The human family will come together when simply listening to one another supersedes having the “right” answer. What is important is to value and affirm one another. If we can do this, we will have the entire human family talking and listening to each other. This short existence is a special time for each person, a time for sharing ideas, exploring creativity, and basking in the glow of one another’s approval.
The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words. ~ RACHEL NAOMI REMEN
When the tribe first sat down in a circle and agreed to allow only one person to speak at a time – that was the longest step forward in the history of law. ~ Judge Curtis Bok
”Council is the practice of speaking and listening from the heart. Through compassionate, heartfelt expression and empathic, non-judgmental listening, Council inspires a non-hierarchical form of deep communication that reveals a group’s vision and purpose.” ~Ojai Foundation leadership, (http://www.ojaifoundation.org/what-is-council)
The way of council circle is THE ethos for our current socially-networked world. This is where each voice has its time and listening is more important than a battle of voices. In council, our pride is in how well we have heard “the Other”. This is humanity’s only hope now.
The wisest being in the circle is invisible, created by the drumming, the silence, the tears, the laughter, the stories. In the men’s circle, we each spoke, wept, laughed, shouted and sang into the silence, into the center of the circle. Often, if I chose to remain silent, waiting until it felt right to speak, another would say something that captured what lived within me perfectly. The feedback after deep sharing and deep listening was appreciation for something other than what I shared. This lifted me up and out of my pain, my pride, my sorrow, my victory and put me back together again…lifting me up or humbling me through warmth, through friendship, through a feeling of brotherhood enwrapped in a profound spiritual sense of community.
I remember a circle 5 or 6 years ago. I sat down and began using the words Us, We and You. A long time circle brother gently stopped me. “Nathaniel,” he said, “I can’t see you when you use these words to describe experience. And I want to see you. Please only use I when you talk about your week and the lessons you’ve learned.”
This was a huge evening for me because I really felt in my body the truth of personal responsibility.
My experience of circle is that I gain incredible wisdom in sitting with others, really on a level rarely plumbed in other settings.
One of the cornerstones of Circle is teaching adults and children to appreciate one another in a manner that the recipient can truly feel the appreciation. I say what I really see inside the person, what I love, honor and respect about the person – not their story. I learn not to over appreciate because I know that some of us can only “hold” so much. I avoid speaking about their appearance but more about their essence. Avoid disguised advice in your appreciations like “ It’s important to take care of yourself”. I try not to use superlatives like greatest, best etc. I try to step out of myself and think only of giving the gift of appreciation in a way that the receiver will accept it with ease.
The principles of deep-listening in Council Circle gatherings are necessary for our now increasingly socially-networked world.
Deep Listening principles from the Council tradition are as follows:
1- Maintain eye contact with the person speaking.
2- Be relaxed but present.
3- Be still.
4- Listen from the heart.
5- Be non-judgmental.
6- Allow the story to unfold.
7- Listen carefully and the person speaking will always tell you what they need.
8- It’s not your job to “fix” the person who’s speaking.
9- Common mistakes to avoid:
a) DON’T give advice (unless asked for)
b) DON’T “swap stories” to reassure the person who’s speaking. You may
think your story is “the same” but its THAT PERSON’S moment, not yours.
c) DON’T interpret the meaning of his feelings
d) DON’T interrupt discharge of emotion (laughter, tears, etc.).
Let the emotions flow out into the circle and sit in attendance to
that emotion.
e) DON’T talk very much
f) DON’T ask questions for your own information.
g) DON’T think a lot about how to “help” the person speaking.
h) ONLY ask questions to lead the person deeper into feelings & his own re/solutions.
10- The most common mistake: Trying to show the person speaking what a good, understanding, perceptive, kind, helpful … person, counselor, leader … you are.
11- Listen, listen, listen! (That’s really what we all need).
The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words. ~ RACHEL NAOMI REMEN
The nature of a circle is equality and if we really want to heal the world through circles (whether digital or in-the-flesh), we must learn the way of circle, which was mastered many moons ago in the tribal cultures of the world. This is our only hope as humanity at this time. We do not have time for the dis-organized, tangled world of arguing as seen in the British Parliment. We NEVER have time for the killing off of other ethnicities and the horrible mess afterwards. We don’t have time for hate-speak and fighting.
If I take time, once a week, to sit with my brothers and sisters for 3-4 hours and only listen to their truth and only speak my truth, we will make light-speed progress through a weaving of hearts and minds. Try this today: sit with your friend, your spouse, your parent, your brother or sister, and simply listen to him/her for 30 minutes. Don’t offer advice, don’t interrupt, don’t identify. Just listen. That’s what our world needs right now to allow our collective intelligence true emergence.
The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words. ~ RACHEL NAOMI REMEN
Listening is one of the most attractive traits in a fellow human being. Interest is sexy, and shows that you want to see into the other person. Learning another’s likes, favorites and passions transforms the relationship into one of transparency and intimacy. A classic rephrasing of intimacy is In-To-Me-See.
In the world of social media marketing, listening is a critical element to the humanization of a brand, the discovery of key influencers, communities and conversations where your product or service has an audience. There are loads of tools for listening, all with different slants on the art and science of gathering intelligence. But a critical aspect of this equation is the EQ (emotional intelligence) of the analyst looking at the data (even if the tool has already performed some intuitive filtering).
To use a dating metaphor: when your date really listens to you, he/she will be tying his/her chosen topics into what you are saying, weaving the two hearts at the table, on the blanket, or on the beach together. This weaving of hearts is just as important in social media marketing, where community managers and small business owners have the mandate to engage in one-one dialogues with customers or segmented niches. Such dialogues are not simply about opening up and letting things go on a natural course. As Charlene Li says in her latest book, Open Leadership, “Being open requires more —not less—rigor and effort than being in control.” The best relationships are ACTIVE!
Listening IS Invitation
Active listening has long been a practice amongst psychologists and psychotherapists, and is no less important in the realm of social networking. To actively listen one might consider the following important actions (adapted from the Council Circle tradition of co-listening):
1) Maintain eye contact with the person speaking (In cyber-space, this means using the filters in the listening tools in an intuitive manner so as to properly segment your audience based on keywords, keyphrases AND other verticals that are attractive to that niche. sCRM is all about this CONNECTION of information from databases to extract precise lists of keywords relevant AND resonant to your audience).
2) Be relaxed but present. (Check out Jet Blue’s twitter account. Their staff are interacting with customers in an uplifting, humorous manner).
3) Be still.
4) Listen from the heart. (The heart is THE most important muscle in social media marketing!)
5) Allow the story to unfold. (The Nestle Facebook fiasco is a classic example of a Community Manager rushing in prior to thinking the consequences through).
6) Listen carefully and the person speaking will always tell you what they need.
7) It’s not your job to “fix” the person who’s working.
8) Common mistakes to avoid:
DON’T give advice (unless asked for). (In social networking, Community Managers/Business owners have the mandate to be problem solvers. To truly solve a problem one must listen first. The key distinction between an Advice-Giver and a Problem-Solver is ACTION!)
DON’T “swap stories” to reassure the person who is speaking
DON’T interpret the meaning of his feelings
DON’T interrupt discharge of emotion (laughter, tears, etc.)
DON’T talk very much
DON’T ask questions for your own information
ONLY ask questions to lead the person deeper into feelings & his own re/solutions.
The most common mistake: Trying to show the person speaking what a good, understanding, perceptive, kind, helpful … person, counselor, leader … you are.
Listen, listen, listen! (That’s really what we all need!)
To return to the weaving metaphor, when one weaves strands of past subjects into the current conversation, a common point of reference is established. The social fabric of the internet is one of the most dynamic environments humanity has EVER engaged in…having the tools to listen is critical (science), knowing how to listen is an art that takes practice or comes naturally. Good community managers are EXCELLENT listeners who hear the heart of their audience and give the customer what he/she wants. And that is what makes GREAT customer-centric business, the current HOT method of marketing.
David Deida, the relationship author, writes, “Who we trust in a business situation is based on how open we are. Openness is bodily openness, muscular relaxation, heart openness as opposed to hiding behind some emotional wall, and spiritual openness, which is actually feeling so fully into the moment that there’s no separation between you and the entire moment.” Openess, feeling and intuition are INHERENT traits of the successful social media marketer/networker.
