Listen and share bravely: A fundamental practice for us all

Tess Cooper, founder of Collaborative Future, shares why listening and sharing bravely is a fundamental practice for all of us.

For me this is the most fundamental practice for us to master, however it is also the practice most often forgotten. Many of us think listening and sharing comes naturally as we are social creatures. But true listening requires us to go deeper and allow more time than most of us are comfortable with. It requires us to slow down but society has told us we need to keep moving if we want to be productive.

Going back to basics to transform the future

While it seems simple, I often believe society, our organisations, and our subconscious don’t really want us to make time to practice listening because if we truly heard ourselves and others we’d stop upholding harmful beliefs and systems. Or at least we’d stop making the same bad decisions over and over.

Even though Collaborative Future makes a living off of facilitation and team-building (for which the skill of listening is core) we still need to go back to basics sometimes and practice how to listen to one another because it is hard work undoing everything that stops humans from listening.

The other day we made space to practice this skill by attending Outlandish’s Communication workshop which introduces the use of a simple framework for conversations (FONT). Already the framework has been transformational in terms of slowing us down to listen to each other and our wider community, as well as enabling us to share bravely in a way that can be more easily heard and processed by others.

In my talk the other day I shared how listening is both the most fundamental practice of being human and the most exciting and important thing we can possibly do because it is key to building resonance and movement. It may seem basic but listening has the power to unlock so much possibility.

Conversation is productive — but we can listen and share in a multitude of ways

So many of us seem to think that making space in our work for lots of conversation is a distraction from the ‘actual’ work. Teams are often reluctant to take time out for an away day or to have regular meetings. But conversation is so important for understanding the people you are working with, how you need to work together and building something that resonates with everyone. When you understand your colleagues motivations or fears, or when you make time to understand one another’s needs or boundaries through conversation, you will work much more productively together. When these things go left unheard, resentment can build which causes unnecessary friction and in turn slows us all down anyway.

That said because we are all so bad at listening and sharing, conversation can often become unproductive because there is an imbalance of who’s being heard and what’s being said. When we facilitate teams we often encourage people to use different methods for communication, such as drawing exercises, or we’ll encourage people to think on challenging discussions overnight before reconvening to allow time for everyone to process. Our team recently split our weekly team catchup into 90 mins across two days. As someone that processes through talking I noticed that others weren’t getting the space they needed to process and share their own thoughts because they needed longer to reflect. Sitting on the stuff we’ve heard overnight gives everyone the space to truly internalise what’s been shared.

Setting an example with what we share

I hear so many leaders saying they want to know when their team has a problem or makes a mistake, or that they want to create psychological safety for their team to bring their whole selves to work. But usually the biggest blocker to creating this environment is that the leader themselves isn’t sharing their problems and mistakes, or bringing their whole selves into the work.

You’ve got lead by example when it comes to sharing bravely. And that means speaking up about your own challenges and mistakes (or perhaps your deepest hopes and dreams) even when you fear that people might reject you or laugh at you because of it. None of us want to look silly, or look like we don’t know what we are doing, and so we keep quiet. And in turn everyone else stays quiet too and we end up creating these strange work environments where on the surface everyone seems to be on the same page, but deep down we’re all just going through the motions.

Not long ago I told my staff that I only had one month’s worth of salaries in the bank. A lot of founders would never share things like this in case they created discomfort or fear in others or in case they looked like they weren’t on top of everything. But I believe complete transparency helps give people context and ensures you work together to come out the other side. When we share our challenges, other people bring ideas and perspectives we’d never have considered before. When people know what you’re worried about it gives them context for your actions and behaviour.

When we listen and share bravely we create deeper connections. And through those connections we build energy, we create new possibilities, and we find the power to transform and grow together.

Tess is the founder of Collaborative Future, a social enterprise on a mission to build diverse teams that thrive. Specialising in work placement programmes, Collaborative Future connects growing organisations with underserved talent and supports teams to build an empowering work environment. Prior to setting up Collaborative Future, Tess spent over decade building and leading teams across The Guardian, Comic Relief and FutureLearn, where she eventually became Director of People and Culture due to her drive to create a more inclusive company culture.