Listening to someone, truly listening and trying to understand their point of view, can be a gentle form of confrontation.
Confrontation usually involves getting into someone’s face and challenging something they’re doing or saying. It’s combative and puts the other person on the defensive. It can be mean, and it’s usually not very productive: both sides dig in and refuse to consider the other’s point of view.
Instead, if you were to listen to me and be genuinely curious about my perspective, it would probably make me think more about it. Most of the time, we don’t really think about what we’re saying. Instead, we repeat what we’ve heard on TV, or we rehash an idea we decided was true a long time ago. If someone asks us to talk more about an idea, it encourages us to look at it more closely, perhaps for the first time.
It can push us to confront ourselves, and maybe we’ll actually change our own minds.
It’s worth a try.
