Collaborative Listening - An Introduction

When we listen we must learn.

In order to listen and learn we must have a mental framework for learning.

When we listen and learn we are engaging person to person with another person.

We are entirely learning when we are truly listening.  We are not just like a deposit box for information.

We are discovering things that are new and we need to be able process everything within the mental framework that works best for us for learning.

Since learning is essential to true listening – we all know that we might be hearing but are not actually listening, unless we are learning something – we need to actively manage our feedback as a listener in a way that enables us to learn well and keep learning well.  Otherwise we will stop listening, whether we want to or not.

We may know that our active listening skills need to be focused on the speaker's interests and on attending to the speaker's needs  in a way that helps the speaker say what they really want to say.  If we try to do this, however, it does not automatically mean that we will ourselves be able to learn well in order to be able to keep listening well.  For our listening to reach and stay steadily at the peak level of our learning, our active listening skills must be honed in a way that takes them beyond only being active listening skills to the level of becoming collaborative listening skills.  

So What Are Collaborative Listening Skills?

In order to learn to listen for how others are learning, we need to be aware of what is going on in our own learning process while listening.  Have we really got the full orientation that we need to start with, the context or the connection?  Or are we just trying to hear what is being said and catch up and understand what it all means at the same time?  

Are we just acting like we are listening while we are not really able to learn because we are so busy attending to the speaker?  At such a point, we might even ask good open ended questions that sound like they are designed to help the speaker clarify what they would like to say, but actually we are hoping that they will just enable us to make the connections or associations that we need to make to start to find what the speaker is saying to be meaningful to us.

Most often when people start talking with one another they do little to negotiate the learning process needs with each other that are actually always there if true listening is to follow.  It is as if people start to talk to one another without the full realization that their minds are different instruments that always need to be tuned to one another first.  They just start talking and when the communication turns out rough or broken up or out of tune only then do they start to adjust things and try to tune their minds or learning styles together.

Collaborative Listening Is About Facilitating Mental Orientation and Processing Style Preferences In Learning

If we use the awareness and feedback skills of collaborative listening upfront, attending to both our own orientation needs for learning and those of the speaker in an open and transparent way, we will find that we can much more readily focus our learning process on learning what the speaker wants us to learn and on why they want us to learn it.  We will be able to consistently facilitate the learning process the speaker is involved in, as they try to frame their thoughts in the best way for both them and us in the art of communication.

If we accept that the beginning of almost every conversation is like discovering a new landscape by feeling our way along, we will be much more able to let ourselves know, as well as our partner know, what we need in order to be truly collaborative, truly managing our learning together, when we are listening.