A LIFE EXAMINED
The first thing I read this morning was that Australia has an empathy problem.
I found myself thinking about listening.
Not for the first time.
For years I included communication activities in leadership development programs. We talked about the difference between hearing someone and actually listening to them. About how easy it is to spend the time someone else is talking preparing what we’re going to say next.
And about something much harder: listening to understand.
Nearly thirty years later, I’m wondering whether we’re getting any better at it.
The article that caught my attention had the rather provocative headline, “Wrong side of history: The Aussies with less empathy than a 5yo.”
I don’t know that I’d go as far as declaring Australia has an empathy problem on the strength of one article over my morning coffee. But the idea stayed with me.
Because listening is a topic close to my heart.
And perhaps empathy begins there.
Listening for learning
I’ve been thinking lately about what I actually loved about the work I did for many years.
I loved facilitating.
Put me in a room with a group of people, give us something interesting to explore and I was happy. There might have been a PowerPoint or flip charts somewhere in the background, but the good stuff happened around the tables.
Someone would say something. Someone else would disagree. A question would send the conversation somewhere I hadn’t expected. We’d stop and talk about it. Sometimes the conversation over morning tea was as interesting as anything we’d done in the room.
I thought my job was learning and development.
Looking back, perhaps much of it was creating spaces where people could listen to one another.
Not necessarily agree with one another.
Listen.
There’s a difference.
Stephen Covey wrote about seeking first to understand, then to be understood. I used that idea in communication programs for years.
It seems remarkably simple.
It isn’t.
Because listening to understand requires us to do something a little tricky: park our own judgement for a moment and become curious about somebody else’s perspective.
When did listening become so difficult?
We certainly aren’t short of opportunities to hear what other people think.
Everyone has an opinion. We can post it, share it, comment on somebody else’s and argue with a stranger we’ve never met.
There’s no shortage of talking.
I’m less sure about the listening.
And I include myself in that.
There are people I find easy to listen to because I’m interested in what they have to say. There are people I listen to because I care about them.
And then there are people whose views can have me blinking rapidly and shaking my head, constructing my rebuttal before they’ve finished the sentence.
Usually that’s when something has crossed a line for me. Bigotry. Racism. A lack of basic humanity. That’s when listening becomes harder. But I wouldn’t necessarily stop the conversation. If someone held a very different view from mine on immigration, for example, I’d still want to know why. What are they seeing that I’m not? What has led them there?
I might still disagree. Strongly. But if I’ve already decided they’re wrong before I’ve understood why they think as they do, I’m back to hearing rather than listening.
Understanding someone’s point of view doesn’t mean I agree with it.
I can still listen and ask questions.
Perhaps that’s where curiosity matters.
What am I missing?
What happens after we listen?
I’ve been thinking about that too.
We can ask people what they think. We can run surveys, hold meetings, invite feedback and have conversations. We can nod in all the right places.
But what happens to what we’ve heard?
Do we sit with it for a while?
Do we allow ourselves to be curious about the bits that don’t fit neatly with what we already believe?
Do we ask another question?
Most importantly, are we prepared for something we’ve heard to change our mind?
For much of my working life I thought about listening as a communication skill.
It’s also a learning skill.
I used to say in workshops, “Of course, in order for me to be right, you have to be wrong.”
Then I’d add, “As long as we’re clear about that.”
It usually got a laugh.
But there’s something in that idea of right and wrong. Once I’ve decided I’m right and you’re wrong, I’ve already made a judgement. What happens to listening then?
Perhaps that’s where listening and lifelong learning meet.
Understanding before judging
This gets harder when the conversation moves beyond a workshop room.
Politics. Religion. Gender. Immigration. Climate change. War.
The things we care deeply about.
The things that frighten us.
We can debate policies, ideas and beliefs. We can disagree strongly. We can challenge things we believe are wrong.
But somewhere inside those arguments are people living actual lives.
Perhaps kindness and our humanity depend on remembering that.
Listening to understand
I started this morning with an article about empathy.
I’ve ended up thinking about lifelong learning.
That seems appropriate.
After nearly thirty years thinking about how people learn, listening sits at the heart of it.
That’s where listening fits. Inside learning. Lifelong learning.
Once you truly start to listen, you get it.
Life becomes easier.
What do you think?
When was the last time you really listened to someone you disagreed with — not to change their mind, but simply to understand?
I’d genuinely like to know.