Listening with heart

Reading Adam Kahane some more and thinking about listening:

It is a truism to say this, but I’ve been pondering the deep implications of this statement and what it means for a practice of listening and opening that becomes a leadership skill.

It is almost impossible to describe what it is like to listen from the heart. We easily talk about “speaking from the heart” or making a “heartfelt” appeal, and we recognize this in someone who is deeply and honestly communicating their truth. We can probably all identify moments when we have heard people speaking from the heart and we may even be able to remember moments when we were capable of this kind of power. One becomes solid in a way that is out of the ordinary. One feels anchored and firm in conviction and confident of the words one is using. It is sometimes accompanied with tears or other hints of emotion but at one’s core there is a steadiness that appears almost otherworldly. One develops a sense of mutuality with the other, and the boundaries begin to blur.

It is by no means a run of the mill state of being for most of us, but it is far more common than it’s attendant skill: heartfelt listening.

If it is possible to speak from the very centre of one’s being what does it feel like to listen from that place, to listen as the Dalai Lama says “with the heart?” How do we cultivate that in daily life?

My experience of listening with the heart was drafted in the Cariboo region of British Columbia. When I was working with the Federal Treaty Negotiation Office, my job was to bring together third party stakeholder to provide governments with advice on treaty negotiations with First Nations. Most of the people I worked with in the Cariboo were virulently opposed to treaty making when we started working there in the mid 1990s. They were loggers, ranchers, miners and business people, among others, and although some understood that reconciliation of the land question was an important and inevitable journey for British Columbia, most thought that treaties would put too much land in the control of First Nations and erode the ability for the resource sectors to make a living in the region.

This was a real fear, although it was based in a story about First Nations that was loaded with assumptions about competence, vengeance and paternalism. Our challenge was to find ways of hearing the interests of these non-Aboriginal stakeholders and bring them to the negotiating table in a way that resulted in agreements that would work for all parties.

If we were successful, it was because I think we learned to hear at a heart level what people were saying to us. AND I think our sincere desire to know these folks gave us the questions that they could ask of each other too. Over years of eating, drinking, working and traveling with these folks I came to realize that people in the Cariboo, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal share something in common: they care deeply about their region. When they perceive a threat to the future of the Cariboo they react like a parent protecting a child: they become defensive and then aggressive.

It was this defensive and aggressive reaction that gave the Cariboo region its poorly deserved reputation. For me it was hard to hear white people talking about Aboriginal in racist terms. It was hard to hear resource industry workers talk about how they felt about environmentalists, people with whom I shared more in common. And it was hard to hear Aboriginal people talking about white people in sweeping generalizations because my background is mixed ancestry and I take great pride in my Irish heritage.

If I was to work effectively with these interests I knew that I would have to hear deeper than the words, right into the heart of the experience and the story. Without fully understanding that, there was no way we could fashion common ground.

What I learned in the Cariboo was what it feels like to listen without blame or judgment. It feels very much like one is holding something open, as if you have your arms raised above your head and you are keeping a tent from collapsing in on you. You can find it hard to breathe, and if for some reason the conversation should switch into a reactive and blaming mode, there is a visceral feeling of the tent coming down., The conversation becomes smothering, people talk on top of one another, and the listening evaporates. Working in this environment taught me to remain open and to hear what people were saying, beyond the “goddamn Indians” comments.

The last time I went up there to work was in 2003 when I facilitated an Open Space session with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people from government, businesses, the resource sector and the community. In the closing circle I made the observation that my five years of working with these people had taught me that deep below the bluster were individuals who cared so deeply about this place that they couldn’t think of letting go of any part of it. I suggested that far from being a hindrance to treaty settlements, this would work in their favour, because a future without care and passion and connection is not a sustainable future. The result of creating sincere dialogue and listening between groups like that is, with the right questions and enough time, they come to see that deep commonality in each other.

Folks in the Cariboo are continuing to work together and the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities are in a place now with each other that 10 years ago would have seemed impossible. Listening to one another with heart has made this future emerge.

As humans, using our deepest faculties, we really have no idea about just how much we can accomplish.