May 20, 2026 · 17 min · 10 segments
In this episode of Counsel the Word Pastor Keith Palmer talks with Dr. Brent Osterberg on the importance of listening well.
So the importance of listening, uh, if you could put your finger on one of those life skills that just affects virtually everything that we do, both in counseling and yet every other relationship, listening has gotta be one of those, those top things here.
Um, just show us, help us to understand why is it so important for us to listen well?
You know, um, I think this is one of the, the key components to starting out a counseling case is being a good listener.
I, I am still reminded of this in doing counseling, how I can oftentimes jump to instruction and prescription too fast in counseling.
And so I still need to get better at this, is taking a seat back, you know, sitting back in my chair and learning how to ask good questions and listen well.
Then we know how to direct our counsel instead of, um, missing the mark a few times, you know? And that's bound to happen even when we ask good questions, but we can, we can do a better job, a more faithful job of getting to the heart of the issue, um, with more efficiency if we will learn to listen well and ask good questions.
I think too, this, our day and age, we've trained ourselves to be distracted with our devices, with media.
Um, one blog I read, uh, a while back said we've sliced our attention into just a million different pieces.
And so, um, we don't even realize it, how our mind can be darting all over the place because we're used to scrolling, you know? We're used to, um, switching from task to task to task, and that way whenever we get into the counseling room and we're supposed to be giving that counselee our full attention, um, even though our eyes might be locked on them, our minds can be darting around.
And so having our attention and our ears focused as well as our hearts, uh, is something we have to kinda relearn in a sense.
So the importance of listening, uh, if you could put your finger on one of those life skills that just affects virtually everything that we do, both in counseling and yet every other relationship, listening has gotta be one of those, those top things here.
Um, just show us, help us to understand why is it so important for us to listen well?
You know, um, I think this is one of the, the key components to starting out a counseling case is being a good listener.
I, I am still reminded of this in doing counseling, how I can oftentimes jump to instruction and prescription too fast in counseling.
And so I still need to get better at this, is taking a seat back, you know, sitting back in my chair and learning how to ask good questions and listen well.
Then we know how to direct our counsel instead of, um, missing the mark a few times, you know? And that's bound to happen even when we ask good questions, but we can, we can do a better job, a more faithful job of getting to the heart of the issue, um, with more efficiency if we will learn to listen well and ask good questions.
I think too, this, our day and age, we've trained ourselves to be distracted with our devices, with media.
Um, one blog I read, uh, a while back said we've sliced our attention into just a million different pieces.
And so, um, we don't even realize it, how our mind can be darting all over the place because we're used to scrolling, you know? We're used to, um, switching from task to task to task, and that way whenever we get into the counseling room and we're supposed to be giving that counselee our full attention, um, even though our eyes might be locked on them, our minds can be darting around.
And so having our attention and our ears focused as well as our hearts, uh, is something we have to kinda relearn in a sense.
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