Are we really listening?

The art of listening

Julia Larson on Unsplash

Last week I was at a board meeting. One of the people in the meeting shared that she was really struggling. She had said this at the last meeting. She reminded us all that nothing had changed. Her words showed me the crashing realisation that we had all heard what she said months ago at the last meeting, but none of us had really listened to what she was saying. How often does that happen? How often do we actually stop to listen and hear what someone is really saying. How often do we hear what we want to hear, or put our own perspective on something, when we need to listen to the different words that someone is telling us about something important to them.

I see this play out when I run training sessions with companies. For some people they hear me talking about difficult subject matter for them. The words trigger them to stop listening, and start picking holes in what I’m talking about. So they might question the sources of data I use, or question the training method I am using. Sometimes they refuse to engage in the content. And there then ensues a battle of wills as I seek to win them over.

You know what though? I’m getting pretty tired of it all both physically and mentally. When it comes to diversity equity and inclusion work there’s a resilience required which can be draining. It would be easy to walk away too, and do something different. What keeps me going is the fact that I need to listen too. The people who I meet who are struggling are often coming from a place of fear, whether they realise it or not. And everyone working in this space does need to listen to that, and realise that for many people they are very fearful of work that might destabilise their world in some way.

It’s not all bad though. A few weeks ago I was running a training session on anti-racism. I asked the group what they thought the definition of privilege is. And one of the group spoke up and he said ‘privilege is something you’re not aware of if you have it’. His words stopped the whole group in their tracks. In that one sentence he perceptively summed up what is often difficult to describe and understand.

Which brings me back to listening. If we’re going to tackle difficult subjects, we need to listen to different voices. And by that I mean really listen. We’re not going to agree with everything people say. It’s going to be tough to hear some things. But if we really listen to other people and their perspectives and voices, perhaps we can really start to understand difference.