Do you ever fall back on the belief that persuasion and influence only work when we have authority, power, or the sheer will to get our perspectives heard?
Yeah, me too.
And while this is partially true, can you think of someone who took up more than their share of space, pushed their perspective, or to an extreme, sucked up all the air in the room? The kind of behaviours and ways of being that don’t consider different perspectives, quickly dismiss or discredit others.
If this person has authority or positional power, their behaviours might get compliance but not true or meaningful engagement.
And meaningful engagement is essential for shifting attitudes, behaviours, and resources- getting traction on your cause.
Is there another way to gain influence without forcing or pushing our perspectives?
Another way to gain influence
As conscious leaders, the capacity to develop is being able to listen at greater depths.
If you haven’t heard of Otto Scharmer (MIT Professor, changemaker, economist, and co-founder of The Presencing Institute), I encourage you to look him up. His work on transformational global change begins with ourselves. One of the core leadership capacities to help shift organizations and systems begins with deeper levels of listening.
There are four different levels of listening, including: downloading, fact-based, empathy and generative.
Downloading (level 1) is the quick sifting of information that reconfirms our own opinions and judgments. At this shallow level, we are listening from our habits and attachments.
Fact-checking (level 2) is where our mind begins to open. We listen for data and facts that indicate differences. The Urban Dictionary might describe this in how we recognize the “unpleasantly weird or unacceptable”- like what your older friend might point out as “different” when they observe a man wearing a kilt to work (“that’s….different”). Judgment still abounds.
Empathetic listening (level 3), your ego begins to take a back seat (read more here). You can connect to the emotional experience of the other, through the ability to identify and feel into that emotional range within yourself. You mirror, empathize, talk less, and avoid giving advice. With an open heart, you find intimate connection and understanding.
Deeper still is generative listening (level 4). It is the place where you find stillness of mind and a spacious Presence. There is a felt sense that the ‘future’- not yet known- is waiting to emerge and you’re giving it space. Here, barriers or blocks fall away- yielding a potent blend of peace and energetic momentum.
My downloading moves
Depending on how you spend your time, profoundly different qualities of connection arise with self, others, and the organizations or systems you want to change.
Where do we spend the most time? In levels 1-2: downloading and fact-checking.
And, my friends, this is normal. Our attention is fractured and we’re on autopilot most of the time. High work loads, intense family responsibilities, pressure to do more with less, coupled with our intrinsic human desires to be unique, powerful, and in control- land us squarely into ‘more shallow’ levels of listening to ourselves and others.
How do you know whether you’re in downloading or fact checking mode? If you had a video camera on yourself, what might you see? For instance, you might see yourself:
- doing multiple things at once (emailing/talking to your colleague/organizing papers/thinking about what’s for dinner)
- listening to the person you’re with, you’re secretly eavesdropping on another juicy chat nearby.
Some of mine this week:
When my son has my iPhone, I assume he’s playing Clash Royale. During this week’s city hall climate change debate, I was [occasionally 🙂] scrolling Instagram. Instead of listening to a colleague talk about a current challenge, I was daydreaming about a new program idea.
The cost of spending most of our time in downloading and fact-checking is real. When you’re not fully present to others, people feel unimportant or you’re not able to connect with your own vision for change or impact. In my case this week, my son felt I couldn’t trust him (he was checking the weather), and my colleague felt disconnected from me, because I had to ask twice to get their information right.
The magic that happens
So here’s the shift we all need to make: accessing “deeper levels of listening” (Levels 3 and 4) and more often. Because by practicing this you develop core an open mind, open heart, and open will. This is the foundation of conscious leadership and influential change making.
When you can deeply listen to others:
- People feel seen and heard
- They share more information, ideas, solutions
- You can identity subtle emotions, fears, desires that drive behaviours and;
- You are able to access multiple perspectives, beyond your own- critical to finding common ground and build a collective.
All of this is critical if you want to work skillfully with resistance, resistors, team-mates, and systems’ drivers.
Further, empathetic and generative listening is born from a consistent cultivation of your own inner Presence. And why do you want more of this? An inner Presence emanates a quality of Being that is grounded, still, and expansive. It yields influence, invites the impossible, and does so while deepening connection with others.
Practice: Shift the Place from Where you Listen
So how do we do this? To support empathetic and generative listening- we can use cues from our body. This practice is grounded in physical sensation. It creates a felt-sense of bio-feedback to support a shift in levels of listening from ‘levels 1-2’ to ‘levels 3-4’.
To shift the place you are listening in your body physically, imagine a stone dropping from your head to the centre of your body (around the solar plexus).
Often when we are in downloading and fact-checking, you can actually feel a tingly sensation in your head.
Imagining a drop from ‘head’ to ‘heart’, like a stone, is a helpful physical cue to be in your body differently.
This simple but powerful practice will support a shift in deeper levels of listening. The deeper the level of listening, the more it requires you let go of your own ego, attachments, and assumptions about the world.
Give this a try and leave a comment on what helped you access deeper levels of listening! I’d love to hear- so share your insights.
Jennifer
