Generative Listening: the single most powerful transformational behaviour
Listening
Though crucial for authentic Dialogue, true listening does not come naturally. It is an art that requires practice and a specific disposition, so that both speaker and listener connect in such a way that meaning can truly flow through them (as suggested by the Greek root of the word, dia-logos, “meaning flowing through”).
And the dance of meaning-building at the heart of authentic Dialogue starts with a first step: Listening.
When it comes to listening, Generative Listening holds the greatest potential. More than deep, or active listening, Generative Listening enables a level of connection between the one who speaks and the one who listens that is truly generative, i.e. it creates new possibilities for action that neither parties had thought of or even expected before starting the conversation.
Through my practice as an organisational consultant, I have developed 7 principles for Generative Listening:
- Slowing down and noticing more of what is present: often as we enter a conversation (especially in an organisational context), we come filled with thoughts, ideas, or concerns related to what just happened earlier today, or what is scheduled to happen just after this conversation. This first principle invites us to enter the present moment, and slow down all this mental activity linked to past and future
- Listening with all my senses: we could be forgiven for thinking that listening only involves the ears. But in fact all our other senses are important in the act of listening. Sight of course, for it helps us read body language – another crucial conveyor of meaning. But expressions such as “what I heard left me with a bitter”, or “I warmed up to him after listening to this”, or even “this situation doesn’t smell right” shows how much all of our senses are involved in connecting to a reality that we are hearing. In fact, by heightening our 5 senses, we also reduce our often hyperactive cerebral cortex, thus managing to listen not only with our head, but also with our heart
- Listening to the words / images chosen: speaking is like painting with words; as we speak, we choose (even if sometimes unconsciously) specific words – and not others – to paint a picture of the reality we are attempting to describe. As a listener, it is crucial to notice those words, the images they convey, the power (or dullness) that they hold, so that we really try to inhabit that world that is being described. Attention must be placed on unusual words, or slips of the tongue, for they too convey an important meaning about the speaker’s inner world, and the mental models that may be structuring his thinking and his actions
- Listening to the emotions conveyed by the person who is talking: emotions are the bedrock of a person’s presence in the world, the roots of someone’s mental models, thoughts, and actions. Listening fully, or even listening to the full person in front of me, requires me to listen to the emotions (s)he conveys. This can be through body language and the choice of words and images (see above), but it will also be through the tone of the voice, its tempo, its pitch; through the silences as well as the hesitations
- Suspending judgement: this is probably one of the most difficult of these 7 principles, yet probably one of the most crucial. It means suspending both moral and cognitive judgement. By moral judgement, I mean splitting into good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable, mature or immature, etc. For a true, authentic dialogue, this moral judgement needs to be suspended whilst I am listening, so that I can truly get into the lived experience of what it is like to be the person who’s speaking. It doesn’t mean that I have to agree with it, or accept it; just that I let it coexists with my own perspective. If you are still not convinced, try to imagine being judged as you speak – your perspective, and who you are, not being allowed into this space of Dialogue ... Equally, it is important to suspend my cognitive judgement, i.e. my tendency to classify or dismiss what I am hearing into true and false, new thinking or old thinking, right-wing or left-wing, etc. As well as my tendency to finish someone’s sentence for them, as if I knew before they spoke what they are actually going to say
- Noticing what I don’t understand or what triggers questions for me, rather than what I don’t like about what I hear. I would argue that we greatly underestimate how much we don’t actually understand in what someone is telling us. Working often in international context, I have come to observe that the greatest misunderstandings happen between people who speak the same language, and not those who are trying to express themselves through a foreign language. So checking my understanding rather than working on assumptions and shortcuts in meaning is crucial. If I come to feel that I don’t like what I am hearing, rather than dismissing it, this is the time to check that I have understood correctly – rather than jumped to conclusions – and if the feeling continues, use it to clarify what questions it raises for me rather than stay in a place of judgement
- What do I feel as I listen to what is being said – and why? Finally, just as it was crucial to tune to the feelings of the one who is speaking, it is fundamental to connect to my own feelings as I am listening. On the one hand, it may provide useful information into the reality being presented. On the other hand, it is a prerequisite before the second act in Dialogue: Generative Speaking. If I don’t pay attention to the feelings that have been evoked by what I heard, I will not be able to constructively respond to what I heard; instead, I will merely act out my inner state, thus putting the Dialogue at risk
For some of my clients, and at times for me too, Generative Listening has been the single most powerful tool in enabling the organisational transformation they were looking for. The complete shifts in the way organisational members related to one another generated a huge release of meaning, energy, creativity, and, at times, healing. As leaders started embodying their role primarily through listening rather than through controlling and/or giving advice, the whole dynamics at work moved towards collaboration and engagement, leading to new ways of working together, new activities, and new sources of performance.
For others, whilst Generative Listening proved to be a crucial first step in the dance, they realised they were still in need of some tools or processes to help them speak to one another authentically; to be able to bring up tough issues without breaking down the quality of the Dialogue.
So I started working with them on Generative Speaking ...
Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have got it all wrong
We are at a crucial point in the history of humanity. We know what the problem is: our human activities, since the start of the industrial revolution, have increasingly degraded our living environments, which has led to climate change (global warming, more frequent and more violent hurricanes, flooding, extreme forest fires…) and to the erosion of biodiversity around the world.
We also know what the solutions will need to look like, will need to involve: starting from now, and into the future, our human activities will need to work in symbiosis with natural ecosystems, rather than against them. In fact, given the breadth of our impact on Nature so far, our human activities will need to do more than that; more than preserve Nature, more than being “sustainable”: they will also need, to some extent, to contribute to restoring some of the natural capital that we have spent, some of the ecosystems that we have eroded even though we, humans, depend on them for our own survival.
Our human activities will therefore need to be REGENERATIVE.
The task at hand may seem daunting, impossible. The scope of the transformations required may feel so overwhelming that it might be easier to minimise the actual problem, or to seek an escape from it, however wild they may sound, i.e. flying to Mars and start a new human colony there.
In the early 60s, when JFK set the aim of landing a man on the Moon, everyone thought it would be impossible. Yet his Intention galvanised his country, and soon
many efforts converged from all sorts of fields to engage in an unprecedented display of collective intelligence, leading to Neil Armstrong’s moon-landing in 1969.
Today, we’re at such a “Moon moment”. Yet Bezos, Musk et al. have it all wrong. The star we need to reach for is not out there, external to us. It is inside of us. We need to pull together and be creative in order to transform what we produce and how we produce it – rather than build spaceships in order to continue producing what we’ve always produced just so that we can take it with us to another planet.
As humans, we have great, renewable energies inside of us: intelligence, creativity, solidarity, empathy, a capacity to collaborate with others, etc. It is time we apply those to meet the greatest challenge humanity has to face, and discover how we can, together, transform our businesses into regenerative businesses.
And for that, there is good news: some regenerative businesses already exist and are having beneficial impact, combining value creation with the restoration of natural ecosystems.
So stay tuned, for we, Nexus, are going on a journey around the world to meet them and discover what they do and how they do it, and we will be sharing those stories with you so that more and more people can be inspired by these examples.
Soon, a critical mass of businesses will start shifting towards becoming regenerative and, suddenly, that inner Moon we are seeking won’t feel out of reach after all.