Transcriber: Simon Chou Reviewer: Johannes Duschner
Think about listening.
What is listening really mean to you?
Maybe you're thinking about some time in your past?
Listening to parents, a favorite song
or maybe even the voice of your boss at work.
Whenever I think about what listing really means to me,
it always takes me back to the same place
to a moment when I was nine years old listening to the waves in Puerto Rico.
Let me take you back there right now.
Imagine camping at the beach, the feeling of camping at the beach.
It’s nighttime and the stars are bright.
You’ve had a long day of swimming in the saltwater under the warm sun.
It feels good, right?
Yeah, you’re falling asleep to the ocean waves,
and it's as if they're singing you this calming lullaby,
inviting you to rest peacefully.
And then you wake up the next morning and the sun is bright.
The waves, they're still there.
And this time they're inviting you to come out and play.
One day I was snorkeling with my dad.
We were out to catch dinner.
We were swimming back.
We had a bunch of fish and a mesh bag that we were pulling behind us
when suddenly the current shifted.
Strong waves lifted us up,
pushing us forward and crashed us down
on a sharp reef that we were trying to get around.
And the waves kept coming over and over and over.
You know, you could imagine for a nine year old,
this is like a really scary moment.
But for me, I had spent so much time listening to those waves.
I was familiar with their sounds,
I was familiar with their ways
and I knew that everything was going to be OK.
I knew they were moving us forward, but my dad, he was scared.
So, he tries to save me.
And instead, he tumbles on top of me
as we crash against that sharp reef again and again.
Luckily, we make it to shore with only some minor cuts and bruises.
Unfortunately, we lost our catch for dinner.
The waves taught me so much about listening as a young child.
They taught me how to trust the ebb and flow,
not to be afraid of those minor cuts and bruises.
But most importantly, they taught me how to be present in the moment.
So, let’s take a little deeper dive into understanding
what listening really means to us.
Think of someone who listened to you and the response helped you.
Maybe it helped you move forward; make a decision.
Maybe you had an aha moment or you just felt good
and knew that you weren't alone anymore.
I want you to do something for me right now.
Take eight seconds.
Think about this moment of listening that helped you.
And what was it about that listening that helped you.
I will count the eight seconds in my mind.
That was eight seconds.
I decided to do a survey on social media
when I knew I was going to be doing this talk
and we asked people
to describe listening that helped them,
that made a difference in just one word or phrase.
And in just a couple of days,
we had 100 answers from over 20 different countries
with over 70 different words and phrases.
Listening is huge in terms of when it helps people.
I’m going to read some of these words out loud
and as I do, just for fun,
I want you to listen from the top of your head to the tip of your toes.
Listen with your whole body.
Connection.
Presence.
Understanding.
Attention.
Life-changing.
Valued.
Love.
Notice the impact.
I mean that shares some science right now
so that you understand your experience a little bit better.
There’s an ongoing meta data analysis at the Hebrew University
by a leading researcher named Dr. Avi Kluger.
He's looking at the impact of listening on all different areas,
but also on performance and on well-being.
There are over 900 correlates in this research.
This research is recognizing that listening is a facilitator,
a facilitator of a sense of togetherness between two people.
And when we feel this sense of togetherness,
our minds open and we become creative
and we change.
So, this moment that helped you: What new ideas did you have?
And how did you change? Yeah.
This meta analysis is also giving us the big picture of the impact
of listening on organizations.
Listening is very busy getting things done,
but often we don’t realize it because it’s so quiet.
So, I’ll let you know what it’s getting done.
Listening builds psychological safety, relationships and trust.
It also helps us to have more creative solutions
and to make more effective decisions.
What is the output of this?
Listening increases performance.
Sales people, who listen? They sell more.
Negotiators who listen? Negotiate better.
If your boss listens to you at work,
you are more likely to be satisfied with your job
and you are more likely to be committed to the organization.
And last but not least, listening increases well being.
Less depression, less exhaustion, less burnout.
So this listening, this listening that helps.
What would our world be like, if we could shape our future
by listening in this way?
At school, at work, in politics, at home?
This is what you experienced.
This is what the research is showing.
And this is the world that we want to shape.
But we have a lot of work to do to make this happen,
because right now not listening is shaping our world more than listening.
Why? Listening is hard.
It’s really, really hard.
It takes attention.
It does not mean agreement.
It’s vulnerable, because we have to look in the mirror.
And what a lot of people don’t realize is that listening is a muscle
to be trained and maintained.
The good news is that we can learn how to be better listeners.
The research is showing this, but the research is also showing
that just talking about the benefits of listening is not enough.
We need experiential training.
We need to know what it feels like to be listened to.
And not only that, we need time to reflect on our experiences after
to think about it; a time to think about it, to let it sink in.
This is what changes behaviors.
This is what helps us to become a better listener.
I believe that if we partner science with experiential learning
and then regular practice over time,
that this will create a safe space for listening
to transform this communication into connection.
We need time to listen to practice listening in the calm waters
before we can listen more when the waves are crashing.
In 2016, I was at an event in Belgium.
It was a world cafe, which is a kind of a brainstorming event.
And just like often happens at events like this,
you bump into the same person over and over, right?
So the person I bumped into often was a woman from the Netherlands,
and she had spent time in Israel working on peace collaborations.
And we talked about the importance of listening.
A few months later, she sends me this email.
It says: “Raquel, I have this friend that specializes in listening.”
Side note: I did not know anyone specialized in listening at the time.
So, he just published some research.
You might be interested in it.
I read his article and I was totally surprised.
I did not realize that you can change someone’s perspective
just by listening.
No persuading, no convincing, just listening.
I wanted to know more because I thought I was a pretty good listener
that it came naturally to me
and I wanted to help others to listen better.
So, I reached out to Dr. Kluger.
He’s the one that is doing this meta analysis and wrote the article.
That’s when I found out about it.
And I'll never forget our first call.
He was serious and he says OK, let’s start with the fundamentals.
And then he smiles and with a twinkle in his eye, he says: “Let’s have fun.”
I was a little confused, first,
and then I realized he’s inviting me to play with listening.
We did not talk about listening.
We practiced listening experientially
as if we were at this listening playground .
We followed each other’s hands.
We shared all different types of stories.
We asked questions using empathy.
We listened in silence.
He was teaching me how to become a better listener through play,
just like his research was showing.
This moment of being listened to began shaping me and my future.
Fast forward: one year later.
I had invited so many groups to play with listening.
It didn’t matter the country, the culture, the age, the gender, work experience.
I practiced on teams.
I practiced on groups of strangers.
I even had one group of married couples.
And it was magic. Each time.
It was a superpower.
Now, I wasn’t this little girl listening to the waves by herself.
I was this experimental teenager playing in the waves of my friends.
In one circumstance, I had a group of 30 strangers together.
And I had put them into pairs doing something called a timesharing
where we take turns listening to each other.
Very simple.
And I was standing on the outside looking in and time stopped for me.
I had goose bumps.
The whole group, even though they were only focused on each other,
just laughed at the same time.
And then they were loud at the same time,
and they were quiet at the same time.
I was witnessing weight being lifted off their shoulders in just a few minutes,
and they were feeling connected,
their minds were cleared clear and they were inspiring each other.
And this time I had some science to explain what just happened.
I was so excited that I called Dr. Kluger to share my experiences.
And then he asked me a simple, yet very powerful question that showed me
that he had listened to me deeply in other conversations:
“Raquel, what if you could bring this magic home to your son?”
In that very moment, I made a decision,
I'm going to bring this magic home to my son.
I'm going to shape his future by listening to him.
And you know what happened? I crashed more than once.
I still crash all the time
because I’m listening or not listening with a subconscious agenda.
I’m distracted by my mom agenda.
And just like my dad, who's trying to save me from those waves crashing,
my worries of what could be, causing me to tumble on top of my son.
But I do have moments of success like the time he texts me.
He is frustrated because I didn’t remind him
to take his food to school.
My reaction is to say: “Hey, I packed it.
You can remember to take it, right?”
But instead, I texted back: Anything else?
A few moments later, he responds.
Nah, I guess I can do it next time.
So, now I’m the adult that realizes
that all this practice is helping me to navigate these unterlying currents.
And yet I am still practicing one wave at a time.
And I can’t do it alone.
I need your help by listening, this superpower listening.
Leaders, educators, decision makers, all of us here:
We are currently in a communication crisis because listening doesn’t have a voice.
And it’s time.
It’s time to invest time in resources in listening training
that’s partnering with science.
It’s also time to create and design safe spaces
where we can practice listening on a regular basis.
It is possible to work smarter and feel better.
It’s possible.
So, I want you to do one more thing for me.
Take eight seconds and think about
who are you going to invite first to play with listening?
I’ll count the eight seconds in my mind.
That was eight seconds.
Together with this person practice your listening superpower
in those calm waters;
get to know the ebb and the flow.
We can shape our future together:
By listening.
Thank you.
(Applause)