Listening to Each Other: changing how we lead so that we listen better
Summary of key points
The theme of the discussion was ‘how can we change how we lead so that we listen better’. The main points which emerged from the discussion were:
Radical listening is transformative, shifting the balance fundamentally in favour of the people and communities we work with, building confidence and agency, and the ability to influence and shape how things are done.
But many things, not least the conventional expectations of leaders, managerial cultures, and organisational hierarchies, can make the practice of radical listening very difficult.
Therefore courage and determination are required to change the way we lead.
There are some well-established techniques (action learning, appreciative inquiry, reflective practice etc.) that can be helpful.
But what is really needed is for leaders to make space for themselves and for others to listen, in a conscious way, and not react defensively when assumptions are challenged as a result.
Leaders can develop a less hierarchical and more participative leadership culture, so that radical listening can happen at every level.
At the same time leaders can build a much more diverse and inclusive team, in composition more like the people and communities served.
And finally leaders can challenge themselves to go further, by reaching out to the ‘silent society’, in other words those people whose voices are never heard or listened to, and also by building a practice of listening well right across the voluntary public and private sectors.
In more detail
Steve Wyler, co-convenor introduced the model of change set out in the recent Better Way publication Time for a Change.
In this cell we are exploring the ‘listening to each other’ element of this model while noting that there are connections between all four elements, and indeed that applying them in combination makes each more effective.
Our focus this time is how we can change how we lead so that we listen better, even when that’s hard – recognising that it’s not about knowing all the answers or finding the solutions for others, but about creating an open-ended culture where others can participate. We started with two presentations:
Karin Woodley, CEO of Cambridge House, has agreed to be the thought leader for the cell, and she opened the discussion. She spoke about radical listening, explaining that this starts from the premise that everyone deserves to be part of a conversation about societal reform. It aims to change the way we engage with the communities in which we work, so that people from those communities become more powerful.
Radical listening requires those who listen to be genuinely curious and inquiring, and enter into discussions where the purpose is not to provide evidence for what we already think. We have to learn to stop waiting for things that justify our own beliefs, said Karin. We have to be brave enough to have our assumptions challenged, and be willing to listen beyond the surface level to discover what most matters to those we are listening to, making time to do this well.
We need to be conscious of our own behaviour, avoiding for example summing up for people, re-organising their words, and telling them what the next stage is.
We can start practicing this with colleagues in our own organisations and if we do so we will make it easier to challenge traditional internal patriarchies, and well as creating the conditions to listen better to those outside.
Venu Dhupa, previously CEO at Community Links, and now working independently, then spoke about what makes good listening so difficult. Operating in an untidy world, she said, we have a tendency as leaders to want things to be well ordered, and it is difficult to live with ambiguity. Listening is time-consuming, and requires people to be present, but people with very busy diaries will struggle to make space for this. Leaders are under pressure to provide answers, and identify metrics, and even when they are genuinely curious they find it hard to say ‘I don’t know’.
However, Venu explained that when she makes space for others, and trusts that something worthwhile will happen, it often does. For example, Community Links was visited by the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, and Venu decided not to arrange formal presentations. Instead she created an opportunity for women from the local community to tell their stories, and this had far greater impact.
Listening can have multiple benefits for leaders. It can open them up to them to considering different kinds of evidence. It can help them more reflective judgements. It can create useful frameworks that others can fill. It can allow more careful questioning, especially when faced with a complex challenge. It can help leaders go beyond the impulse to control and get to purpose. Leaders can find it hard to manage different opinions and conflict, but teams that are able to work their way through disagreement by listening well to each other can become stronger. And leaders who listen can pick up clues, often given respectfully, but which can be easily missed.
Venu shared her wish that leaders would make more space to listen, allowing people opportunities to explore an issue, and thereby place more emphasis on judgement rather than quick answers. To do so would be a sign of a mature organisation and mature leadership, whether in a Board or Executive role.
Breakout sessions were then held to consider the question: How can people in leadership roles create a culture where others can participate? In the feedback and further discussion participants made the following points:
The difficulties of listening
We need to name the difficulties people have in listening well, if we are to have a chance to overcome them.
Often we listen because there is an end in mind, and we are listening to clarify certain things, for example, how we can best assist someone in a crisis. This can be valid in itself, but is limited, but often those who are listening don’t have the mandate to listen more widely, or are caught up in a treadmill of activity which prevents listening.
To pursue co-production and radical listening requires trust and courage.
Working to meet the interests and needs of beneficiaries, and listening to them, should be the primary consideration, but this can be difficult, if, for example, this means turning down contracts that would pull the organisation in another direction.
Hierarchies in organisations can affect how we listen to each other. But the real expertise is often held by those working on the front line.
It can be hard to hear certain things, and a message might need to be repeated several times in different contexts by different people before it takes effect.
Techniques to listen well
Action learning is a technique to share challenges with others, allowing people to discover their own solutions, put them into practice, consider what has improved, and reflect on what has been learned.
Appreciative inquiry can help people, whether they are service users, those with lived experience, service providers, or commissioners understand how a system works and how to change it.
Active listening can include a process of feedback to check whether something has been properly understood, and inviting the person to suggest possible solutions.
It is the spaces between the formal interactions that produce the reward. There is value in informal conversation and incidental listening, and it can be worthwhile to engineer opportunities for this.
Listening is more than hearing, it is possible to use other senses to build awareness of what is happening, and even where there are barriers to communication it is possible to be creative to overcome them.
The experience of advice services is that often the presenting problem masks an underlying problem that needs to be addressed, which may not be immediately obvious but which can been be brought to the surface.
Changing the way we lead
Leaders don’t need to have all the answers, they need to be good at coaxing/coaching them out of others.
There are conflicts inherent in the role of managers, who need to take account of their Boards, their team, their users, their community, their funders. It is not easy or always possible to please everyone. There is often no single correct solution. There are dangers of raising expectations that can’t be met, because the resources are not there, or because the change required would be too difficult.
Traditional top-down hierarchical management does not encourage good listening, and we need to shift away from patriarchal management models towards more participatory forms of leadership where listening is part of what everyone does.
Indeed, one implication of the Better Way model for change is that we need to dismantle traditional organisational hierarchies, it was suggested.
Large and small organisations
It was noted that in large institutions a hierarchy of experience can be useful, where if someone is able to solve a problem on their own they will, but if they reach a dead end they can escalate it to someone who has more experience.
In smaller organisations, or in community settings, hierarchies within meetings are usually not useful, because it is more important that people (including those who come from large institutions) have an equal voice and are respected and valued equally.
Shifting the organisational culture
Within organisations is necessary to have some people who are driving the change, putting in place ways of operating that can help people become more confident about listening and being listened to. This includes making time available for listening in its own right, holding back from offering answers even when invited to, and enabling people to take action on the basis of what they have heard.
Empathy, especially with those who have been most marginalised, is aided where organisations are more representative of those they are working with. Many charities have become more like public bodies in their staffing structures and composition, but diversity within staff teams should ideally take many forms including class and education, and this can disrupt traditional hierarchies because lived experience brings knowledge, insight, and empathy, thereby helping to redefine what constitutes good leadership.
Decisions are best made as close to the people affected as possible, with assurance given to people on the front line that if they listen well they will have authority to act. Over the last year in the Covid pandemic we saw more of this, especially in the first lockdown, with some very good results, although more recently this way of operating has become less evident.
Changing the wider system
We need to create a shift from passive service users to active and empowered co-producers of solutions, and this will only happen if we listen and provide conditions necessary for people to generate the outcomes they want (one example of this, it was suggested, is direct payments, where funds are made available to people in ways that enhance choice and control, rather than simply setting up a care package).
Most people do not want to be drawn into the management of the services they use, but they do want to be listened to and have some influence, so that services are run in a way that are responsive to what they actually need.
The pandemic has helped people see weaknesses in their organisational models and the ways in which services are designed, and there is an appetite to develop strategies for organisations to help them do things better. The Better Way model of change can help with this, but changing structures and methods to make them less hierarchical and more inclusive, and which can generate the practice of radical listening, will be a long journey, and will need to engage the efforts of people at every level.
Going further
There are parts of society which appear silent, where there are deeper levels of structural inequality and voices are not reached or heard. We need to challenge ourselves to enter into that part of society and listen.
It can be difficult to listen well across the different sectors, voluntary, public, private, but this is becoming ever more critical.