Listening & Mediation 3

The third session of the listening series was completely influenced by Fiumara's, 'The other side of language', which opened up a huge can of worms regarding the nature and intent of questioning. The entire premise that logic comes in the way of listening and logic of the questioner derives the answer was a strong insight for me. Therefore the instruction given to the group was - go where the sharer is taking you and be aware of where your questions are coming from, from what they are saying or what you want to know? This was a slightly more open group so designed the framework to go deeper at the onset.

Three groups with 3 different outcomes. The premise, one person to understand what entertainment means the other while the third observes and records the process (did demonstrate visual note-taking but they stuck to writing notes).

Reflections

The understanding of how questions guide the answers was quite clear when we conversed, but in actuality it was a difficult task to do, especially at first trial. In the conversations each person who was asked to understand struggled to stick to where the the sharer wanted to go. And also for me it was quite evident that they way I set up the exercise (have been doing it the same way for the last decade) was for the person who needs to understand to build the skill of extracting information! To seek rather than listen, to get into their thinking rather than to create an environment where they share. It is not like it not about listening or making the sharer comfortable (environment) but it was never ever about it but about building the skill of seeking. How do we know whether we are truly listening to what they want to say? How do we know that they are okay with what they are sharing (during and after)? And how do we ensure that it is not about only seeking?