Active Listening — "Listening" Changes Judgement

"I listen well to others" — many people feel this. But what psychology has illuminated over half a century is the fact that truly being able to "listen" is rare. The act of listening looks passive yet is the most active work of the heart. What this volume treats is the revolutionary nature of that act of listening. Rogers's active listening, Rosenberg's empathic listening, Bohm's dialogue, Isaacs's four practices, Krishnamurti's "listening without conclusion," and Zhuangzi's xinzhai (fasting of the mind) — in the light of six traditions, the structure by which listening changes judgement is carefully unwound.

01"Listening" and "Being Able to Listen" Are Different

While the other is speaking in a meeting, in our heads something else is often happening. Preparing the next remark, rendering an evaluation, building a counter-argument, suppressing boredom, recalling another errand — all of these happen in parallel during the same time the other is speaking. The ears are open, but the heart is somewhere else. This is the true form of everyday "listening."

The "being able to listen" this volume treats is a different state. The state in which the other's words enter without passing through one's internal evaluation apparatus. The state in which the other's world rises up once inside oneself. This is not innate talent; it is a trainable skill. And on the pharmaceutical floor, this single skill fundamentally changes the quality of the reviewer's judgement.

02Rogers's Active Listening (1957)

Carl Rogers (1902–1987) and Richard Farson, in the 1957 paper "Active Listening," systematised the concept of active listening. This is the foundation of modern counselling, education, and organisational development.

"Active listening is the act in which the listener, without adding evaluation or advice to the speaker's utterance, enters the speaker's world of meaning and emotion and mirrors it back in a form the speaker can confirm. Listening, in itself, changes the speaker." — paraphrase of Rogers & Farson, "Active Listening" (1957)

What Rogers shows is the fact that the one who is listened to is changed merely by being listened to. Without evaluating or judging, receive the other's world once and return it in a confirmable form. With that alone, something inside the other loosens. A clinical fact observed tens of thousands of times in Rogers's counselling rooms.

On the pharmaceutical floor, when listening to the requester's explanation of the background of a correction request, we are often in the state of "judging while listening." That is not active listening as Rogers means it. Pause judgement, and first receive the other's world — this is Rogers's starting point.

03Rosenberg's "Empathic Listening" — The NVC Way of Listening

Marshall Rosenberg (1934–2015), within nonviolent communication (NVC), gave to the act of listening a unique structure. The four elements of NVC also touched on in Vol. 1 — observation, feeling, need, request — are reconstructed as the listener's work.

"The posture of trying to listen for the four layers behind the other's utterance — the observation (what happened), the feeling (how they feel), the need (what they seek), the request (what they utter the speech for) — is empathic listening." — paraphrase of Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication (1999)

Rosenberg's contribution is to have given technical structure to listening. Not the vague posture of "listening to the other," but the concrete work of trying to extract four layers from the utterance — he formulated the act of listening in this way.

On the pharmaceutical floor, when the requester says "isn't this correction too strict?", listened to with Rosenberg's four layers, it becomes: observation (about the comment on which clause and item), feeling (perplexity, urgency, resistance), need (deadline, quality, the boss's evaluation, maintenance of one's own role), request (request for reconsideration, additional explanation, exploration of an alternative solution). Merely picking out four layers from one utterance instantly widens our options for response.

04Bohm's Dialogue — Co-inquiry Beyond Argument

The physicist David Bohm (1917–1992), touched on also in Vol. 3, revisited from the angle of listening. What Bohm showed is the fact that, in dialogue, listening is not passivity but the most active participation.

"In true dialogue, the person participates in listening as much as in speaking. Listening is not a 'break' between speakings but the act of making an active space through which meaning passes between the two." — paraphrase of David Bohm, On Dialogue (1996)

This observation of Bohm's is a deep counter to our everyday sense. Many regard listening as "the time when I am not speaking." In fact, listening is the work that supports the field of the flow of meaning. The quality of the listener determines the quality of what is drawn from the speaker. One reason why on the pharmaceutical floor there are partners with whom deep argument is possible and partners with whom it is not, lies in how the field is built as a listener.

05Isaacs's "Four Practices of Dialogue" — Listening, Respecting, Suspending, Voicing

William Isaacs, an MIT organisational-learning researcher, in Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together (1999), organised four practices that support dialogue.

"Dialogue is born in the field where listening, respecting, suspending, and voicing circulate. If any is missing, dialogue returns to argument." — paraphrase of William Isaacs, Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together (1999)

Isaacs's four practices can be applied as is on the pharmaceutical floor in joint deliberation and dialogue with requesters. Listening is the starting point, but listening alone does not become dialogue either. Listening, while respecting, suspending, and yet ultimately voicing one's own — the circulation of these four makes deep dialogue.

06Krishnamurti's "Listening Without Conclusion" — Observing the Habits of the Mind

The twentieth-century Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986), in over half a century of dialogues and talks, gave to the act of listening a unique depth.

"We do not really listen. Because, while listening, we are constantly comparing the other's words with our own knowledge, experience, and prejudices. To truly listen is to set aside all that we have known and to receive the other's words, without conclusion, as if hearing them for the first time." — paraphrase distilled from Jiddu Krishnamurti's Freedom from the Known and other talks

Krishnamurti's observation is radical. When we feel daily that "we are listening," we are in fact receiving the other's words through the filter of our own knowledge. Krishnamurti called this "not real listening." To truly listen accompanies the work of temporarily setting aside one's past knowledge. This is not "discarding knowledge" but the delicate movement of mind to "hold the knowledge while, just once, putting down its weight."

07Zhuangzi's "Xinzhai" — Listening with a Cleared Mind

From the Eastern lineage, the deepest classical proposition on listening. In the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi, "In the World of Men," depicted as a dialogue between Confucius and his disciple Yan Hui, the dialogue of xinzhai (fasting of the mind, 心斎).

"Unify your will. Do not listen with the ears but listen with the heart. Do not listen with the heart but listen with qi. Listening of the ears stops at the ears; listening of the heart stops at the tally (the matching, the concept). Qi is what is empty and waits upon things."
— gist of the Zhuangzi, "In the World of Men," chapter on xinzhai.

What Zhuangzi shows is three stages of listening. Listen with the ears → listen with the heart → listen with qi. Listening with the ears alone, the sound reaches but the meaning does not. Listening with the heart, the meaning reaches, but the speaker is grasped through one's own concepts. To listen with qi is the state of having made oneself empty (xu) and preparing to receive all of the other — this is xinzhai.

Zhuangzi's xinzhai points to a place strikingly close to Krishnamurti's "listening without conclusion." Eastern thought of more than two thousand years ago and twentieth-century philosophy arrived, from separate paths, at the same place. All the traditions in this volume illuminate this place in different words. Empty oneself, and welcome the other. This is the deepest discipline of the act of listening.

08Active Listening on the Pharmaceutical Floor

Bring the abstract down to the floor. In the scene of the material reviewer talking with the requester, how can this volume's wisdom be applied?

09The Quiet Fact That Listening Changes Judgement

What all the traditions in this volume commonly point to is the fact that the act of listening changes the judgement of the one who listened. Judging after listening to something and judging without listening differ in the quality of the judgement itself. This is not because some other information was added after listening. It is because the act of listening itself changes the structure of mind of the one who judges.

What Rogers saw in the clinic, what Krishnamurti showed in his talks, what Zhuangzi spoke of in xinzhai — the same place. Listening is not a means of information gathering. Listening is the work that changes the listener's own quality of being. On the pharmaceutical floor, the reviewer who can listen deeply changes in the quality both of what is drawn from the other and of the judgement one renders. It is skill, an object of training, and one of the most important skills for every professional.

10Four Disciplines of Active Listening

To bring the same place to which six traditions pointed down into daily practice, four disciplines.

Listening is not passive. It is the most active work of the heart. Rogers, Rosenberg, Bohm, Isaacs, Krishnamurti, Zhuangzi — six traditions, in different words, pointed to the same place. The act of listening itself changes the listener's judgement and changes the world of the one listened to. This is not metaphor; it is a fact independently confirmed by half a century of clinical psychology and more than two thousand years of Eastern and Western philosophy.

"I listen well to others" — throw a single question to the self that feels this. "Am I, without passing through my evaluation, receiving the other's words?" The moment of the question is the entrance to the act of listening.