Listening

The way you listen to your surroundings, people around you and your self is the key that unlocks deeper world view which has a major impact on your personal, professional, spiritual, and also cultural level of participation in the ongoing processes that surround you.

“When you look at all the leadership failures that we can witness in major organizations and institutions around us, and you double click on that and ask yourself what is really at the core of that? Almost always, at the core of these leadership failures are, leaders disconnecting with the reality around them, which is often significant change. In other words, leaders are unable to listen to the change of reality around them. …

When I look at all the different programs, and labs, and activities that we have been undertaking, and then you talk to participants and the change makers afterwards about what’s the most important thing that changed for them. Just about every time you have that conversation among the top two or three things is listening. My level of listening has changed, has deepened, that’s what just about everyone says. This may sound as something that’s really small, so the listening changed and what else? But if you really double click on that, when your listening is shifting, changing, deepening, that means that your relationships to others are shifting, changing and deepening. And that means that your experience of others and of the world is shifting, changing, and deepening, and that means everything is changing. So it looks really small, but the impact on our lives, on our experience, on our relationships, and on the results that emerge from these relationships, is profound and significant.”

– Otto Scharmer (a senior lecturer at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and co-founder of the Presencing Institute. He chairs the MIT IDEAS program for cross-sector innovation and is the author/co-author of several books.)

 

Listening can be categorized into four levels: downloading, factual listening, empathic listening and generative listening. When we listen from the downloading level, we can only hear the things we already know. In other words, we are affirming our existing concepts. In this level of listening we do not really hear the other person. Metaphorically, we can only see the walls of the prison of our own conceptual world of beliefs that we have created. When listening from factual level, we are trying to listen for things that we do not know yet. We are looking to learn new stuff. We are able to look outside our “prison walls” and seek the unknown. In the level of empathic listening we are listening from a place beyond our “walls”. We are listening from the place of the speaker. We are feeling into their experience and viewing the world through their felt lens. The level of generative listening goes another step deeper. Here we are listening to the highest potential future possibility. We are no longer listening from the place of another, but from an interpersonal field. If we manage to tap into this field, we can offer the next steep of the other person’s process. This is the level great coaches try to operate from.

 

How to listen so the other feels understood and deepens their experiencing.

 

1. In ordinary social interchange we almost always stop each other from getting far inside. Our advice, reactions, encouragements, reassurances and well intentioned comments actually prevent people from feeling understood. While the other is speaking, only use expressions such as “Yes”, “I see”, “Oh yes, I can sure see how you feel” or “I lost you, can you say that again please”. This can be communicated non-verbally as well with an attentive posture and undivided attention. You must be sincere.

 

2. To show that you understand exactly make a sentence or two that gets at the personal meaning this person wanted to get across. Use your own words, but it’s a good idea to say back the touchy main things exactly as the other said it.

 

3. Do not attempt to change or fix anything about the other or what they are saying. Instead commit yourself to perceiving the current state of other exactly as it is right now. The person that is speaking needs to hear that you got each step. Try to feel the very crux of what they are experiencing every step of the way.

 

4. Sometimes what people say is complicated. You cannot get what they say or what it means to them straight away. If you feel lost, do not just “let them talk” and move on. Make a sentence or two about the crux of the part you understood. Let them correct it and add to it. Take in and say back the things they have changed or added. Keep doing this until they agree that you have understood it exactly as they feel it.

 

5. If you do not understand what the other person is saying or you get mixed up or lost, there is a way to ask for clarification. However, do not say “I did not understand any of it”. Instead, gather all the bits you can even if it’s very vague or just the beginning of what they said. Reflect it in the following manner: “I do get that this is very important for you, but I don’t get what it is yet.”

 

6. Do not say many things that you are not sure about. The other will have to spend a lot of time explaining why those things do not fit. Instead start by reflecting the things you know you heard and allow them to repeat the rest.

 

7. Say back bit by bit. Do not let the person say more than you can take in. Interrupt, say back, and let them go on.

 

 

Click on “Contact me” to get in touch and find out about opportunities to deepen your level of listening with Evoke Beyond.

 

This piece of writing has used resources from the course “U-lab” and the book “Focusing” by Eugene Gendlin (1978).