You’re not listening.
It’s rare to find people that make you feel “seen”. People who make you feel safe, understood, & appreciated. In their company, we feel as if there is no such thing as distance. No space at all between the stars.
Just like bats can “see” with their ears, I think good listeners create a type of sonar image of whoever they’re listening to - more tangible than our eyes could ever see alone.
The art of listening has been in decline. Whether the cause is social media stunting attention spans, hectic work schedules or our biological inability to process the size and breadth of our global tribe, we are headed for severe consequences. Our society is polarized and on the brink of massive breakdowns. I feel like we keep waiting for someone to save us. Some big dramatic turn around.
I remember leadership being an elective in high school. It wasn’t part of the regular school day. You had to get a ride because the bus wouldn’t get you there early enough and many of the kids encouraged to join were already in ASB or top achievers or extroverted popular kids that certain teachers had favored. They were the ones that talked the loudest and most often. This made it pretty hard for all of us low income kids, who relied on buses, needed our sleep, or simply were quiet, to participate in leadership activities. I never understood why leadership wasn’t a required course and easily accessible.
This was most likely because schools have a hard time funding electives. Which is bullshit in itself, but Americans also seem to think leadership is a God given endowment to the select special few. Charisma is a blessing. The rest of you are sheep just waiting for your shepherd.
Fuck off.
I happen to believe that leadership and charisma are things that can be learned and curated and that leaders come in all sorts of varieties. Not just the big talkers.
Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison for opposing apartheid. Yet, one of his first moves as president of the post-apartheid South Africa was not to punish his predecessors, but to establish a Reconciliation Commission to keep the peace. Reconciliation can’t happen without forgiveness. Forgiveness can’t happen without empathy or understanding. Empathy can’t happen without listening.
It is often said that Mandela held his meetings with everyone sitting in a circle so that each person could be easily seen & heard. He was frequently the last to speak so that he could open the floor for others. He led a fractured nation to more equality & prosperity in his self imposed one term as president in the 90s. He is still revered as one of the greatest leaders in history.
We tend to remember & rate our leaders on their rhetoric & bombastic speeches. I would argue that, despite being a great orator, Mandela was a great leader because he was a good listener.
Mandela himself once said in an interview when asked about leadership, “it’s not a question of a leader, it’s a question of a human being who does something to make an ordinary individual to feel ‘I am a human being.’”
Basically this says to me, leadership is bringing out the humanity in others. In each other. It’s the seemingly ordinary, even mundane, small things.
Most people will not comprehend just how arduous a task it is to listen well, or how powerful and necessary this skill is. For maintaining friendships, fostering business, or even a democracy, listening is not a luxury.
It’s what we owe one another.
As Kate Murphy highlights in her book You’re Not Listening, FBI hostage negotiators emphasize that much of their task is actually just to make people feel understood and listened to. If you don’t, negotiations dissolve & they stop listening to you too. Even children & animals are deeply upset when not heard. It not only fractures their trust, but stunts their development.
When you have everyone turning a deaf ear to each other, what you breed is loneliness, disease, hate & violence.
I found startling connections to Murphy’s book in Anne Applebaum’s Atlantic article on Hanna Arendt’s The Rise of Totalitarianism. Arendt hypothesized that the main precursor to totalitarianism is loneliness and disconnection.
Reading both of these texts really drove home how crucial a skill listening is. Below I will go over Murphy and Applebaum’s insights and how considering their warnings and tips could help improve your relationships and maybe even our country. Be the leader you wished you had. Start by listening.
Kate Murphy is a reporter for the New York Times so she spends a great deal of time listening to people. Some of whom she admires and respects, others, she despises. Yet, to get their stories without them shutting down on her, she has to put her feelings aside and offer all of her subjects a certain amount of human consideration. She has to be curious about them without immediately passing judgment. Something John Keats called “negative capability”.
She found some startling science on listening. Apparently, when we listen well, the speaker’s and listener’s brain activities sync up. We literally are on the same brain wave. It’s nearly impossible to not feel a bit of empathy grow when you truly listen and when the speaker feels truly heard. This is what storytelling and journalism is based on. Feeling each other’s truths.
Murphy’s book is full of fun facts and useful advice. Here is a breakdown of good and bad listening habits.
These are of course starting points. If you want more examples and instructions - check out Murphy’s book. And research the topic for yourself! I’d love to hear what you find.
I will also press that you should offer yourself some of these kindnesses. Journal and listen to yourself. Be open with your own thoughts and feelings and ask yourself kind open questions. Don’t judge and label yourself too harshly and too soon. You may just not be listening to what you really want or need.
You are the vessel through which you filter the outer world. If you can’t see your own truths, you can’t accept anyone else’s and that doesn’t do anybody any good. We engage the same parts of our brain when we talk to ourselves as when we talk to others. So consider yourself worthy. Witness yourself. Maybe then you’ll stop asking for permission to lead. Maybe then you’ll just do it.
One last reminder - be extra attentive to the people closest to you. Most of us are much more likely to assume we already know our best friends and spouses and siblings so we stop really listening to them. Just because you’ve known someone for a certain number of years, doesn’t mean you can sum them up. People change and evolve. You may be shocked by how much you don’t know once you start really listening.
Why am I so obsessed with getting better at listening? Because we are at war again and things seem to keep getting worse.
Anne Applebaum in one of her latest articles has this to say about Arendt’s work on totalitarianism:
“The questions Arendt asks remain absolutely relevant today. She was fascinated by the passivity of so many people in the face of dictatorship, by the widespread willingness, even eagerness, to believe lies and propaganda—just consider the majority of Russian people today, unaware that there is even a war going on next door and prevented by law from calling it such. In the totalitarian world, trust has dissolved. The masses “believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true.” To explain this phenomenon, Arendt zeroes in on human psychology, especially the intersection between terror and loneliness.”
Arendt says, “Terror can rule absolutely only over men who are isolated against each other … Isolation may be the beginning of terror; it certainly is its most fertile ground; it always is its result.”
Arendt’s four main predictors of totalitarian regimes or ones that used terror to control and subvert everyone in society (not just their enemies) are:
Divided society in which individuals are isolated from each other - emotionally and in trust - not necessarily physically.
A strong man unifies through fear and propaganda.
Natural rights and individual sovereignty are eroded. Humans (mostly women and people of color) are seen as nothing more than animals. Acts of atrocity against them don’t seem as weighty. (Think abortion rights. Think George Floyd.)
The banality of evil - enough thoughtless individuals who are not necessarily evil, but carry out evil like it’s normal. Think mass shootings. Think cops who take their authority too far. Think how common it all feels.
I don’t want this to continue. And I don’t want to wait for some grand solution. I want to start with what I have control over. Yes, political action is necessary, but the private is political. What I choose to do or not do in a free society has weight.
I learned the power of “radical listening” from Deeyah Khan, a documentary film maker who studied jihadis and the American White Power movements. She engaged many people she strongly disagreed with but when she saw their humanity, they were willing to see hers. I highly highly recommend her documentaries. They are available on YouTube. Just search her name. I’ll try and have a proper blog post about her and her work soon. Because I want to be like her.
I choose to do the small, unglamorous everyday tasks that feel impossible sometimes. I choose to acknowledge humanity even when mine is being threatened. Even when anger surges through me and I want to deny it.
Some days I wish horrific doom on people who don’t seem to get it. But that seems counter productive too. I’m choosing to live for curiosity and for play.
Hopefully enough people doing the same will account for something.
Here’s to trying!
