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This blog post comes out of a conversation I had with Justin Jalea, and is co-written with him. Justin is a lawyer, DE&I strategist, and professional musician who assists organizations in developing inclusive strategies and practices that enhance equity, collaboration, and belonging.
“Listening is being able to be changed by the other person.” – Alan Alda, actor
Listening is critical to a successful organizational culture. While listening is a necessary skill in nearly all jobs, it is an essential skill for leaders and defines their interaction with others. Listening to someone is a way to get to know people and demonstrate respect for them. It is the basis of collaboration, and most endeavors in cultural organizations are collaborative on some level.
Much of the literature on listening focuses on “active listening.” Active listening was developed as an approach to psychotherapy that advocates for decentering the listener. Active listening is a communication technique that promotes awareness and attention. It requires the listener to decenter themselves and focus on what the speaker is saying by being fully present, responsive and empathetic. Tips for active listening include attention to body language, paraphrasing what you have heard, and asking clarification questions to gain a deeper understanding.
While active listening is an important technique for individuals to employ, it is one-sided:one person is the speaker and the other is the listener. It is also episodic: it is an approach to being in the moment during a conversation. Once the conversation ends, active listening is silent on how to act on the information and insights gained moving forward.
We would like to offer another model that we think goes further and is more applicable to the workplace: meaningful listening. Meaningful listening is listening with curiosity and the intent to look for and incorporate new ideas. We posit three key aspects to meaningful listening: respect; comfort with ambiguity; and commitment to a continuing dialogue.
In the context of meaningful listening, respect for others in the conversation is the acknowledgement to oneself that the person you are talking to might have something to contribute, regardless of their position in the organization. Respect is demonstrated by curiosity and openness. A respectful stance requires critical thinking: the ability to take in new ideas, imagine how they combine with existing ideas, and evaluate them in this light. Showing respect is not a passive exercise. Depending on the context, it may require the listener to offer their thoughts or take action to uplift others effectively.
Comfort with ambiguity is important because taking ideas seriously is not the same as agreeing to them. The listener may, in fact, be hearing divergent viewpoints that engender disagreement. Considering ideas that do not immediately resonate is something that requires practice. It is important to acknowledge that an idea has been heard (this is active listening), and that the listener is committed to grappling with those ideas even though they are uncomfortable and complex. This moment of grappling is a moment of ambiguity: “I might change how I’m thinking about something because of what I heard, but I do not yet know.”
Allowing for that moment of ambiguity is a commitment to the challenge of ongoing dialogue. It is unlikely that divergent ideas will be resolved in a single conversation. It requires time for reflection, time to process the ideas that were shared. It cannot be done completely in the moment. And follow-up communication is almost always needed.
Meaningful listening is important for a number of reasons. First, it is a critical part of treating people with dignity and respect that recognizes their inherent worth. Second, it builds cultural competence—the ability to understand individuals with different backgrounds and experiences. While it is not necessarily anti-hierarchical (we understand hierarchy as often necessary to keep large organizations running effectively) it actively and productively counters the assumption that some people have more value than others. Finally, it helps create inclusive spaces by combatting disingenuous pseudo-listening and the common frustration that concerns are falling on deaf ears.
Ultimately, we believe meaningful listening is essential for acting and leading ethically. If leaders are not listening to employees with the intent to act on people’s concerns then they are not treating them well. Worse, they may be doing both employees and the organization harm in the long run by letting genuine concerns fester or go unnoticed.
To practice meaningful listening means to commit to the process to cooperatively explore ideas or concerns a speaker raises. Active listening is an essential step in this process. We recommend understanding and practicing active listening for one’s personal and professional development. However, we believe that in the same way actively listening is necessary for personal development, meaningful listening is essential for organizational growth. Those interested in systematically improving their organization’s health and effectiveness must listen deeply and engage with what they have heard with the same courage the speaker demonstrated in voicing their concerns in the first place.
Museum Questions 
Why is this framed only toward the “leader” or “leaders”? If each employee was held to account this way to listen meaningfully, it seems the entire organization can grow together, and change could be considered much more meaningfully and deeply along the way.
Good point, Rebekah. I guess this shows our bias that leaders who know how to signal that they listen but are not practicing meaningful listening is a major barrier in many organizations, and we wanted to address this. A bigger challenge for employees seems to be productive sharing – how to share your ideas in productive ways that are easier for managers to hear and integrate into their own picture of how things should be. If you have the opportunity to share this with your colleagues and to engage everyone on a team in meaningful listening, I’d love to hear what kind of impact that has!
-Rebecca