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.

 

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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.”

 

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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).

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Deepening into experiencing or the secret to success in therapy

I will begin with a little overview of the research that lead to Focusing. Afterwards I will shortly describe the process itself. This is based on an article by Gendlin, (1969).

 

The aim of the series of research was to investigate what makes a successful psychotherapy. Researchers (van der Veen, Stoler, Tomlison, Hart, Rogers, Gendlin) were analyzing therapy tape recordings with an attempt to find the common theme amongst those that were classified as successful based on fulfilling all three of the conditions: client’s feedback, therapist’s feedback and psychometric scale scores. Eventually this lead to introduction of focusing. Initially, the analysis suggested that the success in therapy correlates with experiential level. This was measured based on something called “Experiencing Scale” which had seven scores and each of those had specific descriptions of what the rater (mostly undergraduate students) had to hear in order to score the given bit of tape in any of the seven scores. As a result, it was concluded that a common theme for unsuccessful therapy encounters was a low experiential level while for successful therapy could be predicted based on high experiential level. Furthermore, the researchers set out to define such verbal behavior when the client uses fresh currently occurring experiential process as basis for what is being said. This means speaking from the experience, the process of moving from one thing said to the next, from one thought to another while referring to the immediate felt experience. This is quite different from speaking about an experience, merely intellectualizing, moving from concept to concept or reporting emotions or situations.

Even before this research, therapists had known that merely intellectualizing and reporting predicts failure in the therapeutic process of change while “working through” is what generally brings success. However, what exactly this “working through” is had not been defined before. This is where Focusing was introduced. Furthermore, the research was conducted to investigate the effects of focusing instructions on the level of experiencing which, as already established, was considered an indicator of success in therapy.

In addition, the research in question found that throughout the tapes the experiential level for a single client did not change noticeably. The researchers could predict the outcome of the therapy by listening to a tape from the beginning, middle or the end of the therapeutic process. If the experiential level was low at the beginning of the therapy, it usually did not increase over time. This meant that the therapists had not been effective with the patient that did not arrive with a high experiential level. Most of these therapists had been trained with an assumption that it is impossible to teach a client how to do therapy. This was the gap that focusing as a teachable skill was there to fill. Focusing is not a scale like the experiential level. It is direct and abrupt turn from talking and thinking to a felt body version of the problem.

Below there are instructions to the focusing practice as offered in the research cited. Since then the practice of focusing has evolved and I would use a slightly different approach when teaching it. There are books available about focusing and each of those have a slightly different way of describing and leaning into it. However, I believe that you will be able to sense the gist of it. I feel that this is a shortened and simplified version, probably, due to the process of research, but it should give you a sufficient taste of the nature of it.

 

 

 

“FOCUSING MANUAL:

30 seconds:

This is going to be just to yourself. What I will ask you to do will be silent, just to yourself. Take a moment just to relax. All right— now, just to yourself, inside you, I would like you to pay attention to a very special part of you. Pay attention to that Part where you usually feel sad glad or scared. 5 seconds. Pay attention to that area in you and see how you are now. See what comes to you when you ask yourself, “How am I now?” “How do I feel?” “what is the main thing for me right now?” Let it come, in whatever way it comes to you, and see how it is.

10 Seconds:

If, among the things that you have just thought of, there was a major personal problem which felt important, continue with it. Otherwise, select a meaningful personal problem to think about. Make sure you have chosen some personal problem of real importance in your life. Choose the thing which seems most meaningful to you.

30 seconds:

  1. Of course, there are many parts to that one thing you are thinking about—too many to think of each one alone. But, you can feel all of these things together. Pay attention there where you usually feel things, and in there you can get a sense of what all of the problem feels like. Let yourself feel all of that. 30 seconds or less

1 minute:

  1. As you pay attention to the whole feeling of it, you may find that one special feeling comes up. Let yourself pay attention to that one feeling.

 

1 minute:

  1. Keep following one feeling. Don’t let it be just words or pictures – wait and let words or pictures come from the feeling.

1 minute:

  1. If this one feeling changes, or moves, let it do that. Whatever it does, follow the feeling and pay attention to it.

 

1 minute:

  1. Now, tale what is fresh, or new, in the feel of it now… and go very easy. Just as you feel it, try to find some new words or pictures to capture what your present feeling is all about. There doesn’t have to be anything that you didn’t know before. New words are best, but old words might fit just as well. As long as you now find words or pictures to say what is fresh to you now.

 

1 minute:

  1. If the words or pictures that you now have make sore fresh difference, see what that is. Let the words or pictures change until they feel just right in capturing your feelings.

 

1 minute:

Now I will give you a little while to use in any way you want to, and then we will stop. “

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gendlin, E. T. (1969). Focusing. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 6(1), 4–15. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0088716

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To Listen

 

What does it really mean when we ask people “to listen”? What is it that we want to receive exactly? If you were asking me to listen and I started giving you advice, would you feel that I had done what you asked? If I were to say how you should or should not be feeling given the context? If I felt like I have to resolve the situation you find yourself in? Although, all of these are commonly used and well-intended ways of communication, when mentally experiencing these scenarios I feel an impulse to move away. It is like I (as the person that asked) was not heard, and perhaps I might even start to think that the way I feel is not quite “right”. In all of these instances I (as the listener) would have rather denied your existence by an act of unconscious self-importance that will separate your experience from mine. Can you see how this process becomes a way for my self-actualization rather than answering your call to dwell onto the question you were contemplating? I will have found a way not to see you as you are in all your complexity, but to assume that you are feeling like I imagine my self feeling in such a situation.

In my opinion, I would not have really listened or I would have done it superficially. I would have ignored the importance of your unique experience and reduced you to something like a binary system consisting of 0’s and 1’s. In doing so, I would be assuming that I can download what you said through the words I heard in my ear and that my brain would render a perfectly similar picture to the one you were experiencing. That seems quite absurd to me.

What happens when we use words? We are compressing a highly complex plethora of information and experience into concepts and verbal communication ways agreed up on by a certain culture. No matter how skillful we are in the art of language, when we use words we shall always lose some of the complexity of what we are trying to communicate. It could be seen as loss of energy when transporting or transforming it (mostly through generation of heat). If we were to precisely measure and compare the amount of energy input in one end of the wire and output on the other end, the input would always be greater. Similarly, if we were to only use words for our communication, then the listener would not receive the same amount of information as the speaker intended. Furthermore, when we perceive this information we analyze it through the concepts and subjective experiences available to us, which highly likely will never match perfectly between two individuals. Is what I understand with “nice weather”, “a clean house”, “clean dishes”, “good food” the same thing that you understand with those phrases? How many of our misunderstandings and conflicts rise from simply having different conceptual understanding of things?

Open heart listening. What does that mean? One of the first characteristics would be to look at the other person as a whole human being with their own experience and plethora of concepts which is never separable from the potential conversation. To do that, we need to let go of the idea that we know better or that we need to fix or change something about this person. We need to let ourselves feel the interconnectedness of everything. How you and I are connected in some invisible ways that are hard to explain. It is to listen to how it is to be in the world as the other person. It is like being there in the experience of the other. If the other is sharing how they are walking by the sea, can you be there and walk by the same sea side by side and perhaps even hold hands? Can you feel how the sand is moving through the gaps between my toes? How I’m shivering as a sudden wave splashes cold water on my feet? Can you really hear what the speaker is saying and even feel it yourself? It will be more than just words, the essence of each of us will always shine through every experience we are having. There is all that complex plethora of things that we cannot really communicate by words alone. How much can we experience the same thing? Poets have a talent to use language to paint a picture of what seems impossible to be communicated by words. How do we perceive poetry? What happens within us? Do we download the words and then project them into our minds? Or are we spoken to in some other, subtler way? To practice open heart listening we need to open our heart space and soften our belly. We must be impressionable, we need to remove our armor and let others be closer than two meters apart. We need to allow other people to lay into us as in a meadow and see the shape left by the other once they get up. We need to allow the speaker to be like a poem that speaks to us in that subtle way. Most often during our life we have created an armor around us and learned that keeping a distance is the safest way to survive. And it is true. It definitely has been. My invitation is for you to double check, if the way you appear in the world and the way you listen to the world is aligned with where you want to go in life. It might be that some of the existing patterns are no longer serving the cause you stand for, but they are still ruling your way of being. I invite you to practice awareness and when possible to open up to the heart space.

It could be that open heart listening is a path towards true empathy. If you could really feel the state of the other and be with them in their experience before you make any judgements, how would it change your views on people? Maybe, if we were put in the place of any human being in the history of the world with identical up-bringing, genetic, social and spiritual background, environment etc. or if we were that person – we would do the same things they did. This applies to the most honorable heroes and the worst villains alike. An interesting food for thought. How does this apply to the way I am in relation to: my partner, my family, my relatives, my co-workers, my boss, someone that has wronged me, politics?

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