(1) What is the learning here, about fostering listening to what is difficult to hear?
· A shared sense of purpose or a shared question is necessary to foster listening to go beyond superficial or easy communication to deeper levels. Some people in our group did not, I think, feel a strong enough sense of connection with, or ownership of, the questions posed by the inequality experts to continue the process.
· If this was the case, why did the discussion focus so much on the process, that is, the question about whether to stay in a big group or move to small groups to discuss the questions developed in the previous stage by the inequality experts? Why was the group unable to identify the need to (re-)establish a shared purpose or set of questions?
· Some people did speak and offer ways forward – including me – but it felt as if most people just wanted someone else to make a decision to get things moving. So a possible reason that the focus became ‘what’s the solution?’ rather than ‘what’s the problem?’ or ‘why are we stuck?’ is that a focus on solutions is so deeply embedded in NZ/Pakeha culture (e.g. think the language of business and government), which is a big problem for listening. Why listen without that shared purpose or question? I would note that a good number from the group were not happy with what emerged – the fish bowl process and discussion about Highlander – and walked away. Trying the fishbowl did lead to the group coming back together and agreeing a way forward.
(2) Drawing from your experience on fostering listening in challenging contexts, what is your response to hearing the challenges these five described?
4. How to engineer moments where diverse groups encounter and are brought into meaningful contact and interaction with one another?
6. How to create a modulating politics - that can have diverse forms (slow or fast, oppositional or radically receptive, etc) to respond effectively to different contexts - and not get stuck in one way of working?
I’m most interested in questions 4 and 6 because both speak to meaningful contact/receptivity across diversity. I believe these are largely missing elements in our current body politic, which is largely oppositional and based on gathering votes/shouting loudest/winning and bold claims about having perfect policies/solutions, which we all know can’t be true. If everyone is shouting at you and making claims about what their approach is going to do for you, your family and your community, what’s the response? Deafness, withdrawal, apathy, etc. (Which isn’t a million miles from the reasons young people – and many other adults – don’t vote).
So the first step for leaders and organisations is their attitude or orientation to others. I believe we need leaders and organisations that are hopeful but not certain about what needs to happen. They invite exploration of issues from multiple perspectives first rather than claiming a complete understanding of a problem and/or propose the solution. They seek to identify areas of common ground about the nature of problems and what should be done in dialogue with the people who will be affected. They proactively invite people who may have very different views to do this work. This approach was, briefly, institutionalised in the Bioethics Council, which started to develop momentum as it was disestablished, despite concerted protest by, for example, the Catholic and Anglican churches. I believe we need new organisations focused on the listening/receptivity/inclusiveness to help create a modulating politics.
One of the keys to being able to bring diverse groups of people together is the reason. The topic has to be something people are really concerned about or interested in – which can be a local or national or international issue. In my experience, diverse groups are more likely to form when the organisers show they have listened in advance and name all the main issues, perspectives and values trade-offs in advance and make it clear that these are all going to be considered fairly. Note many government policy consultations are framed in expert terms that do not resonate with the public, do not make clear what public values are at stake or what the trade-offs are, etc.
I also think it helps if the organisers do not have an interest in promoting any of the interests or perspectives. For example, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Forum of NZ has recently proposed it lead public discussions about the ethics of AI as if there are no issues with the members of the AI Forum being mostly tech companies that are investing heavily in AI. Alternatively, the organisers can be a coalition of all the interests and perspectives.
Organisers also need to be well-regarded (e.g. trust worthy, competent, open, etc), and have strong networks and relationships to even be able to approach communities. This is a problem for many public sector organisations.
And there’s the promise: what sort of influence will participation have? Participants often decide whether to participate and how much effort to put in based on the promise.
1. What are the tools that can help tell the systemic story? (that can make structural conditions visible)
Our socio-drama exercise showed us one tool for highlighting the systemic elements of a story. Deliberative processes with their emphasis on learning and exploration of all perspectives also support participants becoming knowledgeable about structural elements.
2. How to foster listening when there's a scarcity of time, attention and sense of insecurity across the system?
A complex question which I could come at in a number of different ways …
One approach is to create specific spaces for listening, dialogue and deliberation. New rules can apply when moving from one context to another. We need spaces – like the ‘Listening for Equality’ workshop – where the norms of everyday work and life, etc can be suspended for periods of time. All the ‘listening experts’ at the workshop do this in their own ways.
We also need a diversity of listening spaces which provide different opportunities for participation (passive-active; relatively easy to more complex, etc) and which provide feedback praising participation and encouraging more. The online game designers have shown how this can be taken to scale. The Alternate reality genre is worth looking at for the purposes of listening for (in)equality), e.g. see Jane McGonical’s work - https://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world
3. How to translate small group skills and approaches to deep listening and connection to a large-scale or online level?
Examples to consider re scaling up deep listening practices:
· Alternate Reality Game genre e.g. see Jane McGonical’s work - https://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world
· Some of the large-scale deliberative processes (AmericaSpeaks, Deliberative Polling, World Wide Voices)
5. How to extend action and connection after and beyond a particular encounter?
I don’t have much experience to offer here but there must be lessons from the civil rights movement in the US, etc. The recent referendum on amending the constitutional prohibition on abortion also has a long history that might be instructive. At least one commentator believes a institutional innovation – a Citizens’ Parliament – that promoted listening was important – see https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/29/brexit-ireland-referendum-experiment-trusting-people.
The Involve publication ‘Talking for a change: A distributed dialogue approach to complex issue’ also includes some useful principles. https://www.involve.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Involve2010TalkingforaChange2.pdf