Listening experts can teach us how to engage another person’s story

Barn raising, photo by Ron Shawley

Amish people sometimes call barn raising “frolics,” gathering socially for a practical purpose. Organizers of a frolic provide a plan, and everyone involved pitches in tools and labor. In raising storylistening as a community of practice, we also need a frolic.

Rigid things break. Storylistening should stay ready for many kinds of needs and a diversity of skills, many of which are developed through instinct and experience. But a community of practice also does not coalesce in confusion. This is one attempt to plan by turning the folks who have studied the broad world of listening.

Listening with intention

We need to know why we are listening the way we are. As Andrew Wolvin described, there are many reasons to listen, which can be categorized:

• Discriminative Listening: to know where the sound or visual cue is coming from, necessary for all other kinds of listening.
• Comprehensive Listening: to understand and retain information in the message received.
• Therapeutic (Empathetic) Listening: to support and provide reflection for others, who are best served when they come to their own conclusions.
• Appreciative Listening: to enjoy or be affected by a message.
• Critical Listening: to judge the message delivered in order whether to accept or reject it.

Where does storylistening fit in these broad categories? Before I answer that, let me acknowledge some forms of storylistening that are important, but not exactly what we mean when we use the term. In education, the term is focused on comprehension of stories and its components especially for early learners. In public deliberation, the term is used to describe how stories reflect and affect our political stances.

Storylistening in this case intends to find the “stored self” in another person through deep engagement. That includes all of the components that make up that “storied self,” including incidents, but also people, spans of life (such as high school or a first job ), specific places, times, motivations, emotions, themes, and how they all weave together into an identity.

To achieve the form of storylistening, most of the broad listening types described above can be combined: discriminative (to acknowledge the unique teller), comprehensive (to understand the aspects of their storied lives), empathetic (to both encourage and support the teller), and appreciative (to feel the power of another’s life).

Critical listening is more complex. The reasons you want the story (think about a mentor vs. a journalist) will determine how much critical listening you need. More on that below.

Listening for flourishing

Throughout the process of developing storylisteners practices and guidelines, my own guide in listening has been Dr. Elizabeth Parks. A scholar in ​​listening, dialogue, diversity and communication ethics, Elizabeth wrote an influential book called The Ethics of Listening, which not surprisingly, is rooted in the same soil as this project: dialogue between two people, and thus, a shared responsibility. The goal of the book is not to prescribe rights and wrongs, but to describe a set of practices that help all who engage to flourish and for dialogue to prosper across differences.

The values that lead to flourishing are:

• Be open: Allow for new perspectives without the demand of agreeing or changing because of them.
• Cultivate understanding: Let go of preconceived notions and limited paradigms so you can truly grasp what is being communicated.
• Practice authenticity: Shape your listening around a desire to be honest and true to yourself.
• Engage in critical thinking: Think clearly and be open to allowing for healthy tension to arise, with the goal of growth and understanding in the long term.
• Invest in relationship: Be responsible for the relational bonding within the act of listening and being listened to.
• Care for the dialogue: Tend to both the other and yourself. There can be a cost to listening, and it is essential to care for the ethical listener that is you.
• Focus on what matters: Get past the surface of a conversation into a deeper relational dialogue.
• Be intentionally present: Practice bringing the whole self to the connection.
• Remember the ongoing story: Understand that you enter the narrative at a particular moment, and apply your understanding of the broader context to what is being communicated.
• Be responsive to the need: Grasp the moment that you are in the and the type of listening that is required in that moment, and then respond accordingly.

Parks’ book goes much deeper into each element and for anyone who needs listening skills to understand a wide range of perspectives, it is a must read.

Listening strategies

In addition to intentions and ethics, listening includes strategies. They also begin with intention, but come alive in action (Ratnam, 2019). Here is a general model:

Pre-listening

• Prepare with a listening type in mind.
• Reflect on your own interest or stake.
• Prepare questions that work for type.

While listening

• Deepen what is said with follow-ups.
• Check and reflect what is communicated.

After-listening

• Integrate with common normative knowledge.
• Crystallize content into themes.

This basic model works for storylistening, with some modifications:

Pre-listening for Story.
Living bamboo is a good guide for storylistening preparation. Well-rooted, bamboo is both strong and highly flexible. A storylistener is rooted in narrative, but will let the conversation move in any direction without snapping or getting carried away. We prepare to hear a story, even when a story is not being told.

We need questions, or maybe even one question, to direct the listening toward narrative. Many kinds of questions can spark a story, but some will elicit details (How did you get to school when you were a first grader?), while others will provide more open space (What was a day like when you were a first grader?). Neither is wrong, but understanding what the story requires should guide our questions. We want details, shapes, action, but also feelings, thoughts, fears, and triumphs. Because each person will take the questions in their own direction, we must be able to bend without breaking away from those outcomes we seek.

But the hardest story questions to conjure are not the list we make beforehand. Asked-and-answered interviews will only get us a story when the teller decides to tell one. Storylisteners prepare to find stories even when that is not the case. So preparing to be flexible, to twist and turn when the key people, times, places, events in the answers appear, while staying grounded in the desire to find story, is the best pre-planning we can do.

While listening for story.
Story is not as uniform as we imagine, and neither is listening for it. Again, what we seek from the engagement will guide how we listen. Storylistening can be structural in nature or it can be situational.

Structural storylistening seeks out components of a traditional narrative: Plot, character, time, scenes, themes. Unraveling plot reveals stakes, conflict, rising action, climax, and resolution contained by a beginning, middle, and end. Unraveling character means finding protagonists, antagonists, and “contagonists” (such as sidekicks, bystanders). Time unfolds in a story any way imaginable, from 60 seconds to 50 years, right now or a lifetime ago. Scenes include wide-shots (what you pin on a map), middle shots (general areas, such as a house or an office building), and tight shots (such as a specific room, or corner of a room, in which the action occurs). Themes can reveal general meaning, life lessons, personal reflections, trends, warnings, and much more.

A traditional story structure might pour easily from a storyteller’s memory. When I was five years old, I was in love with a girl named Paula. She ate dirt, but I loved her anyway. One day she grew tired of dirt, said she wanted a candy bar, so we did the most logical thing: We left our block for the K-Mart, with a $500 bill from Monopoly. A storylistener could take this small recounting and use dialogue to reveal something fuller.

Or a teller might speak out a component of the story. I used to get in trouble a lot when I was a little kid, especially with my neighbor Paula. A storylistener guides a teller into plot by narrowing the frame. “Do you remember a specific time you got in trouble?” Once narrowed and moving, other simple prompts can help, “Then what happened?” or “Why did you think she did that?”

On the other hand, situational storylistening is less concerned with traditional structure and more with placement of the self. The storied self is always placed in space, in time, alone or with others, engaged in some activity, even the most mundane. What makes a situational story come alive is interaction.

A situational story often begins with a “narrative stance (PDF)” such as, I am taking my comprehensive exams next week. Ugh. A formal story structure may exist in this stance, or may be emerging, but even if such a structure does not exist, it can still be storied. We already have a character, stakes, maybe even conflict. We can learn about the situation by simply asking our way through the immediate experience. “Why ugh?” or “What is a comprehensive exam?” Through interaction, the teller can be fully understood for who they are, what they fear and want. The story is ongoing and we are capturing a moment of it.

What is common among all stories are character, tension, and motion.

The first character is the one we are listening to, and here we seek the whole human. That starts with a mindset, the flexibility mentioned above, that resists categories and tropes for the sake of finding someone unique and unrepeatable. It also places a priority on the person over segments of their story. That defies some storytelling labor practices, such as narrative nonfiction, aspects of journalism, and perhaps others. Whether such orthodoxies are needed, and this kind of storylistening is rejected, depends on the nature of the tension sought. A tension between the outcomes desired and the teller’s needs is toxic to storylistening. A tension found within the teller, drawn out with care and purpose, is life-giving.

Tension is natural and healthy. A desire for something worthy naturally brings tension. That we know our flaws, our pain, our worries, and want to calm them within us, could not be more human. When a storylistener understands the tensions present and past in a person, it is then that a whole being appears. When in balance, tension is essential for life’s motion.

By motion, I mean that the person must act in some way. Either the act is moving toward something desired, finding resistance, experiencing a consequence, all components of a traditional story. Or the motion may simply be within a relationship, maybe talking something through, sharing a real experience, moving from a place of isolation to a place of communion. Growth is a motion. So is receding. Look for the motion and you will likely find the right tension. Find the right tension, and you are going to find a storied self.

Speaking of motion, another way to listen is to watch the body tell its own version of the story. Sometimes the text is in line with the body. I could not believe what I was seeing (she shouted, arms raising higher with each word). Sometimes not. I have learned to be open when I talk about that time in my life (he said, voice cracking, while his arms crossed his chest like a bear hug). What we say with our bodies shows another layer of our telling, and listening for that can help you guide a story deeper, or simply add nuance to the text.

In all these cases, most or all of the core competencies of listening mentioned above are at work. Deepening your understanding of the story through probing questions, checking and reflecting what you are hearing with the teller all become essential in storylistening.

After listening for story.
How you make sense out of your storylistening will be personal. Organizing our notes, our thoughts, and our conclusions reflects how we make sense of the world in general. So know thyself.

Two broad areas stand out as common among the many methods I have heard and read about: Integrate with Common Knowledge Bases and Crystalize into Themes.

Integrating with Common Knowledge Bases is about checking what we have heard and comparing them to master narratives, those stories we share as a culture and that structure our society. The personal views we hold about ourselves often reflect these narratives, whether we embrace them or reject them. Understanding the story we listened to through this lens helps us understand the social-personal ties that bind. To be bonded with a community is good, to be bound by it is not. So it is right for the storylistener to ask, “What of these stories are bonded to the social norms and what are bound by them?”

For example: When I was a young reporter, a 17-year-old girl died of alcohol poisoning in her bedroom after a graduation party. I spent the day trying to find the home of her parents, who had different last names. Finally, one of the girl’s friends told me the last name, in passing, during an interview. I tracked down their house and stood at the door, unable to knock, because I could not invade their lives on their worst day. Two days later, they called and asked me to come to their home and I interviewed them. I told them what happened and they were grateful, but my editor told me the story about them didn’t matter now. It was too late.

A master narrative of journalism in our society says that good reporters get the story first. Storylisteners contextualize the teller’s story with cultural narratives, not for the sake of pigeonholing the teller, but to understand something deeper about them and their influences.

Crystalizing Themes is about finding the organizing meanings behind a person’s speech and action. Themes come in all shapes and sizes. Some are codes, prescribed by theory to hold particular meanings. These themes can be really helpful and exciting, but I am more interested in emergent themes, or meanings that grow naturally out of the interaction with a teller. Researchers have plans for finding emergent themes: 1) listen for repetition of people, places, words, ideas, references, even hand gestures and verbal tics; 2) listen for intensity of the voice when it rises and falls, when it slows and speeds up; 3) listen for themes storytellers pull together themselves.

Storylistening outcomes

Is storylistening even possible if you are intending to do something beyond the engagement, pushing it into a public outcome?

I think it can. You can see a person as a who and still treat them as a means in an ethical way. As Walter Kauffman reminds us in his preface to Buber’s I and Thou, “Even when you treat me only as a means because you want some information, I may feel delighted that I have the answer and can help” (Kauffman, 1970). What a storylistener would never do is treat the teller only as a means. And good intention is not enough to shield us from that. The value of our work is in the integrity of the process as much as the outcome.

We cannot examine the complications of the process, however, without the lens of our intended outcome. And it is possible to divide storylistening into two board types of outcomes: Productive and Reflective.

Our work teaches us that simple narratives are rarely actually simple. Same with this neat division, and that’s okay. We simplify the categories so we can reach the important complexities, the ones where storylistening resists social norms. Norms that we tolerate and even norms that we cherish. The gentle art of storylistening, it turns out, has an ornery side.

Productive Storylistening intends to create a product out of the engagement: a documentary, a research article, a court filing, a podcast, a social media post, a news story, a medical report, a mental health assessment.

Each product is filled with a process driven by how it is created, who it is intended for, what power dynamic is at play, and how it can help or harm the subject of our listening.

Take an immigrant who has been detained and is pleading a case for asylum. The story she tells is critical to the success of that case. But who listens to the story? Who translates it, perhaps across language but always across themes? Who decides its importance? Power cuts through every element of the story. It is one intended for a system of codes and people. A storylistener must know these complexities, which are tremendous, and understand their own power in the engagement. Yet it seems quite possible to keep the teller’s need at the forefront.

Compare that to a crime suspect going to trial. One of their possible storylisteners, the defense lawyer, might be navigating many of the same complexities as the immigration attorney, but what use is there in trying to find the whole person? Is that beneficial? And what about the journalist covering the case, who might want to get close to the defendant for the best story. Is it possible to keep that teller’s needs the top priority? Could you also do this for the victim, or their family, at the same time? What if the teller is acting in bad faith?

If productive storylistening is possible, or advisable, in these situations, critical listening must become a larger part of the process. Storylistening is not meant to be the next tool for those who would manipulate information. There are plenty of tools for that. Storylistening, in fact, can be quite good at sussing out the facts, because it is the midst of co-constructing those narratives, not just taking dictation. We use our logic, our instincts, our openness, our savvy around uncertainty to avoid the simplistic narrative.

Another sticky question, one I struggled with many times: What of us listeners do tellers get to know? How much should a health care professional’s patient know about them? We can agree that relational storytelling has ended when the health care worker deceives the patient to get the story. But there is much space between that deceit and a full revealing of two whole lives.

This is why storylisteners must be flexible with each other. Within each profession, the ethical actions of a storylistener should reflect the reality of the outcomes sought. But flexibility is not weakness. It is alright to say that storylistening is not merely a sum of its plans and tools. The desire to be seen as a whole, coherent, human being sounds the call for storylisteners. To hold that principle is the root from which our flexibility is most effective.

Reflective Storylistening intends to create understanding between two or more people. The teller comes to understand themselves by seeing their story reflected back to them by a listener. The listeners understand the teller as part of the relationship that forms. This is critical in counseling, in team building, in leadership training, in family and friendship bonding, overcoming stigmas (such as ability or ideology), building each other up for activism, and I am sure much more.

Each reflection, just a like product, comes with complexities that should be addressed. What spaces are available for this kind of storylistening outcome? Unlike productive storylistening, confidentiality is critical. How do we ensure that kind of space?

Also, in some of the roles, such as family and friend bonding, teambuilding, building each other up, overcoming stigmas, the demand for reciprocality is in full effect. It is not enough to merely listen and not tell, because what begins as an equal power dynamic becomes unequal.

On the other hand, in counseling, in leadership, so forth, the question about how much the listener reveals is complex again.

Finally, we must care for each other’s health. As I mentioned several times, having your story reflected to you can be a great benefit to mental health. Listening can also be beneficial, especially in shared meaning-making about the stories. But there is a danger of opening up a space not ready for other eyes. Unless we are trained mental health professionals, we cannot predict what is too much or too little for another person.

So it is important to create space for limitations in this work. We should encourage people to go as far as they can, or want to, or need to. The boundaries we create are part of our healthy selves. Understanding that there are parts we cannot understand, nor need to, is another way of seeing a whole person.

A person is not a barn. What makes the work of storylistening powerful is also what makes it worthy of our caution. That is why we need each other. Bring enough minds, eyes, ears, memories, philosophies together and storylisteners could build plans that are strong and flexible.