Inner Dimensions of Listening: Listening is doing
When I first entered my studies to become a leadership coach at Newfield, I was excited to discover that one of the foundations of Newfield’s framework for coaching was based on the ‘speech act’ (theory) approach to language.
I instantly resonated with the connections and the terminology that we use in ontological coaching – such as requests and promises, offers, and commitments – because they are the terms and concepts familiar to my linguistics work in Academia. I felt that I was coming home, embraced by the notion that language generates the future (action).
Sociolinguists have long studied what we do with words when we speak. There is an entire branch of linguistics called pragmatics inspired by the works of Heidegger, Austin, Searle, and others devoted to the study of Speech Acts and the many ways in which people use language to do things.
The way we say things has an impact. The way we use words and the contexts within which we speak them and anticipate their being listened to, produce results in the world. That is why we say language is generative
Likewise, the way we listen has an impact. Listening, like talking, is an act. It is active. Listening is something that we do. We do things in our listening and with our listening. How we listen, what we are doing with our listening, can produce very different understandings and outcomes in communication
I am sure many of you have experienced this scenario. At a dinner table, an adult asks a 3 -year-old, “Can you pass the salt? “ The child says, “Yes,” but does not pass the salt. The child listens to the request as a request for information. While the adult has made the request as a request for action – a request for the child to pass the salt, not a request for information about whether the child is able to pass the salt.
In this situation, what is the child listening to? What is s/he listening for? What is the adult expecting the child to listen for? What action is the adult hoping to happen based on the circle of the request/listening? Are we using direct or indirect speech acts to make requests, introducing complexities to the child’s ear?
What we do with our listening frames and supports or limits what can happen in any conversation of any scale or significance.
Just think about it. If you discern that your supervisor is not listening to you, how can your relationship grow? What level of trust can you develop with that person?
Presently, I am working with a client who has a wide sphere of influence and authority. He believes that his staff does not generally listen to him. They get the work done “not because they are accountable, but because they are compliant.” Living in this story makes him doubt the level of care that his staff has for the mission of the team and the organization, and impacts as well, the assessments that he makes about trust, specifically in the areas of sincerity and intentionality.
In my view, and in my experience working with leaders and teams over the past thirty years, it is listening that generates rapport and trust – the building blocks of relationships. Listening and speaking to what is understood through listening, not just talking, is the engine that generates relationships.
Through appropriate, conscious, intentional authentic listening, we have the power to create respectful, mutually empowering, and enduring relationships. Isn’t that what we are all trying to do?
Now, more than ever, I am concerned to take a deeper dive into listening primarily in terms of what we are doing with it. What does it mean to say listening is an act? What roads are opened to us human beings when we look at listening as an action? What are the listening acts we are performing every day? What are some of their consequences?
So, let’s look into, or listen into what we are doing with listening. In upcoming articles, I will be focusing on different aspects of listening that influence, impact, promote, or impede our ability to listen effectively, authentically, and consciously.