BY TAMARA TABEL
How might generous listening make space for courageous conversations?
Active listening with less judgment and more curiosity, humility, and empathy takes training and practice. We need these skills not just for our families and workplaces, but for our nation, says Reverend Dr. Zina Jacque.
For the fourth session of A Year of Courageous Conversations at Barrington’s White House, Dr. Nancy Burgoyne and Dr. Jacob Goldsmith of The Family Institute at Northwestern University shared how to listen more generously — even if we don’t like how information is presented.
“When you show curiosity and empathy, the speaker will share more deeply,” says Burgoyne. “The gift you get is the humanity behind the words.”
Nancy Burgoyne, Ph.D., is the Chief Clinical Officer at The Family Institute, a licensed clinical psychologist, teacher, and a practicing family therapist for more than 30 years. Jacob Goldsmith, Ph.D., LCP, is the Director of the Emerging Adults Program, faculty in the Marriage and Family Therapy graduate program at Northwestern, a researcher, and practicing clinical psychologist with more than 15 years of experience. Nancy and Jacob are proud to be leaders in an organization that is celebrating its 50th year. (Read more here.)
“Listening happens on many levels. We listen to ourselves. We listen to others. We listen to build community. These three levels interact and influence each other.”
-Nancy Burgoyne, Ph.D.
Why Does Listening Matter?
Listening facilitates self-awareness, connection and tolerance:
Self-awareness frees us from that sense of alienation — that’s the inner layer, the groundwork. “We must connect with ourselves to be a good listener,” says Burgoyne.
Connection happens when we are seen and heard. If we are not having connected experiences, there are negative consequences, such as loneliness and mental health challenges.
Tolerance for perspectives different than our own is essential for living in community. Listening is a pathway to help us overcome our fears and biases.
Generous Listening
“The best way to step into listening is by being curious,” says Burgoyne. Just as important is to show up vulnerable.
“If you’re going to take something in,” said Burgoyne, “you must enter the speaker’s frame of reference and move into their space. It’s a challenge and an act of vulnerability because you have to let down your inner arguments and your plans for what you’re going to say, and move in and be there for a while.”
Different situations demand a deeper set of listening skills. A family issue might be more charged with emotion, versus a co-worker asking about a work problem, or a math class where you’re simply absorbing facts for a test.
Deeper listening is asking not just what this information means to me, the listener — but what it means to you, the speaker. It’s listening to connect. When someone “gets you,” it resonates in your body.
“We’re wired neurologically for connection,” says Goldsmith, “but in practice, it’s not effortless.” You may need to go through the steps multiple times to build a repertoire of skills.
Core Skills for Conversation
FOR THE Speaker:
Use “I” statements. What you see and feel. “When you said that, I felt this way.”
Say less.
Soften your start-up. Find a safe point of entry for conversation.
Share the floor.
Focus on one subject at a time. Not the whole kitchen sink. No “You always…” or “You never….”
for THE Listener:
Pause. Check your “stuff.”
Pay attention. Listen for meaning, context, emotion.
Focus on the other. Ask what does this mean to the person I’m listening to?
Don’t mind-read. Ask questions instead of assuming you know.
Respond versus react. Offer a thoughtful, mindful response.
Reflect back. Repeat what you heard them say & mean.
What Helps When Listening is Hard?
When talking about innocuous topics, using these skills can be simple. But it gets complicated when things are fraught with emotion. We may listen with emotion, or with a goal, or harboring a fear of rejection. Burgoyne and Goldsmith suggest some tips when listening is hard:
Appreciate what’s at stake. The quality of your relationships with others.
Notice. What is making listening hard?
Check your assumptions and expectations. We can approach it passively, as if it should be easy, or thinking we already know. When you realize you don’t know, you pay attention.
Prepare. Set an agenda. Make time and space. Ground yourself before entering. You wouldn’t call a work meeting without preparing, so do the same for your personal conversations.
Context matters. If you know the context isn’t a good fit, pause and revise. Choose another venue, if needed. Take a walk. Go for a drive.
Use your skills. Take that all-important pause. Maintain bodily awareness. Develop your own mantra to settle yourself down. Choose courage over comfort. Learn to tolerate distress or anxiety, not avoid it.
Recognize your triggers. Our wiring triggers our emotional system during conflict — fight, flight or freeze. Know how you characteristically show up when your nervous system is set alight and check yourself if you’re moving into that space. We bring in our fears and our history because listening digs down into our “stuff.” Figure out what to do with your own stuff, regulate yourself and context.
Emotions & Values
Burgoyne cautioned that emotions are often not a good compass. “Use feelings as one important piece of information to help decide what you want to do next. But I encourage you to organize yourself around your values.” Emotions are like the weather, but your values are your horizon point to get you where you want to go.
Active Listening Exercise
Burgoyne and Goldsmith led a practice exercise in pairs. People partnered — with one as speaker, one as listener. The speaker was asked to choose content that had real significance, something they wrestle with, and repeat that three times, with the listener going deeper each time:
1st Time: Listen for content. Paraphrase back to speaker what they heard. “Did I get it?”
2nd Time: Inject curiosity. Ask questions. Be interested. Try to learn more.
3rd Time: Listen with empathy. Validate what the speaker is sharing and relate back with one word of empathy. Ask clarifying questions like “What does that feel like when?” or “What does it mean to you when?” At the end, confirm: “Do you feel I understood you?”
How to Make Repair
Burgoyne and Goldsmith role-played an interaction between a son and mother in the kitchen at the end of a long day. The son complained about work, the mother offered unsolicited advice. It did not go well. As can happen in our own lives, this situation required repair.
“Take a minute to pause,” says Burgoyne. “Be alone with your own feelings. What am I saying to myself? What am I thinking and feeling?” To demonstrate, Burgoyne took off her shoes, grounded herself, and reset her expectations of what might be accomplished — it might not be perfect.
“Our behaviors unfold in sequences and patterns. ‘I wouldn’t have done what I did, if you hadn’t done that.’ You can’t make change by tracking the sequence back to the origin. You have to pick your arc of the sequence and be accountable for that. You have the most freedom controlling your own behavior.”
SELF-REFLECTION:
“With whom do you need to repair? What do you say to yourself and what do you feel when you think about this person or experience?”
Why is Empathy so Critical?
“Empathy is the ultimate goal of listening,” Goldsmith shared. “Empathy is about understanding and also communicating back understanding.” Empathic listening allows the speaker to think more clearly and more deeply, and allows the speaker and listener to feel closer. When people feel understood, things go deeper.
Empathic listening avoids:
Problem-solving
Focusing on context or extraneous details
Judgment (positive or negative)
Getting to the Emotional Core
Think of empathy as a target of a bullseye, says Burgoyne and Goldsmith, with concentric rings, working from the outside in:
1st Layer: Context, extraneous details
2nd Layer: Content
3rd Layer: Subtext
4th Layer: Central Meaning
5th Layer: Emotional Core
To illustrate, Goldsmith shared a story of a daughter asking her father for advice on whether to take a job in San Francisco with a start-up or one in Chicago with a proven company. The father recommended the second offer. But because the daughter realized his response seemed different, she asked more questions and got to the real emotional core of the issue: It was not that he was afraid she would fail. He was afraid she would move far away.
Listening to Build Community
“Listening to form connection is fantastic. But there’s a bigger pay-off beyond that,” says Goldsmith. This leads us to community inclusion and belonging.
When Google studied what teams work best together, they found that psychological safety was the most important component. We create that safety through empathic listening.
When we drop our roles and start really relating, human to human — a concept Jewish theologian Martin Buber called “I And Thou” — it’s not just about being nice, it’s about stripping our masks and getting to deeper truths. It requires vulnerability and risk. But it builds a stronger, safer, and more functional community. It fosters the growth of individuals within the community. And it fosters inclusion of marginalized voices.
“When we talk about inclusion of previously marginalized voices, things often feel worse before they feel better,” says Goldsmith. “If you have a dominant group of people who believe one thing, who have essentially exiled another voice — when we invite that voice back in, there will be more conflict in the short-term. We’re trading some short-term intensity for long-term harmony. But now instead of exiling voices, we’ve built a community that can tolerate that difference.”
Does It Matter How Someone Speaks to You?
“If we’re talking about building community and listening to other people,” says Burgoyne, “very often it lands at: ‘I didn’t like how they said that to me. They didn’t say it right, so I don’t have to listen to them.’”
There is no denying a poorly sent message is harder to take in.
“But no, you don’t get to tune out the message if it’s not sent in the ‘right package’ — in your language, your tone, or how you culturally show up,” says Burgoyne.
It doesn’t mean you have to tolerate abuse. You can ask for a time out for yourself, but not for the other person. It’s okay to say “I need to take a moment” or “I’m flooded.” But the other person needs to know you’re not dismissing them — their feeling is real, the need is legitimate. Set a time in the future to come back and continue the conversation.
“Demanding a certain form of delivery is often how people with more power and more privilege dismiss people with less power and less privilege. They don’t listen to the content, they react to the delivery. Then they say ‘I’m out’ and don’t have to pay attention to you.”
Shutting down listening based on the style of presentation can “protect us from getting that the rage, the hurt, the confusion or sense of injustice are legitimate,” says Burgoyne. “When it feels that bad, it doesn’t often come out pretty.”
“This is a very heavy thing,” says Burgoyne. “But this becomes essential when you move into talking about race and privilege — to be able to hear things that are hard to hear.”
What We Practice, We Become
Better listening can start at home — or even between strangers. Fellow Stacey Mays-Douglas demonstrated this with a very generous offer at November’s session: she invited anyone in the room to meet over coffee or wine for honest conversation.
What came of that offer? Six invitations for coffee dates. The first from Sue Griffith.
The two women — Griffith white, Mays-Douglas African-American — shared how they met for scones at Griffith’s house and traded stories about their lives and families. “Stacey talked about living all over the world,” said Griffith, “and how it was harder to live here, in the Midwest.” Mays-Douglas said she was a bit nervous arriving at Griffith’s house, wondering what neighbors might presume about a black woman showing up at a white woman’s home.
“I just learned, you have to take the leap,” said Mays-Douglas. “Because you never know what’s going to evolve as a result of a conversation. We can’t continue to tip-toe around each other, because we are human, and we won’t grow as a people.”
Changing the World Starts with a Single Step
Series co-host Jessica Green shared that this session of A Year of Courageous Conversations “serves as the bridge between the internal work that we have done together thus far — on courage, mindfulness, curiosity and listening — and the more externally-focused work we will begin in January, exploring diversity, equity and inclusion in our community.
Reverend Dr. Zina Jacque closed the night by applauding Fellows like Mays-Douglas who have reached out and made personal connections between sessions, and encouraging us to wonder how we might practice these skills to expand, extend or even inspire our own activism.
“Every act that changes the world starts with a single person, a single moment, a single step. If we’re going to change the world, it starts with your single step. The only question is, will you take it?”
The Art of Listening is the fourth of ten monthly sessions for A Year of Courageous Conversations exploring how to foster greater inclusion & belonging in our community. Presented by Urban Consulate at Barrington’s White House in partnership with community advisors, the series is made possible thanks to support from Jessica & Dominic Green, Kim Duchossois, Sue & Rich Padula, Barrington Area Community Foundation and BMO Wealth Management.
The Family Institute at Northwestern University provides over 85,000 hours of scientifically informed clinical service annually to children, adolescents, couples, families and individuals from all walks of life, across the life span, in four locations (Northbrook, Evanston, Chicago Loop & Westchester). The Institute conducts leading-edge research that informs clinical practice and the field of Behavioral Health; offers world-class graduate programs in Marriage and Family Therapy and Counseling to well over 600 students on the ground and on-line; and offers a competitive post-graduate and post-doctoral training for up to a dozen highly qualified candidates a year. To learn more, visit family-institute.org.