Transcript of the "Stories of Impact" podcast episode

Listening & Human Flourishing with Professors Guy Itzchakov & Netta Weinstein


Tavia Gilbert: Welcome to Stories of Impact. I’m writer/producer Tavia Gilbert, and every first and third Tuesday, journalist Richard Sergay and I bring you conversations about the art and science of human flourishing. First, a very Happy New Year to all of our listeners! We’re so glad to be back with you, continuing this season focused on developing the tools for human flourishing. Today, we’re in conversation about a deceptively simple practice that promotes understanding, deepens empathy and connection, and can even create peace. In fact, this skill is one of the most essential components of human flourishing, though it’s one that might seem more difficult to implement than ever: It’s the act of listening. Our guests today are researchers Netta Weinstein, Associate Professor in Psychology at the University of Reading, and Guy Itzchakov, an assistant professor in the Department of Human Services at the University of Haifa. Profs. Weinstein and Itzhchakov are among the awardees of the Templeton World Charity Foundation's Grand Challenges for Human Flourishing, an investment of $60 million to grow the field of human flourishing, encompassing scientific research, practice, and policy. This research team is working to develop a scientific understanding of what listening is, what its benefits are, and why it matters so much to our well-being. Let’s begin with Professor Netta Weinstein, who describes the goal of her research: to build a protocol of listening that can be implemented globally, in order to create a better world.

Netta Weinstein: My interest in listening actually began with an earlier interest in self-expression. My core interests throughout the years have been how do we express ourselves openly, authentically, and with support to others? How do others encourage us to do that? What resources do they provide us that allow us to really be ourselves in conversations, to share views, to bring in our best and genuine selves into our relationships with others. And it became clear that listening is a really important way that we support one another and allow that self-expression. This project is a first foray into really sitting down and systematically classifying what it looks like to listen well. And it’s very important for us to do so, because what we’re hoping to do is to be able to create good listeners. It’s one of the biggest challenges to take somebody in a short time and help them to learn the skills, learn the values, the ethos of being a good listener, and really transform the way that they converse with others. The more people that we can encourage to be good listeners and give the tools of listening to, the more that we can hopefully encourage positive change in the world. Listening is about the way that we convey our attention, interest, and valuing of others. Listening is really about attending to someone else, what they’re saying, what they’re sharing, and trying to understand and value that person in the process. When we effectively convey that interest, attention, and understanding of others, they feel listened to, they feel like they are understood. They feel like they are heard.

Tavia Gilbert: Can we encourage, train or educate people about how to be better listeners, inspire people to be better listeners, create the right environments and the right psychological space for people to listen well to each other?

Netta Weinstein: One of the most powerful things that we see with listening is that when we are listened to, it’s beneficial for our well-being. So when we feel that we are understood, when we feel that we can be ourselves, we have positive well-being and flourishing. It’s one of the things that underlies well-being. In fact, we can’t have well-being without that sense that we can be who we are. And so listening is very important for that, and listening might be one of those important tools that can help us to resolve differences and maybe open up each other’s minds. But what it also does is build more of those connections that make us feel like we are part of a bigger, more positive community, that we can be who we are in that world, in that community. And that’s something that we know is extremely important for well-being and for psychological growth, that we grow through that experience. We’re more able to learn about ourselves, we’re more willing to explore ourselves. We’re thinking about what listening can do to really help people be fully engaged in the conversation, to benefit from the conversation with more self-understanding, with more growth, more awareness, more of a sense of belongingness and intimacy, and the willingness to share more in the future.

Tavia Gilbert: Good listening is actually trickier than it may initially seem, and, Professor Guy Itzchakov, Professor Weinstein’s research colleague, dispels a common misunderstanding:

Guy Itzchakov: One of the misconceptions that people make is that the speaker is the active person in the conversation, and the listener is rather a passive actor. Basically, this misconception is because people equate listening with hearing or listening with silence. And the listener actually determines at least 50% of the conversation, or where the conversation will go using both verbal signals, such as uttering, question-asking, paraphrasing, and nonverbal behavior such as a body posture, head nodding. This is the route through which the listener determines a vast amount of the conversation. So, for example, we can be conversing, and you can say something, and when you’re speaking, you have these automatic thoughts that come to your head, and a few of them, sometimes even many of them, relate to your social appearance. So, does the listener approve of me, how do I look in the eye of the listener. And if for example, I as a listener, will present facial expressions that convey curiosity, like opening my eyes and leaning towards you and nodding when appropriate, not too much, but when appropriate, you will perceive that I’m really there with you. There are actually studies showing how listeners affect the speech fluency and even the memory of the speakers. So, the listener is a very, very, very active partner in the conversation and this is through both the verbal and nonverbal channel that the listener has.

Tavia Gilbert: Professor Weinstein adds:

Netta Weinstein: Naturally when people talk, there’s a listener and there’s a speaker, but people change back and forth in terms of what their role is. So in a conversation, both or all participants have the chance to be a good listener, and have the chance to be an effective speaker. Both are very important and both drive the experience and the outcomes, what happens, you know, as a result of that conversation. And so the listener is an active partner in that conversation. And even a good speaker is not going to successfully navigate a relationship or a conversation without the listener participating fully and contributing through their attentive and high quality listening.

Guy Itzchakov: The benefits of listening in my perception, do not come from the listener or from the speaker, but from the connection, and from the chemistry that is generated between them. It’s not something that is only in me as a listener or only in you as a speaker. It’s the connection that we generate during this process of listening that has downstream effects on the positive outcomes that we know of, both for the listener and for the speaker. The major player in the process is the connection. And the listener and the speaker are the generators of this force, of this force of connection that benefits everyone in the process.

Tavia Gilbert: Listening even has an important role to play at work:

Guy Itzchakov: It’s very important for organizations to implement listening training. We are seeing tremendous effects on the connection that it facilitates between employees and on reducing burnout and anxiety, and increasing relatedness. There was an interesting study that found that checking in is rated by employees is more important than other aspects of the workplace that people think are much more important for us, such as being invited to an important meeting and, and etc. And checking in is spending a few minutes with a colleague asking, “So, Richard, how are you? How do you feel?” Asking, really taking interest for a few minutes a day. But it’s the attention that you give, people want the attention, they want. When you give someone attention, they feel that they matter, they feel that they are important.

Netta Weinstein: Organizations are increasingly investing in trying to understand those experiences of individuals from different backgrounds, but also, how can we promote an inclusive workplace, one where people value one another, one where people can attempt to interact with, respect one another, even if they come from different backgrounds. Listening is a really important tool for doing that.

Tavia Gilbert: So if we want to become better listeners, how might we begin?

Netta Weinstein: For me, listening is about stopping. Stopping those things that I’m thinking about, saying for a second, Alright, I’m gonna set aside my own interests or concerns, worries, those things that are interrupting my ability to be in the moment. So I make an effort to be in the moment with the person that I’m talking to. I take the time to focus not just my attention, but also relax myself and really yield to what’s happening in the here and now. I forget, for a second, those things that I wanted to say to that person, and I allow them to drive the conversation for a short while. Say, for now, I’m not going to have an agenda. For me, it comes down to being mindful in the moment and putting myself in a position where I’m interested in the person that I’m speaking to.

Guy Itzchakov: People have an innate need to evaluate what they hear, an automatic need, and it is really hard to fight it. But a precondition for good listening will be to let your evaluative thoughts come and go. In order to listen, well, you need to decide that this is one of your priorities, because good listening requires an attitude that I want to decide this is something I want to prioritize, I want to be a good listener. And this is, this is a journey, because it takes up time, it takes up energy, it takes up cognitive resources, it takes up emotional resources. You want to be non-judgmental towards the speaker, you should also be non-judgmental towards yourself as a listener. After you realize that maybe you’re not as good as a listener as you thought you were, and have a learning mindset to reflect back on the conversation. Think about points that you missed, like doors that the speaker opened for you and you didn’t came into; places where you could have asked questions, could have provided a reflection, could have exhibited better listening behavior, and learn it for your next conversation or the next time you want to you want to provide high quality listening to someone. So it’s a learning, it’s like a muscle that we need to train. Like riding a bicycle, something that we cannot just read about, it’s mostly about the practice and before the attitude that this is something you really want to become.

Tavia Gilbert: What else has this team learned about the ingredients of good listening?

Netta Weinstein: We certainly use our bodies, our eyes and our postures to convey, yes, I’m hearing you, we nod to say yes, I understand what you have to say. And that’s an important piece of communicating to the speaker, I’m here with you. I’m not thinking or engaged in something else right now.

Guy Itzchakov: It’s the open body posture and it’s the leaning towards the speaker, avoiding external distractions such as looking at your smartphone or even having your smartphone visible when you listen to someone. These are all very, very important ingredients in listening, and this is for me, in a nutshell, what good listening is. Attention, which is constant eye contact, facial expression that conveys attentiveness. Comprehension, which is understanding such as asking questions that promote the needs of the speaker, rather than the curiosity of the listener, and many more sorts of good questions. I usually call it open questions and providing reflections to ensure understanding. And a positive intention that is conveyed by mainly by empathy and by a non-judgmental approach towards the speaker. It does not mean, however, that the listener needs to agree with what the speaker is saying, but to accept the right of the speaker to hold a certain point of view. When the listener sees the speaker is still paying attention or maintaining constant eye contact, the listener gains confidence, and a good question conveys that the listener is really trying to understand or even understands what the speaker is saying. A why question usually elicits more defensiveness and a need to explain myself, whereas the how question is more explorative in nature and also there is the tone, and from our lab studies, we know that paraphrasing and providing reflection to the speaker, summarizing what the speaker said, in the listener’s words, and trying to be as accurate as possible, even to use the words that the speaker used, because the same word can have a different meaning for you and for me. But when the listener paraphrases and then asks, did I understand you? Did I miss anything? Even if the listener did not, and people usually can remember up to 50% of what they heard, but the speaker both completes this gap and feels that the listener is really trying to understand. So it signals intention.

Tavia Gilbert: What are the enemies of good listening?

Guy Itzchakov: There are few enemies that we know of good listening. One is fear of change. People often fear, even without acknowledging it, or even without awareness of it, that if I really listen to you, I might have to change. And this might be threatening to me, that if I really listen to you, I might realize that you are correct, and I might need to revisit my perspectives and change myself. And this is a lot to take. The other one is loss of power. Good listeners are perceived as less dominant by their speaker. So they lose dominance, which is social status, but they gain a different form of social status, which is prestige. But not everyone are willing to do this trade-off between power and prestige. So, if a listener is high on the value for power, there is a good chance that they will not be able to listen well because they might fear that if they are not heard, and if they give the space to another person, they will lose from their social status. So this is another enemy, the loss of dominance. Another enemy is secondary trauma. There is a term called compassion fatigue. For example, social workers and clinical psychologists, sometimes experience this, like, a secondhand trauma, that you receive the trauma of the speaker, and it can cause emotional costs for the listener. Fear of intimacy is an enemy that I mentioned. One is lack of story. We found that listeners find it easier to listen when the speaker is telling a story, versus telling facts or descriptions. This has to do with how the speaker frames the content. And the last one is time. Listening, as I mentioned, it requires time and effort. And these are limited resources. This is the resources that we equate with money, time equals money, energy equals money. And not every time we have the willingness, or the preference, to give this important resource of listening, of the time and energy that listening consumes, to the person that asks for it. So this is another enemy that we have limited energy and time.

Tavia Gilbert: The intimacy and connection that listening makes possible is directly linked to human flourishing.

Netta Weinstein: When we are listened to well, we flourish, and that kind of sense of I can bring my best self forward is what allows us to feel that sense of meaning in life, the sense of a life well lived, the feeling of positive emotions. It doesn’t resolve all the difficulties or the stresses that we have, it certainly doesn’t make bad feelings go away. But it allows us to be maybe a bit stronger and a bit more of ourselves when we tackle those kind of challenging and stressful life experiences. And so flourishing from my perspective is really about having that inner strength that comes from knowing myself, understanding myself, and using that knowledge to guide my own behaviors.

Guy Itzchakov: We know from our research that listening increases the well-being of speakers. When speakers feel really listened to, they report higher positive affect, they report less depression, less anxiety. They report less burnout. Also by the way, listeners who listen well make their speakers trust them more. If you look at the listener side, people who are good listeners are better liked by their speaker, and we know that when we feel that the other person likes us, it increases our well-being. And one wants to be close to a good listener and friends with good listeners. So, people have a basic need to feel understood, to feel that, like, this person gets me. And when I feel that you as a listener, when I feel that you get me, I can flourish. I can gain self-knowledge. And we found it in many of our studies, self-insights on stuff that I would not have recognized or not have been aware of, if not for you as a listener. And this is directly related to human flourishing, to the well-being and to the happiness and to reduced aversive states of people. From our evidence, listening is directly connected to human flourishing.

Tavia Gilbert: In fact, says Professor Weinstein, close listening is enhanced by virtues like humility and empathy.

Netta Weinstein: In an ideal world, we listen from a place of humility. That is, we don’t have all the answers. We listen from a place of empathy, we value the person that we’re listening to. Even if in the moment we might not agree with the things they say, we might not even value the things they say or the things they do, but we recognize that in that moment, the person has intrinsic value and the value to speak and share their perspective. We need to learn more about listening with empathy, and we need to learn more about listening with humility.

Tavia Gilbert: Prof Itzchakov agrees.

Guy Itzchakov: When people feel listened to, they become more intellectually humble. So they realize that their initial perspective might not be the only correct ones. It is one of my goals to see how people who learn to become better listeners affect their community and their social circles in a way that then hopefully, we will be able to see a more accepting and peaceful discussions. And we have become so separated by so many aspects like never before, and this is why I think that this is a very, very important tool or mechanism in a process that society needs. Because every, you can, you can look at it in a society level, between ethnic groups, you can look at it in families, you can look at it in schools. You can look at it everywhere, and you will see the polarization between so many groups that are now building minor groups and minor groups and minor groups. And this is why I think listening, listening is a medicine without side effects.

Netta Weinstein: What I’d love to see is more research and more understanding of how far we can take these principles. How much can we use listening to tackle some of the big problems that we have in society and in our relationships with other people? Without listening, we cannot do it. So listening is the foundation that we build on.

Tavia Gilbert: What the team has learned from their research shows how vital listening is for a healthy, well-functioning society.

Netta Weinstein: One of the things that we might forget to do is to value other people who are different from us or who have different political positions or views. In a way, seeing those people as barriers rather than as intrinsically valued and valuable could stand in the way of resolving those differences. If we see them as barriers, challenges, if we assume that they are incorrect, and, and stick to that assumption, it’s very difficult to convey listening at the societal level, or to convey listening to those who are different from us. And so, even at the societal level, to go from, “I don’t want to hear what you have to say,” to, “Let’s have a conversation, let’s talk about what we’re looking for” — that’s important.

Guy Itzchakov: We found that good listening can make speakers’ attitudes more complex, less extreme, without receiving any persuasive attempt, and this has a lot to do with the receptive space that is created between, we call it togetherness, between the listener and the speaker. Listening can reduce speakers’ prejudice. It is very difficult to listen to someone that you hold a stereotyped attitude towards. You have automatic judgments in your head towards this person. And this really makes listening difficult when you have so much prior stereotypes towards people. And I think the first step is becoming aware of it. Because if you talk to the average person, people will not tell you that they have biases, we see it for many of our studies, like a lot of the answers are, “I do not have biases against any group.” But then when the conversation goes on and on you see that there are biases towards certain groups. We need to know how we can listen, even not cancel out our biases, but listening beyond our biases, that I will see the person behind the stereotype that I have. And this requires training. This is a skill, and this is a process.

Tavia Gilbert: Though both researchers recognize the great benefits of listening, Professor Weinstein also acknowledges how difficult it can be to fully engage in the practice of listening.

Netta Weinstein: To listen well, we need to be in the right headspace. And in a way our hearts need to be in the right place as well. So to listen well, we need the space to attend carefully to what someone’s saying. We need to focus our energy on processing and understanding what they’re saying. To listen well, we need to be open to what they have to say. So it’s very difficult to listen well but have the intention to stop someone talking, to intervene, to share your own perspective. To really, really engage in listening, to really demonstrate to someone that you are listening, it’s important to be really inside open to what they have to say. And so the flip side of that is that we listen poorly when we are defensive, when we feel threatened, when we feel stressed or tired. Those kinds of things can also interfere with good or high quality listening. One of the things that makes listening very difficult is sometimes we don’t want to hear certain things from others. And through listening, we essentially are asked or asking ourselves to put those views aside, our own needs aside in the moment and say, “I’m willing to put aside my perspective and hear what you have to say for now.” And that kind of courage and that challenge, that needs to be met from people being willing to sit with their own discomfort when they hear things that they might not want to hear or that challenges their own perspectives, and attend to those different views.

Guy Itzchakov: It’s okay that we’re different, but we need to find what is, what is not similar, but what keeps us together, rather than separates us. And then I think it’s creating places for good listening to take place. You need to create the environment for it. It will not happen when you and I are standing in line and then you’re trying to get past me and I’m trying to get past you, it will not happen there. It can happen if we create places where people can experience it and can practice it. I think it’s a start, in order to learn that we can accept each other, even despite holding different points of view that are important to us. But you know, at the end of the day, everyone wants to be happy, everyone wants to live in a peaceful world, everyone wants to raise their children in a better world. Will one be a person that tells you that no, I’m against it, I’m against peaceful and good relationships? We need the structures. And the tools. And I think listening is one of them, is a major one of them. But you need to create the environment for listening to happen. Otherwise, we just see more and more polarization everywhere we look at. It’s very difficult, by the way, to listen well to something that you disagree with, or especially strongly disagree with. But you need to create the conditions to rise above the differences, to have a connection. We can still have opposite attitudes. But we can converse in harmony, and in a good way. And this is the type of conversations and discussion that I think we want to see more, regardless of the content that is shared. So, it’s not about what is being said, it’s about how it’s being said and received, which I think will open an avenue for more inclusion and tolerance and acceptance of one another despite the differences that will forever be between people.

Netta Weinstein: It requires a lot of ourselves to listen well, and especially when we disagree, and especially if we’re stressed, and especially if we’re threatened or tired. And so we can think about listening as a skill that we build, as a muscle. And it’s something that we can train at, we need to practice at. To really listen well to somebody else opens up a space, where speakers, where those who are trying to convey their views, feel really understood, heard, and that they can express themselves. And that creates a bond between the listener and the speaker that isn’t possible without that space being created. And so one thing that listening does is it builds a strong relationship, even a relationship or intimacy in that moment. People feel that they are autonomous, in that moment, not just free to do what they like, but free to be who they are, free to express themselves, have their opinions, values, share those values, and be self-congruent, basically be who they are outside, have that represent who they are on the inside. Listening is very powerful for allowing that. In a way, it creates a foundation for having an honest conversation, where both sides feel like in the best-case scenario, they can bring their full selves forward, be heard. And maybe they won’t come out fully agreeing, but the process will be one where effort is made on both sides. Listening creates the atmosphere that is conducive to us being open to others’ perspectives, being willing to explore ideas and values and backgrounds that make us uncomfortable, being willing to challenge ourselves more.

Tavia Gilbert: In fact, their research findings reveal that it’s the “medicine” of listening, not argument, that can open people’s minds to new ways of thinking.

Guy Itzchakov: It’s a difficult process, but listening in and of itself can result in an attitude change of the speaker, without the listener providing any persuasive attempt. I’ve been intrigued, early in my research career, by a phenomenon called the Boomerang Effect, where people try to change the attitudes of other people by basically, simply put, arguing with them, and they get the opposite result. The attitude of the recipient becomes even more extreme. And one of the main mechanisms that operates in the Boomerang Effect is defensiveness. When I feel that my freedom to hold a certain attitude is threatened, I might become defensive, and instead of hearing your arguments, when you are talking, I will be thinking how to, how to counterattack your um, your message. And this is the type of conversation I often see. You can dislike your neighbor because his perspective on the vaccines. It doesn’t matter now, who is right and who is wrong, the question is, what is your goal, when conversing with the person? If your goal is to change your neighbor’s attitude, and to persuade your neighbor that this is not as he thinks, this is a different process, but you can agree to disagree. I think like this, and you think like that, but let’s talk about something that unites us, rather than what separates us, because we can spend our entire life, and we are doing it, by the way, conversing and arguing and disputing about everything that separates us, and it will never end. And we see that as the world become more and more uncertain, we see the gaps are growing and growing and growing. I think instead, we need to change the nature—not the content, we can talk about things that we disagree, it’s okay—but it’s how we talk about it.

Netta Weinstein: When we are asking someone to change their beliefs or their attitudes, we’re asking them to do something that’s quite difficult, which is to challenge themselves to acknowledge that maybe they weren’t right all along. Some of that could potentially mean giving up on the sense of safety that yes, I understand the world, I can predict the world, and my interpretation of the world is correct. Some of that means those things that my culture taught me, my community, my family taught me, those truths I knew might not be so true after all. We might be asked to challenge our own identities. So it is a potentially threatening and scary experience, to listen to those who disagree with you. That’s something that requires effort, that requires will to say, I’m going to sit with these feelings, and I’m going to sit with my discomfort and take a different perspective. And I’m going to try to be open in this moment. What good listeners do is they help to create that sense of safety and that sense of openness that means that defensiveness isn’t the most overpowering thing in the moment, because you’re willing to listen to me, even if just for the moment. That means that maybe our disagreements aren’t as fundamentally threatening to me as maybe they feel otherwise.

Guy Itzchakov: At the end of the day, you want to get along with your neighbor, because it determines your well-being and your quality of life. So the question is, if you’re willing to make an effort, and this is an effort, as we all know, to sometimes listen to stuff you disagree, and say to yourself, “I disagree, but I give this person the autonomy and the freedom to express what they think,” and then you will see that on most cases, they will reciprocate to you. Whereas when you argue you usually get—you know what you get back. Good listening does not equal agreeing with the speaker. It’s about the positivity, resonance. It’s about the non-judgmental attitude towards one’s freedom to express the attitudes. And I think this is where we need to invest our effort, not to have everyone think the same, because we know it won’t work, and we know that we’ll see more and more and more separation everywhere we look.

Tavia Gilbert: The team feels some urgency around sharing their research findings.

Guy Itzchakov: What I think and what I’m trying to achieve, in my listening training, the listening training that I study—and it’s quite challenging—is that we want to see the people that received the training and received the skills serve as social agents.

Tavia Gilbert: Their most hopeful discovery is perhaps this one, one that I hope will make each of us consider what opportunity we have to be positive change-makers through the art of listening:

Guy Itzchakov: One good listener can have a downstream effect, can be contagious, for the family, for the workplace, for the community, and provide an example that then can build the process.

Tavia Gilbert: We’ll be back in two weeks for a conversation with another thought leader, Deepak Chopra. Here’s a preview:

Deepak Chopra: If you have meaning and purpose in your life, if you have worthy goals that are not only about you, and if you know how to make other people happy by giving them attention, affection, appreciation and acceptance, then that’s the fastest way to be, quote-unquote happy. When you make somebody happy, you automatically feel happy.

Tavia Gilbert: If you appreciate the Stories of Impact podcast, please follow the podcast, and rate and review us. We are on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and at storiesofimpact.org. This has been the Stories of Impact Podcast, with Richard Sergay and Tavia Gilbert. Written and produced by Talkbox Productions and Tavia Gilbert, with associate producer Katie Flood. Music by Aleksander Filipiak. Mix and master by Kayla Elrod. Executive producer Michele Cobb. The Stories of Impact Podcast is generously supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation.