I awoke on May 10th and could not hear anything from my right ear. I thought it was just a head cold, so I waited a day. In actuality, I had a rare affliction called “sudden complete deafness” – a viral infection that attacks the auditory nerve.
The short story is through the miracle of modern medicine, my hearing in the right ear was completely restored after two weeks. But for those two weeks, I learned so much.
An old axiom that applies so well to fundraising is “God gave you two ears to listen and one mouth to speak,” which means we should listen twice as much as we speak.
It was very scary to hear one day and not the next. And what I learned from this strange experience is how deafness, even in just one ear, is so debilitating. I could not sense direction. When I made a presentation, I could not locate the person asking the question. Apparently, our ears work in harmony to locate, but also to filter out inconsequential noise. I could not function in a restaurant or room full of people. My new vocabulary consisted of a steady diet of “excuse me?”, “can you repeat that?” and “what?”
The total loss of hearing in one ear forced me to listen twice as hard. It is so challenging to have a conversation with partial hearing, that you are forced to focus your attention on the one speaking right in front of you. You watch their eyes and lips to take in as much information as you can. You stop multi-tasking. You are in the moment and focused.
In those two weeks, I heard things I never heard before. I truly took in every word and listened so intensely as to hear.
So how does this apply to philanthropy? Empathy. I have been blessed with a new sense of empathy. And empathy, not sympathy, is the true way to a donor’s heart. As I listen intensely, do I hear what truly stirs a donor’s soul? What makes their heart sing and their tail wag?
Are you listening twice as much as you speak? Try it. It works.
