Still listening
By Charlie Jones & Brigid Russell
There is fatigue. It seems to go way beyond the physical and mental exhaustion of living and working through the pandemic for nearly 18 months. It’s an existential fatigue. Who are we now, and how do we want to be?
Many of us in health and care feel under pressure to get on with stuff, to reassure ourselves somehow by driving forwards to action. Before we rush on, though, we think there is a need to listen to each other more, to say what’s on our minds more freely. We’d like to share a perspective about how we might do that for ourselves. It draws on our experience of connecting with hundreds of people through Spaces for Listening [i] over the past year.
#SpacesForListening
We have been holding Spaces for Listening for over a year now, and the interest is continuing to ripple out farther and wider. Around 800 people from across the UK, Ireland, and beyond, have come together in over 140 one-off groups to listen to each other, uninterrupted. In addition, many of those who have experienced spaces for listening with us have gone on to use this simple approach within their own organisations across the public and third sectors. It is easy to set up, requiring only a Zoom link and the readiness of eight people to take part for 50 minutes including one person who facilitates (and also takes part).
This is not a neatly packaged intervention. It is about meeting as equals and trusting that we can both help ourselves and support each other in an informal space. The approach is counter-cultural in that it goes beyond role, hierarchy, and organisational responsibility. It is about exercising our individual and collective agency, a way of being and working with each other in a more relational and non-hierarchical way.
In listening to each other, we find ourselves connected by our common humanity, and our shared experiences of living with the pandemic. We are also supported to share and hear more about each other’s differences. We think that this quality of listening has the potential to support more meaningful collaboration, by enabling us to understand more about each other’s perspectives. In sharing, we have felt lighter and more connected. We are liberated from the responsibility to ‘fix’, and we realise that we can care for each other by being there — simply listening.
What are we noticing?
There are tensions many of us are experiencing that come up over and over again in Spaces for Listening. It is in holding space for these tensions that we believe we will find the creativity to make real progress.
We want a better, fairer future — but we also feel overwhelmed and wonder what to do next.
Many of us in health and care are weary of the ‘same old’, and we are fearful of missing the collective opportunities to begin to put right the inequitable wrongs in society. We are anxious about the future, despairing and angry about the present, and we feel hopeful and excited about possibilities too. Yet, many of us do not feel there is the space to talk freely about the things which really matter including racism, the social and economic inequities, and the pressures people are experiencing in living and working with the pandemic. What can we actually do to support a fairer society? Do we feel able to focus our energy in the right places? Are we spending our time on what really matters?
There are impassioned calls to get past the corporate gloss, stop tinkering with the status quo, name where power and privilege sit, and collaborate more meaningfully. But, the scale and complexity of the task feels overwhelming: where on earth to start? It leaves us wondering: What difference can I possibly make? What does it mean for me? Am I prepared to consider my role and identity, get beyond a sense of guilt and helplessness, and face my own privilege?
We want both to get on with it, and also to pause.
We notice that the pace can feel unrelenting, with an urgency to get on with something — anything. The default, in the absence of any kind of ‘Plan B’, seems to be a pull back to ‘business as usual’, or busy-ness as usual perhaps. But, we also notice there is an alternative view spoken in quieter tones — a heartfelt yearning for space. Space to listen to ourselves, and bear witness to each other, and to acknowledge what we are all living and working through. Space to be still, and grieve. Space to question both the focus of our efforts and the suitability of our working practices. Space to grow relationships, and understand who we are.
The challenge is in how to tolerate these tensions, and to resist the urge to rush to solutions which can appear to offer early relief. Busy-ness might be a good way to manage anxiety, but when we have more space together, we are able to consider what difference we are really trying to make, to think more clearly. Is everyone here who needs to be in the conversation — and who decides? What might our next step together be? This is not about actions to be taken by leaders in positions of hierarchy; it is more about how we exercise our collective agency to create these spaces with and for each other.
Creating space for possibility
During the pandemic there has been an understandable focus on well-being initiatives, and a lot of professional support has been put in place for people working across health and care. We entirely support this.
And… we’re hearing about a deeply felt need for something else. Something simpler and more organic that includes everyone — a different way of being and doing things together, rather than an intervention. This is about much more than our individual well-being. It is about how we connect with each other, how we understand our purpose, and how we feel able to focus on what needs to be done collectively.
We have heard time and again a wish to get away from tinkering with, or adding to, a way of doing things that is fundamentally no longer fit for purpose. What if we can stick with the tensions we are experiencing, rather than avoid them? If we can create the space together to hold them, and if we can speak freely and listen, then maybe we can gradually reconcile them. Yes, we need to act. But let’s be more intentional, and spend our energy on what we really believe will make a difference, rather than just defaulting to what we have always done.
Rather than rush to find final solutions, let’s arrive at our next steps together — through diverse, vibrant conversations. Let’s explore and experiment.
It’s about how we listen
It is hard to disagree with the importance of listening, so why do we go on and on about it? Because listening is essential to how we work relationally with each other every single day. It is relevant to all of our interactions to attend to the quality of our listening. To be still and present, to connect with someone with curiosity rather than judgement.
But how often are we able to listen properly? How open are we to being moved by what we hear, to change our minds as a result, or do we remain more focussed on offering our solution? We tend to talk over each other, waiting for the next pause to say our piece. Our sense is that this distracted and partial listening is characteristic of the rush generated by the tensions we are experiencing. Proper listening and feeling able to stay open to the tensions therefore go hand in hand.
We’re still listening
This is not about listening just enough to get things ‘sorted’. The point is that good listening is an ongoing part of a better future. Having space both to listen and to hold the tensions in our work and lives needs to be part of the everyday fabric of how we do things.
We have seen in Spaces for Listening how we can create for one another a space to reconnect with each other as people, to feel less alone, and to consider that there might just be other ways of living and working together — holding and navigating the tensions as we go.
If we are more able and prepared to listen to and understand each other, then we are more likely to be able to engage in more creative, honest, and open conversations across our communities and organisations. It is about being in spaces where we can be alongside each other, working collaboratively as equals, and holding the creative tension. This means being able to bring our strengths and commonalities together in the most effective way, as well as understanding and valuing our differences.
There is much work to be done together in making positive social change. And for that we need to keep on listening to each other.
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[i] Spaces for Listening is a structured approach in which 7 or 8 people come together over zoom for a 50 minute confidential session. It comprises three listening rounds in which each person has a 2 minute timed turn to speak uninterrupted in response to a different prompt in each round. For more details of the approach and experiences to date see blogs by Charlie Jones & Brigid Russell Spaces for Listening (November 2020) and Listening in practice, in the spaces in between (March 2021), and the guest blog by Claire Longmuir Listening with Kindness (February 2020)
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For more about people’s experiences in their own words, have a look at #SpacesForListening on Twitter. You can find us on Twitter @charlie_psych and @brigidrussell51
