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Listening as a Creative Act
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As a coach I consider myself a bit of a connoisseur of Listening. Over the years I keep finding new depths of listening, new directions of listening, and new possibilities and views of reality through shifting and expanding my view of what listening really is and what it can be. So, I found myself surprised once again by hearing something profound in a recent mastermind call with Ankush Jain and several coaches in the AJC school. It’s still working its way into me. If you’ve been to my Insight Salons, you’d recognize it as a “!” moment for me. First I shall share the full quote that Ankush shared. You might have your own powerful insights from this passage, before interceding with what was new and fresh for me. From the UK activist Laurence Platt: “The soundtrack of my life during the first halcyon summer holiday at Lookout Beach Plettenberg Bay was hands down unquestionably no doubt about it The Beatles Abbey Road. It was, after the breakthrough Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, their second concept album in which breaks between tracks and sides were completely arbitrary and basically non-existent. It was one seamless whole.
As a monastery in which to discover who you really are, there’s nothing quite like music. In Plettenberg Bay I listened to Abbey Road, as did everyone else. It was the soundtrack of their lives too. But later, much much later, I came to appreciate, by realizing what I didn’t do, I hadn’t ever listened to Abbey Road. I came to see I hadn’t listened to anything else, for that matter, either. What I did do by default, rather, was hear.
The distinction is both subtle and profound. Hearing is listening without any responsibility, without any ownership. At worst, hearing is simply eardrums’ automatic sensory reaction to soundwaves, machinery which doesn’t require the presence of who you really are. At best, it’s paying attention. Listening is hearing with creativity, with responsibility, with intention, with bringing your Self to bear on the matter. And the thing is this: when you hear Abbey Road, obviously it’s The Beatles creating the music. But when you listen to Abbey Road, it’s you creating the possibility of The Beatles creating the music.” Read it again. Listen for what YOU hear. On the surface, if I wasn’t really listening, I could dismiss this as something I already know: shallow listening vs deep listening. Am I really present? Am I receiving on all channels? Am I being impacted? Am I emotionally, relationally, spiritually involved? I’ve been a fan and teacher of ‘generative listening’, inspired by the work of Nancy Kline: the art of listening that creates a space where the person being listened to becomes wiser, more resourceful. Being a catalyst, without agenda, where the client expands and folds and taps into their own wisdom. Almost no one is teaching that, and I had been holding that as the pinnacle of listening, until now. The two words that jumped out from this passage and rattled me were responsibility and creativity. This isn’t just listening as a catalyst. It’s participatory listening. It’s listening as a creative act. As a co-creation, a relationship, a dance. What if the way you listen, where you are listening from, can be even more impactful than what is said? What if you listen not just to understand, but to be impacted? (If you’re a coach, what if you listened to your client the way you would listen to your coach?) It’s the responsibility (i.e. ability) of both sides to deepen the listening. If you’re sharing something valuable, prepare the person to really listen. Make sure that they receive it. Make sure they’re impacted. And if someone is sharing with you, listen like your life depended on it. And make sure that you receive them. Let yourself be impacted, and share the impact. What if you’re not only expanding how much you notice within listening, but also taking on the responsibility for everything you notice? If it’s in your awareness, you have the ability to respond. This bridges from deep listening into the topic of Radical Responsibility (the topic of an Insight Salon in 2020–message me if you’d like that recording). What if you listened to create? As part of something coming into the world, that didn’t exist before. Where it is not one parties responsibility to create, but both the speaker and the listener. Deep listening can be a creative act. You know deep listening has occurred when the world has changed for both parties. What if listening could change the world? Michael McDonald :: Transformational Coach :: authenticintegrity.com |
Michael McDonald, Transformational Coach
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