn.
Jeff Staege is an American who lived in China for 23 years before moving to Istanbul, Turkey in 2022. He is an executive coach and trainer in Emotional Intelligence. He helped found Sofian International Consulting and is the co-author of the EQ Solutions curriculum.
Jeff is married to Rebecca Staege and has four high school age children. He loves learning languages, reading, teaching, running and rock climbing.
