Struggling to Listen? 3 Tips to Help You Hear More

PLUS: A real kneecapper! And more...

Author

Rob Volpe
May 21, 2025

Table of Contents

→ Where Have I Been? A Real Kneecapper…
→ Q&A: What Advice Do You Have for Listening to the Other Side?
→ Coming Up…

Hi!

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Where Have I Been?

When I cracked open the last draft of this newsletter, saved on March 28, it was like going back in a time capsule.

My intention back in March was to write an insightful reflection and pull some video together from the Navigating to a New Normal study looking back at 5 years since the pandemic and lockdown began.

But that was not to be. A few days after I last hit ‘save’, I had a slip and fall in a hotel lobby in Chicago on a marble floor. Turns out marble is a harder substance than my patella. My kneecap was in pieces.

Off to the hospital! So grateful many of my Dig Insights colleagues were nearby as well as my good friend Cynthia Harris who came with me to the hospital.

Hospitals, doctors and surgery followed. I’m now 4 weeks out from surgery and 6 weeks from the fall.

A few random things I have learned:

  1. The patella is not a weight bearing bone so you can stand on it provided you keep your leg straight in a brace

  2. Keep ahead of the pain thru medication - sleeplessness while waiting for medication to kick in is no fun

  3. I’m so grateful for all the yoga I did in my 40s - being bendy so you can touch your toes or the ground - nothing about this recovery is easy but being able to get your socks on feels empowering!

I’m now waiting for the bone to heal (6-8 weeks after surgery which is Memorial Day or later) and THEN I start PT. The surgeon suspects I’ll be in the leg brace for 12 weeks or so. In other words, July.

This has been a time filled with lessons and reminders in patience, empathy and compassion From the hospital staff to friends, family and co-workers checking in on me to my own battle of will to do something but not do too much that I have a setback. I’m really grateful for all the support I’ve received. It has helped keep my spirits up which I understand to be so critical to the healing process! 🙏🏽

In the meantime, I do think five years since the pandemic is a notable occasion. I see it as a fracture (pun intended) in our society as we further divided into groups based on ideological connections. We had a few months of national and even global community during lock down and then, here in the US, it became politicized.

It’s remarkable to me that we are ignoring the anniversary.

More than 1.2M people have died in the US, a number that continues to slowly tick upward. Lives and lifestyles were changed. We are recovering and rebuilding. It has affected many of us in ways that we are and are not aware of.

Two months ago I was pleased to see Brian Stelter and CNN’s Reliable Sources make note of the anniversary of lockdown and the impact that it had. He asked for reader stories on how the lockdown had affected people. I submitted my thoughts and mentioned the Navigating to a New Normal study, which came about from the pandemic and is still going, five years later, exploring changing values and behaviors among US adults. If you recall the videos of consumers I’ve shared in the past, it comes from that study.

A few weeks later, I was thrilled to see they included some of my comments and a link to the study in their newsletter.

I will do some more proper reflection on the pandemic and how we’ve changed (or not) five years on. I’d like to consider your experiences and perspective as well. Please email me [email protected]

Q&A: What advice do you have for listening to the other side? I’m really struggling!

A: I hear you on the struggling to listen to others. I’ve been hearing that a lot lately. And for those Trump supporters or Trump tolerants - before you turn away or skip this piece, there’s relevant tips here for you as well.

And I have to be honest… I have dodged some of these conversations myself. But we can’t avoid it forever and the person I was avoiding I finally spoke with after 6 weeks. It was an interview from Navigating to a New Normal study so the dynamics were a little different than a conversation but I opened my mind to listen and got through it.

Based on that and a conversation during a recent visit from Stephen Shedletzky and Minette Norman while I was recuperating, I’ve come away with the following three tips.

Tip 1: Start in small doses that are not far from your own beliefs.

This article in The New York Times gave me the inspiration for this tip. As I started reading, I wasn’t really looking forward to hearing from Trump voters who had previously voted for Biden or Hillary Clinton. Then, I decided to stop being judgmental (that pesky barrier) and give people a chance.

It was revealing to me and I’d be curious to know your thoughts after you read the piece. Put your thoughts in the comments below or email me and I’ll share mine, but overall it gave me a better understanding of where the Biden then Harris campaign, and Democrats at large, went wrong.

I found this piece to be easy enough to take in without a lot of statements that I’d want to reject out of hand, consider conspiracy, lunacy or worse. Small doses, close to home but just outside your comfort zone.

This means, if you watch Fox News regularly, try CNN or one of the big 3 networks. If you are an MSNBC stalwart, find some of the people who are center right on CNN or have a blog or podcast to dip your toe in the waters. And not the opinion shows, try the actual newscasts.

Tip 2: You do not have to agree.

People often get confused about what it means to have empathy. It does not mean that you agree. It just means that you understand where someone is coming from or how they are feeling. If you find that you aren’t, then something is blocking you from getting there. Most often it is our own judgmental thoughts.

When you think about The 5 Steps to Empathy, there’s a reason the 4th and 5th step come where they are. Even though these aren’t always linear, it depends on the persons involved and the topic, but if you don’t dismantle judgment, ask good questions and actively listen, it will be next to impossible to integrate into your own understanding another person’s perspective.

Think of empathy as that rocket fuel enabling your ability to communicate and collaborate. It doesn’t mean agreement. In my research and in experience working with teams and coaching individuals, I’ve found judgment is the big barrier here. So be aware when judgment is coming up, get curious, ask more questions and put your beliefs to the side while you listen. Then, bring them together and compare, contrast and decide on the next step forward.

Tip 3: Find the nuance and explore that space.

Nuance has become a lost art in public communication. We are polarized into either being for or against. You are either with us or against us. That has led to purity tests, on both sides if we are being honest. Look at cancel culture on the left and MAGA-purists like Laura Loomer on the far right. There are times to walk away from or stop supporting people if their values don’t line up, but if we don’t expand what is reasonable and acceptable, we will be living a very lonely existence.

That NYTimes piece I referenced was challenging for me at first. And other writing that reflected affirming views of the current administration’s behavior is also difficult to ingest. But that’s when I realized, I’m not trying to make sense of Steven Miller, Karoline Leavitt or the sentiment behind the Executive Orders. I’m trying to understand how my fellow, ordinary Americans are viewing what’s going on, and what’s behind their opinions. They do feel left behind, that government isn’t working so why not disrupt it and reshape it. Or they just aren’t that engaged because it hasn’t affected them directly, yet.

I encourage you to take these baby steps with me. Find the neighbor or church member who might be in the middle or leaning right rather than full-blown MAGA. Or vice versa depending on which side of the aisle you sit. Ask open, accusatory questions. And listen to the answers.

Once you understand the other person’s point of view, try having a constructive conversation. Share your own concerns. Don’t insult or talk down but share how you feel. When you see it coming from an emotional place, it can change the tone.

Let me know how it goes!

Minette Norman and Stephen Shedletzky make a house call.

Coming Up…

I’m grateful to have still been able to deliver talks on how to improve relationships in marketing as well as in customer service to different organizations. I have an in-person training with one of the oldest QSRs coming up in June along with a workshop for the PIHRSA in LA.

If you have interest in strengthening the leadership skills, customer experience, core values, communication norms or systems and processes in your organization, let’s talk. I have openings in my calendar through the fall. Email me [email protected] to get the discussion started.

Solitaire left her mark while I was waiting for the tech check of my TACCM presentation.

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