Krista Tippett
Generous listening and the future of tech for human good
What does it mean to not only listen to someone, but to really hear them? What is the difference between small talk and a good conversation? Why do we open up naturally in some interactions and feel deeply uncomfortable in others? Google Empathy Lab asks hard, thoughtful questions and listens deeply as an integral part of our grounded research processes.
“Listening is about being actively present,” says Krista. “It’s not just about being quiet. I meet others with the life I’ve lived, not just with my questions.”
Empathy Lab’s work is kindred to On Being, in that we also focus on the living laboratories of our hearts and minds, relationships and communities. Entering these spaces with curiosity, kindness, and compassion is essential for our work to be truly meaningful, honest, and empathetic. It is key to ensuring that our research invites the deepest, truest experiences of the people we interview, the humans who share their lives and teach us how to be whole.
As a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster, National Humanities medalist, and host of the deeply-loved On Being podcast, Krista Tippett is a veteran in good conversation, and someone we wanted to learn from. Empathy Lab invited Krista to sit down with Lab founder Danielle Krettek Cobb and discuss the art of generous listening, a craft she has been honing for decades.
This is our first conversation with Krista. You can find our conversation on beauty, civility and our lives with technology. Also explore our candid Q&A.
Danielle: The thing that touches me most about your conversations is what comes alive in you in the moments that you listen.
Krista: Listening is about presence. What I hope for every conversation I have is that it is an adventure and that something will happen that will surprise both of us. I think of listening as a basic social art [or] spiritual technology. It’s a tool for the art and craft of living, and for a deepened, more generative, higher-quality human experience.
What I hope for every conversation I have is that it is an adventure and that something will happen that will surprise both of us.
How do you teach someone to listen well?
Krista:I think it’s something we know how to do, or we’ve known how to do, but we’ve actually unlearned. I think that, growing up in this culture, we learn that listening is to be quiet while the other person says what they have to say until it’s time for me to say what I have to say. But actually, listening is not about being quiet. The being quiet is a side-effect. Listening is about being present.
Listening is not about being quiet. The being quiet is a side-effect. Listening is about being present.
For me, listening brings a quality of generosity. And as a spiritual technology, it’s always working in two directions: It’s inner work as much as it’s outer work. In this world we inhabit now, with so many things we’re fighting about and so many things we’re fearful about, this is not as easy as it sounds. In fact, it’s not very instinctive. To me, a generous listener would be wanting to understand the humanity behind the words of the other — so it’s not just about the words that are going to pass between us — and wanting to bring your own best words and your best ideas into the conversation.
What kind of role does curiosity play in the act of listening?
Krista: The thing about curiosity is you can’t actually fake it. At an animal level, when we encounter another human being, we absolutely know whether they’re really curious or whether they’re just asking us a question. So really, even just this basic component of the art of living, of being curious, becomes a spiritual discipline. It becomes a muscle that we need to flex and flex so that it again starts to feel like instinct, starts to feel natural.
One litmus test to see whether you have actually gotten yourself to a curious place is to ask are you willing to be surprised? And again, we walk into all of our spaces these days so guarded, so clear about what we have to say, what we have to present, what we have to protect, and also so clear about what we think those other people stand for that being willing to be surprised is an unnatural move.
That being said, in many of the spaces we are currently working with and living in and meeting each other in, it wouldn’t actually be reasonable to ask other people to surprise themselves or surprise us.
That feeds into something you shared about hospitality, can you tell us more about that?
Krista: The social art of listening is intimately connected with the virtue of hospitality. Hospitality is a gateway to all the other great virtues and it’s much easier. You don’t actually have to love someone to be hospitable towards them. You don’t have to agree with them to be hospitable towards them. You don’t even have to like them to be hospitable towards them.
The space you create absolutely limits or expands what is possible that will happen there. There is a difference between creating a space with a welcome ethos or just opening the door so that anything can happen. To me, the digital world is just a new canvas for the old human condition. There’s nothing that happens online that doesn’t happen offline.
The space you create absolutely limits or expands what is possible that will happen there. There is a difference between creating a space with a welcome ethos or just opening the door so that anything can happen.
The quality of the encounter, of the listening, of the relationship, of the possibility of what can happen between two people — whether they agree with each other or don’t — is very much affected by creating this space.
I think there’s a real need in the physical world as much as in the online world, to create alternative spaces where it would be reasonable to ask any of us to walk in and bring our best selves and be looking for the good in the other and be willing to surprise ourselves and be truly inviting other people to surprise us.
How is listening in a conversation related to the rest of what’s happening?
Krista: I absolutely think the companion to listening is the art of asking better questions.
In American life, we mostly trade in answers. And a lot of what calls itself a question or presents as a question is actually not questioning. It’s a kind of tool or weapon to incite or corner or catch or entertain. The question is often about how it makes the questioner look and not really about what it’s going to elicit.
What I want to point out is how powerful a form of words a question is. Questions elicit answers in their likeness and answers rise or fall to the questions they meet.
Questions elicit answers in their likeness and answers rise or fall to the questions they meet.
In the negative expression of that, it’s almost impossible to meet a simplistic question with anything but a simplistic answer and it’s almost impossible to transcend a combative question. It’s also almost impossible to resist a generous question. And we’ve all had that experience that there is something life-giving about asking a better question.
I sense that there’s an opening in the space between you and the other person where things can be put. How does that work for you? How do you cultivate that opening when you prepare for a conversation?
Krista: I do actually think in terms of hospitality in the work I do. So much is determined about how an encounter is going to go in the initial moments before words are spoken. When we don’t do that preparation, the most obvious things about us define what’s possible. I create the space so that the things that we already know are problematic don’t define what becomes possible between us. I get excited about the conversation.
I prepare for my guests because I want them to be able to relax as quickly as possible so that we can really go deep. And one way I do that is by knowing about them, by honoring them. I think of my interview preparation mode as the Vulcan mind-meld: My mind, your mind, your thoughts to my thoughts. My goal in preparing is not that I know what they think as much as how they think.
What does it feel like or how do you know when a conversation is going well?
Krista: We all know this experience: you meet someone new and you know very quickly if you’re going to have to explain yourself, defend yourself, or be on guard. And then that’s what your whole body gears up to do.
But what I’m aiming for is this other experience we have also all had where you meet somebody and you just know that they get you. And even when I say that to you right now, my body relaxes, and there is a lot more possibility. It’s a soft space in which just more can happen. And I think it’s a more playful adventurous space for the same reason.
