When I Listen People Speak and Come Alive

When a friend, neighbor, family member, or stranger shares something important, our instinct is say something, to add something. If what they are sharing is something distressful or discomforting we run to the rescue. To give advice, find solutions, or commiserate with similar experiences. When I Listen teaches a revolutionary approach called empathic listening that actually transforms the speaker in the moment they are speaking. This kind of listening does not seek to change anyone. It is wholly about being with the speaker, accompanying them in the moment. Yet virtually every time someone is listened to this in this way, they arrive at a sense of their life as richer, more expansive, freer than when they began talking.

That’s because empathic listening creates a quality of relating rarely experienced. Even further, this quality of relating engages the speaker with the meaning they are expressing with and through their words, the meaning which is more than and beyond the words. This engaging moves the speaker deeper into their meaning. While the results of this new way of listening are powerful, the skills involved are easily learnable by all levels of listeners. Professionals and beginners who practice this way of listening discover opportunities to use it multiple times a day in everyday encounters.

When I Listen is the culmination of author Allan Rohlfs’s five decades long work of practicing listening and teaching. As Kathleen Tillman, Professor of Pastoral Ministry, Emerita, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago says, “When I Listen is an act of devotion by a person who has touched hundreds of lives with his own deep capacity to listen and to teach.”