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4. A nice one. Kristin Glaser, Some more thoughts about beginning listening groups, including what you might do if there is no leader
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4. A nice one
I've given three dialogues thick with horrors, and now it seems appropriate to give a dialogue where good things go on - they do happen, even in a beginner's group, and they do feel good.
Tony: (is silent for about a minute, eyes closed. Then… ) What comes up here is an incident that occurred in the earlier part of the meeting, during the break. I walked up to this fellow and asked how long he'd been in Changes, and he said, ’I don't want to think about it, ’ and turned away. ”
Cleo: " You're remembering an incident in which you asked somebody a question and he wouldn't answer it. "
Tony: " Yes… but it wasn't just asking him a question. (slowly) I wanted to start a conversation. "
Cleo: " So it was more than just a question. You wanted to talk to him. "
Tony: " That's right! I was opening myself up in a way. And now I see that his turning away was like a rejection of my openness. No wonder it feels bad! "
Now Tony knows a little more about himself than he did before he started, and Cleo has had the satisfaction of seeing him use her responses to help his own process. In a beginner's group, where there are so many people waiting a turn to try this new thing Listening, it's hard for anyone to get a chance to really feel the good things about it. I just keep hoping they'll be interested enough to keep trying. I wish everyone in the world knew about Listening - that world would be a better place for me.
Kristin Glaser, Some more thoughts about beginning listening groups, including what you might do if there is no leader
Everyone I have seen run a beginning listening group does it slightly or not so slightly differently. As long as the basic issues that Linda raises are being addressed, there are a lot of styles and variations which work better with different groups and different leaders.
When I run a group, I am concerned with immediately teaching the attitude which I feel goes along with doing good listening and focusing. Somehow, I have usually had a small group of people who are sitting on the floor together, almost knee-to-knee. In my introduction, I emphasize the open, relaxed, receptive - almost positive, if you can get there - frame of mind that is preparatory to doing either listening or focusing. To help people get there, I may give the following instructions, doing them myself as we go along:
Please sit in a relaxed, but not slumped position, close your eyes and pay attention to your breathing. (Pause. )
Take some deep breaths, and try to attend to the whole process of taking the air in and letting it out. (Pause. )
Check your body for whatever sensations may be there - a tight place, a tense stomach. Try to relax the tension, but if it won't go easily, note that place and you may want to come back to it when you are focusing. (Pause. )
Go back to the breathing and try and clear your head of the fast thoughts, the ticker tape, that usually runs through. Take those thoughts and try and put them away, to pick them up again later. (Pause. )
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Sit quietly now for a few seconds and then open your eyes.
When we have finished this exercise, I am usually in a very relaxed but alert state. Talking quite slowly, I may take a minute to explain how I feel and how this makes me ready and receptive to either go into myself, focus and talk about my feelings, or be really ready to listen to someone else. At this point I will probably ask someone to talk and I will listen.
I then move in front of the person who is going to talk and settle myself as close as feels comfortable. My body position of closeness, slightly leaning forward, and my facial expression of interest and warmth all combine to give a message to the talker that I am there with all my attention and caring to hear what she has to say. To me, taking the time to develop my attention and receptivity are a very critical part of the listening process and prevent the initial learning from having the stiltedness and hollowness that people complain of. However, you do it, you should be totally there.
We will then go on to do the round-robin and continue with Linda's model.
What happens when you don't have someone to teach you but you would like to learn listening, anyway? We hope that you can learn by yourself using this book. I would make some suggestions about doing it differently. Suppose that you and a group of five others decide to try. If you want a leaderless context make sure that everyone has read all of the sections of this book on listening and focusing. To start you will want to have really studied the part on Listening. The structure to use is trios. Have one person talking, another listening, and the third observing and taking the leader's function of asking each person for feedback and making his own comments. Then the other three people in the group who have also been observing will make additional comments. Do a round-robin in this way but really take your time. Clearly you will be needing to learn from each other so give plenty of time to process each interaction and make sure that someone is trying to " listen" to each comment made by the interactors or observers. To make it easier to learn from each other, always go slow, try to keep your interactions short, talk about feelings but not the big heavy ones to start off with. Have a conversation ahead of time about guidelines for feedback to each other. Listening is only learned by trying and probably making lots of mistakes. Listening goes against almost all our natural impulses in a conversation. Hopefully you will all be able to agree to hear each other's comments and criticisms without it being difficult. Perhaps you can learn to offer a supportive comment to go along with each correction.
If you can get a tape recorder, it would help the learning process immensely. If you can tape an interaction, play the interaction back and let the listener hear himself, he may be able to pick up on and comment on his own work. It is also important to spend some time on the person who is doing the talking. Is she getting to her feelings or skimming along the top? Is she inwardly " checking" the responses she gets to determine whether they feel accurate? If they don't, is she correcting the listener by saying something like, " That’s almost right, but it's more like…”
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