Equipping Live - You're Not Listening!

You’re Not Listening

Wednesday, November 18 | 2:00 PM ET | $10 | Zoom

Most of us think we’re better listeners than we are.

We’re not waiting to understand. We’re waiting to talk. Or we’re fixing the problem before they’ve finished describing it. Or we’re relating, jumping in with our own version of the same story. Or we’re reassuring, which feels kind but tells the other person we’re more interested in making the discomfort stop than in actually being with them in it. Every one of these moves feels helpful in the moment. None of them are listening.

And the people across from us know it. They can feel the moment when we stopped hearing them and started managing them. They just don’t say so. They go a little shallower. They wrap it up a little faster. They stop bringing the real stuff.

This session names the patterns that keep us from actually hearing people and gives you one practice that changes what happens in your next hard conversation. Not a technique. A discipline. The kind that James had in mind when he said be quick to listen and slow to speak, which turns out to be much harder than it sounds and much more important than most of us have treated it.

If any of these land, this session is for you:

• You care about the people in your life but you’re not sure they feel heard by you
• You’ve been told you’re a good listener and you’re not sure that’s actually true
• You find yourself jumping in before someone finishes, and you know it but can’t seem to stop
• You have a relationship where the other person has gone quieter over time and you’re not sure why
• You’ve taken an Equipping class and want to keep the practice going between sessions

Not for: People in acute relational crisis looking for immediate intervention. This is formation, not triage. If something is urgent, reach out to chris@equippingministries.org and we’ll point you somewhere better.

What to Expect

An hour that changes what the people around you experience when they talk to you.

Equipping Live is a conversation with people working on the same things you are, led by someone who has been guilty of every pattern on the list and is still working on it.

You don’t have to be a bad listener for this to matter. You just have to want to be a better one.

Your Host

Chris Conlin

Chris is the Executive Director of Equipping Ministries International, a 50-year-old relational discipleship organization that has worked with over 750,000 people across 120+ countries. He has spent years studying what it actually takes for people to feel heard and why the gap between intending to listen and actually listening is wider than most of us want to admit.

He leads EMI’s monthly class series in Cincinnati alongside his wife Victoria, hosts The Human Project podcast, and is working on a book about the relational practices that form real followers.

He will probably demonstrate at least one listening failure before the session is over.

What’s Next

If this session resonates, two ways to go deeper:

• Creating Connection | a half day on what gets in the way of real connection and how to practice the skills that build it
• Conflict to Connection | In Person | November - because the hardest listening happens when the conversation gets hard

Register above or email info@equippingministries.org with questions. The Zoom link will be sent after registration. Can’t make it live? Register anyway. We’ll send you the recording.