Have you ever been to one of those workshops that try to teach active listen skills? Sometimes it's a first step in a leadership course or conflict resolution seminar or ‘how to deal with difficult people’ workshop. You might be assigned a partner and be told to listen, without saying anything for 2-3 minutes. Or you might have to share what your partner said with the whole class, to test your listening. Most of the time during the course we’re thinking, ‘too bad my boss/partner/etc isn’t having to do this exercise’. The conclusion is usually that almost everyone could do better at active listening (which is different than just hearing), each other.
Active listening is one of the key steps in a good conversation, which include: stopping to hear the other person, actively listening to them, asking clarifying questions, interpreting/reacting, then speaking. When I see miscommunication in an international team, where they are all using their second or third language (English), it can be difficult to assess whether it’s the language or conversation skills that are misaligned. At first it’s easy (and polite) to assume that the other just didn’t understand the English. But after a team works together over several weeks they start to notice that it’s the way of conversing, not just the language, that’s so different. In the final week of our 5-week program when we ask them to form same-country teams, they often comment in their reflection writing what a relief it was, how easy and efficient the conversation was. They no longer take for granted the ease of communicating with others.
While bird watching recently, the guide noted a conversation happening between to birds. The call and response was so different I would have never known it was the same species. I wondered what the other birds in the forest thought of the conversation. Were they able to understand these birds warning each other of an approaching mutual predator? The other birds had to have heard the birds, but did they understand them? Were they actively listening for useful messages? Surely some species are cross communicating when they share a neighborhood.
This started my search of other species’ conversations happening around me. I began to wonder, if humans wanted to, could they join in? It might just stem from childhood images of Snow White having forest animals gather at her feet and perch on her shoulder to chat with her. But in a recent nature show I saw Amazonian tribes doing a call and response with birds in the forest. What if we really could have these conversations?
Ok, so what’s the first step to having a cross-species conversation? I suppose the same as with a human from another country. First, hear what they are saying. Hmmm… it seems I’ve found the rub right here in the first step. I could do a lot better at simply listening to the conversations around me. Eavesdropping on the Myna birds in the park or the gibbons in the zoo or in a less auditory sense, watching the tern partners communicate as they mirror each other’s flight. So many conversations to actively listen to.
We teach in our programs about the power of conversations. That in the best conversations, it’s not just saying what you think and hearing the others words, it is actively creating an idea together, a concept or way of seeing the world that did not exist before. We encourage participants to fully engage in conversation, like it’s the most important text of the course, a text that you read and write at the same time. The power of conversation is the power to change minds, yours and others, and thus the power to change our world and the way we live in it.
We know it’s taken millennia to learn to communicate as humans, to create language and to refine it to what it is today. It’s shaped our brains, our evolution, our ability to adapt to nearly all the earth’s ecosystems and thrive in them. I don’t expect we can reach this with other species anytime soon, if ever, but could we use what thousands of year’s has taught us, up until the active listening exercise last week. Stop and hear the one who is speaking. Suspend your own talking and thoughts and listen hard to try to hear what the other one is trying to say.
We might be surprised that we can actually understand a little bit of their language.
Active listening is one of the key steps in a good conversation, which include: stopping to hear the other person, actively listening to them, asking clarifying questions, interpreting/reacting, then speaking. When I see miscommunication in an international team, where they are all using their second or third language (English), it can be difficult to assess whether it’s the language or conversation skills that are misaligned. At first it’s easy (and polite) to assume that the other just didn’t understand the English. But after a team works together over several weeks they start to notice that it’s the way of conversing, not just the language, that’s so different. In the final week of our 5-week program when we ask them to form same-country teams, they often comment in their reflection writing what a relief it was, how easy and efficient the conversation was. They no longer take for granted the ease of communicating with others.
While bird watching recently, the guide noted a conversation happening between to birds. The call and response was so different I would have never known it was the same species. I wondered what the other birds in the forest thought of the conversation. Were they able to understand these birds warning each other of an approaching mutual predator? The other birds had to have heard the birds, but did they understand them? Were they actively listening for useful messages? Surely some species are cross communicating when they share a neighborhood.
This started my search of other species’ conversations happening around me. I began to wonder, if humans wanted to, could they join in? It might just stem from childhood images of Snow White having forest animals gather at her feet and perch on her shoulder to chat with her. But in a recent nature show I saw Amazonian tribes doing a call and response with birds in the forest. What if we really could have these conversations?
Ok, so what’s the first step to having a cross-species conversation? I suppose the same as with a human from another country. First, hear what they are saying. Hmmm… it seems I’ve found the rub right here in the first step. I could do a lot better at simply listening to the conversations around me. Eavesdropping on the Myna birds in the park or the gibbons in the zoo or in a less auditory sense, watching the tern partners communicate as they mirror each other’s flight. So many conversations to actively listen to.
We teach in our programs about the power of conversations. That in the best conversations, it’s not just saying what you think and hearing the others words, it is actively creating an idea together, a concept or way of seeing the world that did not exist before. We encourage participants to fully engage in conversation, like it’s the most important text of the course, a text that you read and write at the same time. The power of conversation is the power to change minds, yours and others, and thus the power to change our world and the way we live in it.
We know it’s taken millennia to learn to communicate as humans, to create language and to refine it to what it is today. It’s shaped our brains, our evolution, our ability to adapt to nearly all the earth’s ecosystems and thrive in them. I don’t expect we can reach this with other species anytime soon, if ever, but could we use what thousands of year’s has taught us, up until the active listening exercise last week. Stop and hear the one who is speaking. Suspend your own talking and thoughts and listen hard to try to hear what the other one is trying to say.
We might be surprised that we can actually understand a little bit of their language.