Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Walking Around To Your Side
Celebrating DEI through Radical Listening
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?
At PF, we highly value the 3 C’s: curiosity, compassion and connection. For us to live out those particular values means committing to a deep level of inclusivity, and we try and practice that everyday.
Underpinning that practice is even deeper listening: Radical Listening (RL), if you will. RL is a concept that’s implicit in our PF social contract, and explicit in our conversations around how we wish to “be” with each other as a team, our clients, and the world.
And talking about it is important because the action of RL has to be a very conscious choice.
As humans, we tend to respond reflexively to challenges and opinions that are different to our own, through the filter of our personal lens or biases. Radical Listeners, however, strive to sit on that compulsive need to respond and make the effort (and it is an effort!) to “walk around to the other person’s side”, to see the world from their viewpoint. This is not an easy thing to do. In fact, it’s generally downright uncomfortable.
The discomfort, we know, is caused by two factors.
Passionate practitioners of Radical Listening, however, believe it is the way out of the silo-ed fortresses we’ve built for ourselves, and the way to build a bridge across the fierce polarities and prejudices that are choking human society.
By choosing to sit in the emotional discomfort triggered by suspending judgement and truly listening, we create the space to find the common ground that will build new paths forward.
If we think of deep listening as the beginning, the footings, the foundations that lays a path to change. By “softening the ground” between us, we can begin to use creativity, compassion, and collaboration, not just to overcome differences, but to transform and evolve.
RL is not only a choice that needs to be made, but also a muscle to be exercised. And a way to tone this muscle is by practicing our inner listening. This means taking moments to focus and listen to ourselves: our mind/body. What do we want and need? Where are our frictions and disconnects?
When we first attempt these moments of pause, we may become aware that inaction, or “not doing”, is uncomfortable and counter intuitive to what we believe is productive.
In this discomfort, lies the tension and the work we need to do — becoming more at home with being receptively present.
As our capacity for this state of being grows, the kind of attention we give will also change. Rather than our attention being alternating or divided, we will find ourselves able to give focus and sustained concentration.
And as we work harder to pause and listen, we will discover “these are the moments that we taste and touch the mystery.” — Tara Brach. That is, the joy of truly understanding and connecting with ourselves, and with others.
