Listening does not have to mean being silent
Silence has all kinds of different meanings, culturally and personally. Silence can be critical for mindfulness - that is, for being present, hearing our own voice, aligning with our values and making intentional choices that are not driven solely by our biases, socialization, background experiences, fears and traumas.
Silence can be healing but it can also be damaging.
We often hear about the damaging impact of silence from staff more deeply impacted by systems of oppression within our client organizations. Silence equates to lip service, failed allyship, cowardice, lack of engagement, lack of caring, lack of commitment, lack of safety, leaving the burden of the work to those less aligned with power and more.
There is a kind of silence, especially from those who align with contextual power and privilege, that speaks volumes that may not be what was intended.
Silence has an impact, and in the case of leadership, it’s often an impact of harm.
Leaders often get frustrated - “I thought I was supposed to sit back and listen! To take up less space! To let others go first!”
Yes AND listening does not have to mean being silent.
This is what we mean when we say “create a circle not a ladder.”
We’re not talking about taking the current ladder (ie hierarchy) and turning it upside down.
We often say - don’t create space for yourself by negating others, but don’t create space for others by negating yourself either.
In a circle, there is space for everyone, and sometimes, as a leader, you have to take space to make space.
What might that look like?
Here are three guiding principles that come to mind for leaders to listen without being silent.
1) Practice active listening
This might seem obvious or cliche, but it’s amazing how little this happens, especially now that we are still so very dependent on zoom/video conferencing for meetings. However, blaming the virtual environment for a failure to create psychological safety and inclusion is, in my opinion, a cop-out. Yes it takes a bit more work, but only because we are still used to our default/dominant culture/in person/extrovert friendly norms.
In fact, the virtual environment offers more options for active listening during meetings that suit different communication and learning styles, such as using the chat, or responding with emojis. In fact, emojis are great for active listening when messaging as well, whether via IM, text, Slack or other platform.
But whether meeting in person or virtually, there are other old school methods of active listening as well, such as using facial expressions to show you are listening, reflecting back what you are hearing, and asking questions.
Often, leaders are silent because they don’t know what to say or they’re afraid of getting it wrong. We are socialized to have the answers, but the truth is, jumping right in with the answers, or with advice, can actually shut down the conversation. Leaning into genuine, authentic curiosity does not require “expertise” but it does require engagement and interest.
2) Make your learning and growth transparent
Again, we are often socialized from a very young age to believe we need to have the “right answers.” Within a traditional educational model, you don’t raise your hand in class unless you believe you have the right answer, after all.
It takes time to shift a culture based on “right or wrong” to a culture based on learning and growth. Reading Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck was eye opening for me as I realized all the ways in which I had been taught to fear failure and rejection. Our backgrounds and identities may drive this differently. For some, success (rather than failure) is about safety and survival. Some of us don’t live with margins that allow for failure… and yet, we are human, and therefore perfectionism is an unrealistic and oppressive ideal.
When we have more power and privilege, therefore, one of the ways we can build trust and foster psychological safety is by modeling learning and growth so it becomes safe for others as well.
3) Name what’s going on
Again (are you catching a theme here?!) you don’t have to have the answers. It can be very powerful to help slow things down by naming what’s going on, especially when there is an uncomfortable silence and no one seems to be willing to speak up. Often, what happens in these moments is, after an awkward pause, someone jumps in and changes the subject.
Instead, especially when you have some contextual power, it can be helpful to step in and say “I just want to name that there is a bit of an uncomfortable silence right now. I myself am not sure what to say on this issue either but I think it’s important that we take a moment to acknowledge it, and perhaps we can all take a quick five minute break to consider our response.” Or “I know we need to move on but perhaps we could all agree to come back to this issue when we next meet.”
Even when it’s less charged, it can still be helpful to say, “I’m here, and today my plan is to listen” (but in this case, see “active listening”) or “I’m here but there’s a lot of background noise where I am so I can’t really unmute and participate” (still see “active listening”! No reason you can’t still use chat or emoji responses, unless you are dialing in by phone, which does make it harder, but then I would argue that if you can dial in by phone, you can probably connect via video conference, and even if you can’t have your camera on, you can still use the chat.)
What strategies do you have for listening without being silent?
Banner photo by Jonathan Farber on Unsplash
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