“The gift of listening is the laying down of presumption. I don’t know you. I don’t know what you would say about this or that or the other thing. I don’t understand how you have experienced life. I don’t share in that emotional moment. I don’t have that same vocabulary. I don’t have that same life experience.” (Mark Labberton, from this episode)

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton reflects on the reality and meaning of the fact that “I am not you.”

He considers the importance of differentiation between speaker and listener, and the best posture of the listener not only to gain information, but to contribute back to the speaker and the conversation itself, opening up a deeper and more imaginative exchange.

Learning to appreciate and pursue knowledge of “differentiated others,” listening in this context becomes an antidote to presumption. The less presumptuous we are about others, the more knowledge and perspective we’re likely to gain.

Listening is also more than immediate reflection. Better than restatement would be to probe the speaker’s interest and awaken their imagination, thereby creating new possibilities for everyone involved.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate, inspire, and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection—a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• The gift of listening is not just similarities, but differentiation
• The adventure of knowing another person
• Mature listening
• Expanding the heart and mind through true differentiation
• Letting differentiation be a gift, and not a threat—leading to compassion, mercy, justice, and enlivened exchange
• “A chance to be more than our mere selves.”
• We’re each coming from different bodies, contexts, backgrounds, etc.
• Understanding the volley or back-and-forth
• “Sometimes listening is just an excuse for being quiet while we develop our own lines that we’re preparing to say to the other person. That is not listening. That’s something else. That’s about plotting and planning, or it’s about fear, or it’s about anxiety …”
• Earnest, genuine listening means becoming a genuine learner, without presumptions.
• “The gift of listening is the laying down of presumption. I don’t know you. I don’t know what you would say about this or that or the other thing. I don’t understand how you have experienced life. I don’t share in that emotional moment. I don’t have that same vocabulary. I don’t have that same life experience.”
• What happens when you are wrongly presumptuous about other people
• Listening is an unmasking of presumption.
• Exposing our presumptions
• Reflecting the words of the other is not enough; genuine listening unearths and awakens the imagination of the other
• Reaching genuine depth of conversational volley
• “These things are critical in leadership, because communication is a miracle—and not a frequent one.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.