A Quaker Listening Space has two key foundations; effective listening and creating a safe space so everyone feels able to share openly and honestly.
Effective listening is a practice that sounds simple and many people understand the fundamentals of good listening. However, in our everyday lives we forget to practice these skills and instead listen to respond, rather than listen to understand. There's more information on listening basics here.
Being prepared to truly listen to others can be counter to the way we work in other parts of our lives where we feel under pressure to get things done, make decisions, get results and solve problems.
Some aspects of effective listening are;
To remind ourselves of effective listening practices, we use a simple acronym, HUE. HUE stands for Hear, Understand, Explore and is described in more detail here.
A safe environment is essential to a Quaker Listening Space. Participants need to feel safe in order to contribute fully, and speak openly and honestly. In some situations a safe space can be created quite quickly. In other situations where diverse points of view exist, or there is a element of conflict, this can take longer.
To help create a safe space, a Quaker Listening Space involves establishing a set of guidelines that reflect the values, qualities and behaviours that participants ask everyone to bring to the group. The guidelines can include practices that help if a group is unable to follow the guidelines.
Having established a set of guidelines at the initial session, they are revisited at the beginning of subsequent sessions to remind participants and if necessary make amendments.
Another important aspect is that a safe space can at times be uncomfortable. We may hear alternative points of view to our own and sometimes ones that we disagree with.
In a Quaker Listening Space everyone is given an equal opportunity to speak and be heard. In the early stages, this is usually done using a talking piece – an object that indicates who is speaking. When a person wishes to speak they take, or are given, the talking piece and when they are finished speaking they put the down or hand it on to another person or the facilitator.
While a person holds the talking piece, the focus remains on what the speaker is sharing. Others do not interrupt and the speaker says when they have finished speaking. There is then time for the facilitators and others in the group to ask questions to seek clarification and explore further - being curious about what the speaker has shared.
The dialogue in a Quaker Listening Space is often structured in a series of rounds. Within each round everyone has an opportunity to speak, but they are not required to speak and sometimes individuals will use their turn to simply hold the talking piece, thus providing a time for silent reflection.
Each round has a focus which depends on the overall theme of the listening space. The first round may be to give everyone an opportunity to share their thoughts on a topic. The second may be to share how their understanding has moved on and what they remain curious about. A third round may focus on how they intend to use their new understanding.
As the group becomes more familiar with these practices, the use of the talking piece may be stopped, but the way of conducting the listening space is maintained.
In a listening space, each participant comes with their own truth, the way they see a topic or situation. A key purpose of a listening space is to expand that truth by hearing, understanding and exploring the truths of others. In this way, a listening space builds a wider truth that incorporates the truths of individuals.
We use a simple metaphor of a landscape to better understand the idea of a wider truth and our individual connection to that wider truth. There's more information here.