Over the last four years, we have made connections with well over 2,000 people through convening and participating in over 400 ‘spaces for listening’. Each of these spaces comprises a one-off group of eight people, effectively strangers to each other at the start. We gather for just under an hour in a lightly structured virtual space, simply to listen to each other in three listening rounds. No formal roles, no hierarchy. No lofty aims, expectations or responsibilities. No need to ‘do’ anything beyond making the choice to be there, listen, speak in turn without interruption, feel heard, and to hear ourselves too in those moments.
Looking back over our experiences, we realise that these spaces for listening are in effect a low-key, ongoing, collaborative exploration of what it takes to be the change we want to see. It’s an enduring and practical enquiry into what happens when we just gather as a group of human beings, be in the moment together, and listen to each other.
“Just come along and experience it.”
We both find ourselves saying this again and again to people who contact us to find out more about the ‘spaces for listening’ approach. It has never been our intention to push a particular model or make any claims about its impact. This is totally about the shared, co-created experience.
In a way, each space is part of a rolling cooperative enquiry into what it takes to listen and just be alongside each other as human beings. None of us are there representing our particular profession or organisation, and it’s not a formally controlled or mandated space. It needs each of us to be ready to take a certain amount of risk, perhaps to be a bit vulnerable, to trust enough.
What does it take to truly listen to another person, to understand more of what is going on for each of us in these shared moments? How much (or rather how little) do we need to know about someone else in order to be interested enough to listen to them fully during three rounds of two minutes each? How much and how quickly can we feel enough trust – as strangers – to be there with each other, being ourselves, in this temporary community of enquiry?
What does it elicit for each of us individually? What do we notice in those moments, what insights and learning do we take into the rest of our life? What can we learn about ourselves, our own and wider issues, simply by listening to seven other people? What might this mean for who and how we are and how we can be elsewhere in our own lives, work, teams, networks?
What do we notice collectively, alongside this group of human beings, in this shared space? How cathartic it can be to listen to seven other random people with no sense of responsibility or agenda to push or follow-up actions to take! And perhaps we realise first-hand how much we can help and support simply by listening deeply to each other, rather than jumping in to ‘fix’, problem-solve, and offer advice (which tends to be more the norm in other settings).
What does all this mean for how ‘we’ might be able to gather across difference – in our community, in our political and civil society? How might we work and learn together differently, more collaboratively, by listening to and understanding each other more deeply?
Across the world, through generations, people have sat, talked and listened together in circles. It’s an essentially human thing to do. In a sense, we are reconnecting to this ancient practice and its simple power.
Such deep listening by itself cannot solve all our problems. But we can feel nourished by listening deeply to each other. And it can offer us the space to find community and connection – through all our fragility, strength, and differences. Perhaps there’s a feeling of hope and possibility in that.
How the sessions work
#SpacesForListening is structured in the form of three listening rounds, held by a facilitator (who is also an equal participant). There is a prompt for each round:
• How are you, and what is on your mind?
• An invitation to share your reflections and feelings now, and in light of what you have heard in Round 1.
• An invitation to share anything you’re taking away from the call, and anything that has resonated with you that you’ve appreciated.
Each of us gets two minutes to speak, which is timed and called out by the facilitator. We take our turn in a set order in each of the three rounds. Each of us can use our time to say whatever we like. If any of us wishes to pass when it is our turn, this is our choice. We do not interrupt each other or open up into a general conversation. We can choose, if we like, to comment on what others have said within our own allotted two minutes. At the end of the third round, it is the end of the call.
