Drafts and more

Content

1. Preface

2. Acknowledgments

3. Introduction

4. Preface to the chapters

5. Music as a Means to building Attention

Format 1: Music

Format 2: Music & Cognition

6. Podcasts & Building Cognition

7. Hearing & Dialogue (Mediation)

Module 1: Engaging in its Entirety

Module 2: Engaging and Questions 1

Module 3: Engaging and Questions 2

Module 4: Context and Mediation

8. Conclusion & Way forward (Artefact: Workshop Design)

9. Appendix

10. References

11. Annotated Bibliography

1. Preface

Listening is the most needed yet the least practiced skill in the mainstream world today; I have reached this conclusion after years of work as a facilitator who builds facilitation skills. I see the balance is tilted in almost every conversation I have had or observed, we are so focused on talking that we are slowly forgetting to hear the other, and it’s impact is evident everywhere, most visible in the cracks of our education systems. The reasons for the imbalance are many and deep-rooted, my interest and therefore focus became to understand what needs to be different when a group of individuals really listen to each other in order to create anything new – decision, design, challenge, learning etc. We see listening as something we just do and not so much as a skill we build. We hear, respond, comprehend, question, learn to give visual and verbal cues etc. and for the most part assume that is listening. But does this listening help us learn, grow, understand each other at a human level and collaborate? Are there multiple ways of engaging the auditory sense for multiple purposes and does each one of them have a place in how we engage with the world? And can we enhance these capacities, and by attempting to do so restore the much-needed balance.

This Capstone project is an exploration of what is the role of every individual in a dialogue (what skills do they need to build), what constitutes the different auditory capacities (ways of engaging), what do the philosophers and the experts make of it, what is its value in my personal and professional environment and finally how do I build mastery in it

2. Acknowledgements

Padmini, who mentored the heck out of this project and the entire course with her unwavering enthusiasm and value adding insights, thanks Padmini you know what you did. My comfort and support, Aalok who unfailingly heard me through all my lamenting, helped proofread my work, recorded my videos and podcasts, consoled while I hyperventilated, and was ever encouraging through the process. My genius of a daughter who used her every bit of diplomacy to gently tell me how bad some of the things I wrote were, gave a structure to my random thinking, read and reread my proposal and continues to be an unfailingly honest and kind feedback-giver. Vibha and Aparna were awesome throughout; encouraging, being great sounding boards and going through this with me. To all who gave your valuable time to be part of my research process and experimented along with me, thank you. And because of the nature of the topic almost everyone had a point of view on how I should go about it and didn’t hesitate to share, so thank you for that. And finally, thank you Srishti for providing a fantastic opportunity to grow in breadth and depth, India needs more schools like this.

3. Introduction

Gemma Corradi Fiumara in her seminal works, ‘The Other Side of Language, A Philosophy of Listening’ says, “we carry the illusion that we can speak without listening” and thus powerfully frames the intent of my Capstone. Her and many distinguished scholars across the world and over the centuries have tried to hammer the importance of listening to any culture and to us collectively as human. But somewhere along the way we have ignored and set aside the need to listen and pontificated, ruminated and worshipped the speech and articulation demigods. Nothing wrong with that, but it has created a skew that has impacted us in a profound way. There are many biological theories as to why speech and even visual have taken precedent over listening. One reason why the other two attract more attention is that evolutionarily they have moved towards greater usage and importance, for example, 70% of all sensory receptors are in our eyes (1), four-fifths of all the impressions from the senses comes from the eye (2) etc. Visual and speech have evolved from their basic purpose to the subtleties when we engage with each other adding multiple dimensions and intricate nuances. Shane Safir in his book, The Listening Leader, talks about the fact that speech is used to exercise dominance over another in a social construct and it is almost equal to establishing/marking territory. Another reason why is that many people see oratory ability as a desirable quality to possess over the assumed passivity of listening.

Interestingly historically we were able to overcome the ‘biology’ of it, and provide listening an equal role in society by exercising a simple premise: if one builds speaking capabilities there has to be an equal listening capability. The transmission of tradition and culture in India for thousands of years was through the spoken word, which meant, you listened with attention. The enunciations were subtle and nuanced and so you were trained to hear, very unconsciously. There is much said about listening in the Indian philosophical context, the spiritual influences of the Bhagvad Gita, where the first chapter is devoted to Arjuna’s sharing of his angst while Krishna listens. J.Krishnamurti3 talks about listening being the only way you build and understand relationships and Tagore4 says, “everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it”. The Greeks whose euro-centric influence is immense, used the word ‘logos’ to define saying and listening; two sides of the same thing. Phenomenologist Heidegger’s work on Discourse (a way human beings engage with the self and with the other) included listening and silence as relevant to speech and language. He says, “we are capable of speech because we have heard it first, we have listened to language, (and) we hear language speaking”. Almost all traditions were aligned to the importance of listening and that it needed to be a part of all communication was evident to them. Charles Sander Pierce, a renowned phenomenologist describes multiple modes of engagement that manifest with the auditory sense and how each of them should be cultivated with thought and action in order to engage with the world meaningfully. Similarly there are practices that are laid out in the Indian traditions like chanting which build the capability of listening, indirectly.

Why did things change and when did speech take over to become what it is today; wanting airtime all the time, believing we deserve more listening than before and very comfortable with not paying heed to any side other than the side that sounds like us?

· One reason could be that in today’s world, listening is seen as a non-glamorous practice. It is not possible to put it out there for people to appreciate like writing or speaking; it is devoid of any external tangible manifestation, and therefore not desirable. Listening is invisible and yet omnipresent making it very hard to appreciate but you do know when it is not there, like air.

· Another reason could be that listening has to do with being present and in attention and that is very difficult for most of us. From J.Krishnamurti, to Hiriyanna5, to Heidegger and to Shane Safir (The Listening Leader) all them talk about Attention (each have their own word for it) as the foundation of listening. Attention is staying in that moment without bias, judgment or boredom. It has a spiritual undertone that requires rigorous practice and one that you can never master as it is unending.

· And Fiumara who is strongly influenced by Heidegger articulates a third and most important reason. She philosophises that the main cause could be our existing mainstream logic-centric culture, in which an individual can constantly shift what they are saying without really having to take in any new input, we all (most of the time) use logic to respond to what is being said rather than just listen. And according to her, speech shows knowledge of (individual shines) something whereas listening works on being in co-existence with (the collective) the other. And when we first started communicating this skew was never meant to take the shape that it has today. This triggered a reading and reflection that I had done of Ivan Illch’s book, ‘Tools for Conviviality’ (the quality of being friendly and making people feel happy and welcome). He says, “I claim that the solution of the crisis begins with a recognition of the failure”. He saw and recorded the magnanimity of the problem decades before it unfolded; it was ‘unmissable’ yet we missed it. And today we are scrambling to reduce the size of the monster we created. The problems that looked like nothing even a decade ago now make us question our near future; whether natural resources, the recurrence of war, poverty at a peak that we should all be ashamed of and the list goes on. In my opinion, we never saw the failure and actually many still don’t. The carnivorous movement towards scale, largeness, and growth is seen as, ‘good for the human race’. The machines that claim they are alleviating poverty do not want to realise that are adding to it, the medical institutions that claim they are providing better healthcare don’t want to accept that they are catering to diseases that are ‘discovered’ by them and the schools are fashioned like all these ‘successful’ institutions are churning out products which are up to specifications, seem to think they are doing a spectacular job of giving the world what it wants. How does one live with this lack of recognition? And even if we do recognise, can we really do something about it? Is it really only debate between the capitalist and the socialist or does it go beyond something so mundane? Since it the way of the world today, why should we to shift the direction in which our engagement with each other and the world is moving? Reiterating Fiumara, “there must be a problem with listening that we only hear from the earth when it is so seriously endangered and we cannot help paying heed. And there is whole world yet to be discovered, not of unsolved issues but of relationship among things we know, of ways in which they might fit together”. Is it possible for us to engage in a manner that we listen in order to integrate and create new? Is Fiumara right, could a first step that moves towards a different solution, a newer way be changing the way we engage and therefore co-exist? And should we take the first step towards creating a shift in understanding who we are when we listen, how do we listen and engage, how do we respond, and what kind of environments do we contribute to when we engage with the other and with the world.

In the last semester, I explored listening as a personal practice extensively and started to pay attention to how I listen, how others listen, and what makes me want to listen. Varela and his work on Embodied Action influenced the intent of my practice. In the book The Embodied Mind, the authors, Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch talks about Enaction; which is defined as cognition stemming from the interaction or relation between the environment and an organism (person). Varela says, “Enaction brings forth an agent-dependent world of relevance rather than representing an agent-independent world”. He generalized this thought to systems such as a network of processes that depend on each other for their creation and discernment as a network, and are seen as a unit. He alluded to its application to other domains like communication networks and Discourse/Mediation. Does it mean that we can use the Enaction ability to learn and grow together? Logically the dynamics should change when there are two Enaction-oriented beings in the picture and the environment adding its own layer. Varela also says that Enaction has selectivity deeply embedded in it, therefore allowing each of us to choose what we take away. We can evolve and grow if we listen to one another and heighten our quality of engagement and however hard we try we are never separate from the ones we are talking or engaging with, making it harder to argue with others. Clearly, engaging is about self and not the other.

Listening (in its entirety) has now become a conscious part of my professional practice. I have been a facilitator for the last two decades and I mentor and coach adults who want to become facilitators or improve their existing facilitation skills. This encompasses facilitation for teaching, skilling, dialoguing, negotiating strategy, and innovation and for running effective teams—a very people and relationship specific broad and open space to work in. My focus has been only on speech and language, naturally, as I am part of the same world that obsesses over speech. I would always say that I learn best when I talk but until now I had failed to acknowledge that I listen to what I say therefore I learn! The loop is what moves my learning and it took me twenty years in the facilitation space to ‘see’ it.

Since listening has so many dimensions, interpretations, variations, depth and meaning, I have defined my premise as such; to explore the realm of dialoging as a gateway to building co-existence by focusing on four variables:

1. I (self)

2. The other (could be one or more)

3. The context in which the engaging needs to be situated

4. The environment that maps the tonality and quality of the engagement.

As stated earlier Embodied Action influenced my practice realm and over the Capstone I integrated Phenomenology into it, as that made the most sense for an individual who is exploring their ways and means. As J.Krishnamurti says Attention is ONE - where the action, the listening and the seeing act as one. So constant observation of when I listened how I am (act) and what I contribute (value I add) towards an engagement was mapped as my personal mastery and as for my professional practice (Facilitation) I added the dimension of responding (value I add) and guiding to my observing and acting. And over the last year as I have practiced, paid and shaped attention to my listening ways, I have come to see the impact listening has had on my personal and professional practice, with respect to co-existence and cognition. I have come to recognise it as a non-influencing, non-threatening way to learn for the self (me) and in the process create an open environment for the other to explore their listening ways.

The phenomenological approach was the key route to this practice; the foundation being Heidegger’s work on Discourse and the modes of experimenting will be grounded in Charles Gordon Pierce’s work in listening practice. Heidegger iterates that there are many instances in Discourse, which have nothing to do with linguistic/language capacities. The importance of hearing, keeping silent, and the conversation within/with self (conscience) all points to the understanding that he intended Discourse to be closely linked to, but not identical with language. The practice was conducted using the structure proposed by Charles Sanders Pierce in his work on the three modes of Sensing, Hearing and Mediation. In Sensing the focus is on quality of the experience - there are no parts to this, the experience and the experiencer and everything around is one. Hearing is about being in relation with another (which could be an experience or another person/people) and being present. It is more about the engagement with the other; there is no purpose or agenda to it. And Mediation is a deliberate engagement with the self, with another or with many but with a purpose. The purpose could be co-creation, building meaning, cognition or learning.

The focus of my personal mastery was:

1. To build attention or stay present as I listened. I incorporated a tool, which I have unknowingly used to ground myself as I listened, I doodle. During my Masters I was introduced to the practice of visual note-taking so the random doodling took a form that allowed me to stay present for what was being said and capture it meaningfully, providing depth in my understanding (cognition) when I went back and reflected on it

2. Carnatic music has been in the air since I was a child, and I grew up listening, singing and learning it. But it was all through osmosis, there was no formality to what I learned, it was self-initiated, I learned as my mother sang (she did not teach us), I learned listening to cassettes etc. So I never considered myself knowledgeable of Carnatic music, as everything I did around it was informal. I loved listening to it because it was familiar, home and I knew the words, but never had any understanding of the form, function and structure. I experimented with listening to Carnatic music as a way to build attention and deepen my understanding (cognition) of it as a genre. I started my journey of a true rasika (aesthete).

The focus of my professional practice was:

1. Building Dialoguing (in Pierce’s words Mediation and Heidegger calls it Discourse) as practice/skill within my Innovation workshops. I work with people who want to become facilitators and therefore need to build engagement skills, which are more crucial to making Innovation happen than ideation is. Workshop design has been a part of my life for the last twenty years; it started with the structuring based on a Bloom’s taxonomy and moved towards homegrown design for the world of Innovation in the corporate sector, which incorporated the action method of creativity tools and techniques to ideate and prototype (pure experiential learning methodologies). In the corporate world most design that I have learned and created have principles for enabling adult learning rather than structures and frameworks. For example I have used a contextualized version of Andragogy (which is based on a humanistic conception of self-directed and autonomous learners as well as teachers as facilitators of learning6). I have also used frameworks from Edward De Bono’s work extensivley, many inputs came from Adam Kahane’s7 work on dialoging and the process of enabling enriching and outcome oriented dialogues among leaders, and in the last two years have incorporated parts of Daniel Wilson’s (Project Zero)8 work on collaborative learning for adults. My philosophy of education has majorly been shaped by J.Krishnamurti’s work. In the last two years the introduction to Paul Friere’s emphasis on the importance of tolerance as we learn from the other and Piaget and Papert’s work on constructivism (more adult learing orientation) and constructionism (more towards children) has really given me clarity of the basis of the adult learning frameworks I had regularly used. The way the two shift from theory to philosophy to method, from science to approach to practice9, added a new understanding and therefore application in my workshop design practices, the designs I was able to put together were much more meaningful and useful. I have built my design based on the above as I have not encountered too many models in the education world for adult learning, especially facilitators.

2. This is the foundation that I used to build and run four workshops that involved arriving at a decision as a collective group, which was hierarchical in nature. I used visual note taking as tool to record and also used it to reflect with the group. For the last one, I encouraged every member of the group to visualise. The focus of each of the workshops was different:

1. How do we listen when we make decisions?

2. Incorporated 1 and added the dimensions of questions - as this module had to do with understanding the latent needs of a consumer.

3. Focused on how we frame questions and the influence we (unknowingly) have on how the other answers.

4. And the last one was to build a common understanding (context) of a challenge we needed to solve.

The aim of my practice in these four workshops was around facilitation as a tool to bring about Hearing, which could be common understanding, a new way/approach or even a decision that everyone has equity, in an environment that allows for listening, engaging, responding, creating new meaning and movement through dialogue.

The chapters that follow will delve deeply into each of the practices, the learnings from them, the educational/philosophical grounding they manifest and what elements did not work or could be made better.

4. Preface for the Chapters

Wittgenstein10 says and I agree, “words have no rigid meaning, language is fluid and our understanding of it changes over time” and therefore the need for this preface.

I have used the word ‘to understand’ instead of cognition as there is a heaviness to cognition as compared ‘to understand’ and also cognition implies (to me) a closure whereas to understand seems more open and evolving. For the purpose of this project they carry the same meaning.

I have also used the word attention instead of mindfulness, presence, awareness, and Da-Sein. In my numerous readings and practice I have come to understand and believe that they all mean the same once you go beyond the surface. The purpose of defining attention is to articulate how it has played out in my practice. Attention for me has come to mean ‘being there’ and ‘staying with’ and ‘engaging in’ all at once.

Finally the word listening itself is causing a bit of confusion. Pierce, who I have based my practice on, uses listening as the way we engage when we build cognition with the other or in a group, whereas everyone else uses it to mean a deeper way of engaging. So, used Mediation instead of listening when I talk about Pierce’s mode of Listening. And have used listening and engaging interchangeably when talking about my personal journey. I sense a change in the title of my Capstone.

And I have used the term, engaging to mean what it does; engage with another, not colour Peirce’s mode of engaging - Sensing, Hearing or Listening. It also is making more sense as t makes us aware of the assumptions of how we are verbalize and define our auditory capacities.

Finally, sentences in italics are insights and underlined phrases/sentences are potential tools for enhancing personal or group mastery of engagement.

5. Music as a Means to building Attention

I set up the practice in two formats, and as mentioned earlier, have based it on Pierce’s modes of engaging - Sensing, Hearing and Listening.

Format 1:

Introduction: The first experience had a broader focus, which included observing my relationship with Carnatic music, talking to aesthetes who listened and played classical music to understand how they built their relationship with music, listening to the music and observing my stance in multiple formats:

1. On headphones (familiar songs)

2. Attending live concerts (completely unfamiliar songs)

3. At a wedding (familiar songs)

Added familiar and unfamiliar music to the listening and tried multiple duration times. The intent was to observe the way I listened, and this observation I reflected upon it post the experience through visual note taking and writing.

Practice Reflections (refer Appendix 1):

1. The familiar songs drew me to them, I would stay with it but they evoked memories that kept me away from being attentive to it. I mapped attentive as staying with the song as it played and not being drawn towards the emotion and the feeling it evoked. For me to be with the song and experience the emotion was impossible. The song was part of the emotion, intertwined. And interestingly one rendition of a very familiar song happened in a live space, where I was not able to control the emotion that the song evoked. Tears were rolling down my eyes without even my knowledge, people were wondering if I had finally lost my mind. I was lost, the song and the emotion intertwined to evoke a deep connect with the music. Was there ever going to be a time where I could be attentive (Hear) to the music without the history attached to it? And therefore, would I be able to add to my understanding of the song and the raga or would familiar music always bring with it the history? So for any understanding to happen, is Hearing a necessary first step?

2. During the unfamiliar renditions, whether live or otherwise I struggled to Hear, my attention would wander very easily. There were three different performances, all blending in the Carnatic and the Hindustani. The feel of the place and the people immediately permeated me and my level of engaging. I went with a Rasika (not in the technical sense but more so in the love for music sense). As I became part of the experience, the Sensing part of it became heightened, not so much of the music itself but more of the ‘mahaul’ (environmet). The people who came in late, the offbeat tapper in front of me, the quiet murmurings of children who couldn’t stand still. All this was increased when I was not engaging with the music. The fact that I was constantly trying to draw myself back to the music was useful - I caught multiple moments of being one with the others and with the performers and what did that look like - being outside my head rather than inside it.

The first step into understanding is why it is important to know what you are experiencing and why building knowledge of classical is relevant. Recognizing the nuances is one of the ways to build a relation with the artist. Should you already know quite a bit of the music in order to build that relation? Is saha-hridaya, a term that is used by Hiriyanna10 in his collection of essays which essentially means that the listener and the listened need to be on the same plane (the listener has to have the depth and the nuances of the renderer, without either of them needing to explain beyond what is being rendered) - "Every lover of poetry in this view is virtually a poet”, meaning that appreciation of poetry is equal to creating it. Is this possible without a nuanced and deeper understanding of the craft, especially one that needs rigour to master? And does the environment you are in impact your Hearing and Sensing during an experience?

Critique and Conclusion: What emerged was the need for attention when engaging and the varied distractions that pulled me away, when the engagement was not ‘live’ or did not need to be ‘visible’. A performer on stage and even a song on an iPod does not demand or insist you be with it, it is a choice that each of us make in that moment. We chose the quality of Hearing we are going to give to that moment. Whenever I kept pulling myself back into the music it was voluntary but drifting away gave a feeling of involuntary, but it was not. In fact the other patrons kept me grounded, whenever I got distracted I would ‘see’ how intently the others were engaging and snap back into attention. The expectation that the other will hold my attention was key - familiar music I stayed with as I was with an emotion it evoked and unfamiliar music I got distracted, therefore allowing the external to dictate my stance. The internal distracted with familiar music and the external with unfamiliar music, I was constantly pulling away from just being there with the music. It seemed like that was Hearing for me and I was not sure that I liked the control the other or my own thoughts had over how I responded. All four aesthetes I talked with said they grew up with music as children, the ones that were formally introduced to it believed that one needed to understand classical music in depth to enjoy it whereas the ones that were introduced to it as part of the air they breathed without the formality felt that all they needed was to like the melody and that would bring them joy. But they all agreed that they engaged with the music instantly whether familiar or not, it was impossible to be distracted once the music (especially their favourite genre) started to play. They cultivated Hearing over time and today are able to snap into Hearing the minute music is played. For one it was the melody, for another it was the breaking down to figure out the way the musical was rendering the raga and for the third it was all about Hearing to learn. All had purpose and that instantly triggered the Hearing. So if there was a purpose beyond observing how I engaged, would I have stayed with it? And staying with it needed rigour and practice? And did that purpose help them realise that they needed to be attentive in order to understand and connect at the deepest level?

Format 2:

Introduction: The second format emerged from the above question; a purpose was decided ant it was, to build a deeper understanding and recognition of one particular raga. I picked the raga of my all time favourite song. I had learned it on my own through listening to a Bala Murali Krishna cassette tape at least 50 times, 30 years ago. Realising only in hindsight that I instinctively understood practice to mean: rigour, routine and ‘staying with’, nobody explicitly ever told me to do that. As mentioned earlier this song to this day evokes a very strong emotion and connect which I believe is similar to what Pierce describes as Sensing, somewhere between nothing and something and a connection that is indescribable but visceral. As there was no formality to the learning, I could not recognise the raga nor did I know any other song in that family. So, I decided to build that understanding by engaging through Hearing, Pierce describes this as being present and engaging completely with the other (animate or otherwise). Intent was to observe (reflect upon it post through visual note-taking and writing) how I built comfort and understanding the flow/essence of the raga, and eventually build the capacity to pick out a song in that raga from a lineup.

Practice Reflections (refer Appendix 2):

1. I would sit every day for a minimum of 20 minutes and engage, focus on the music; intent was to develop an understanding and recognition of the raga. The posture was what I had experimented of attention in the previous format. I did not want anything to else to be important other than imprinting the music. A reflection was done post each session. It was a total of 10 sessions, one included a background playing off the songs over a period 3-4 hours and also included a mid way reflection on what I was observing of me through the ‘Hearing’. Repeatedly playing and engaging with the song was the way I was building an understanding of the raga. Not just that, the routine I had created was the most crucial part. I would sit in a room, close the door and just stayed with the music. Played different songs which were part of the raga, many classical and some popular. In the beginning every song sounded nothing like the other of the same raga, I then started to look for one familiar part, not the whole song but one part that sounded like the song I knew and loved, that immensely helped. Once I figured that out, then I moved outwards and attempted to build familiarity with the other parts. Emotion did not play a part, even when I was engaging with the familiar song, the purpose shifted to understanding the song.

Critique and Conclusion: Having an outcome helped me engage my Hearing skills in a dramatic manner; I was surprised by the rigour I brought into my practice. This was not what I expected, as the assumption that I had made was that because I was doing something I was happy to do, purpose and rigour were not needed in order for me to take the task seriously. I would do it because I loved it. The Hearing would be engaged as I liked music and not because I wanted to learn new. As observed in the first format, Hearing was tough to engage, especially with the unfamiliar. Today the raga is more familiar but I still cannot pick it out of a lineup and that highlights the engagement one needs to commit to in order to build that skill. For me what worked was the outcomes and a rigorous routine and I didn’t have to keep pulling myself back from being distracted by the external elements. The focus was in-built. Also recalling how the others were listening in the live concert and the conversations with the aesthetes helped in engaging deeper with the music.

Summarising the thoughts around both these experiences:

1. What I expected when I wrote in my proposal was achieved; the process opened my understanding of how I engaged at a micro level. When I say micro, I mean in that moment and every moment after that how did I engage. And the constant back and forth between the observer and observed was highlighted at every one of those moments, so being present or being in attention to me has come to mean what I experienced in both these formats, and that it needs practice which needs routine, rigour and repetition. When we say pay attention to a roomful of adults or children, is this what we expect and is this how they see paying attention as? Again, the meaning of the word and the connotation it carries makes all the difference of how we ‘live’ that word. While we use it all the time, we never really tell a child or an adult what they should do we when say, pay attention. What is the process of paying attention? What should a child actually do, be and think when they are asked to pay attention? And do you get better at paying attention when you practice paying attention? You do, it is why the UK education system has instilled a curriculum, which includes mindfulness as a subject, or even why the Vedas extoll the importance of attention led practice in order to arrive at an insight (Darshana) and be spontaneous (moulik). The more you want to get better at something, the more you pay attention to it. We all know this, so why do we expect to do well and be better at something when we have not been completely attentive to it? I really do not have an answer to that, other than to say, blame the lizard brain11 (200,000 year old part of our anatomy, one that is responsible to keep us safe from physical harm and puts up quite a resistance when we want to shift our behaviours to the difficult or unfamiliar as it believes it is protecting us) we still carry around with us! And maybe it is up to each one of us to build our attention led practice so we do not allow the ‘self preservation’ aspect to lead our engagement.

2. Understanding the ways I chose to engage in the different environments helped recognise my triggers of what helped and what came in the way. Also the influence of having a purpose grounded me more than I care to admit. I did not realise how output focused I was, especially in something that I treat as a passion. The rigour and the routine played a big role in the grounding my attention and minimising the internal and external distractions.

3. Pierce describes Hearing as, “a combination of an action and reaction, between our soul and the stimulus. The realm of Relation is therefore the realm of events and things moving with and against each other; it is the “experience of effort without regard for any purpose”. Pierce has completely changed the way I use and interpret the word Hearing. For me, in this format it has been the most important way to engage. The Sensing and the understanding come much later and are outcomes (most of the time), everything starts with Hearing - ‘being there’ and ‘staying with’ and ‘engaging in’ all at once, Attention happens here. And that is what Peirce also shares, “temporally, then, Hearing precedes Sensing, and Sensing therefore requires our interaction with things in the world to be made apparent”.

6. Podcasts & Building Cognition

Introduction:

These experiments as mentioned in the introduction were to understand the relationship between Hearing and building cognition (an understanding of a topic that goes beyond comprehension into being able to contact the dots and synthesise new information that adds depth and breadth to my understanding of a particular topic). And also as mentioned earlier doodling and/or visual note taking was a tool that I incorporated into my practice.

A fascinating class on how visual note-taking adds dimensions to what you understand made me research more into the world of doodling with a purpose and visual note-taking, it was quite a discovery, the most famous being Da Vinci, Kafka, Yeats, many American presidents etc and the least famous being me. We all had one thing in common though - doodling grounded us and we stayed with what we were listening to. Research12 done with medical students shows that doodling allows for connections, triggers memory, improves focus, and reduces stress and allows you to be more creative. Medical students improved their depth of comprehension and memory when they doodled along with the lecture. In this practice I deliberately converted my doodling as I engaged practice to visual-note taking as I engaged. My doddles were not random but were about what was being said in the podcasts. Though I am really bad at drawing and I cringe every time I see my doodle, I didn’t back down.

I picked a topic of utmost interest to me, The History of Man, selected six podcasts that ranged in duration and the renderer (ensured a cultural mix), doodled as I paid attention, and before I engaged with the next doodle, summarised the previous one.

Practice Reflections (refer Appendix 3):

This practice was more in my control, maybe because I had become more conscious of my listening ways. Even though it was a topic of extreme interest, I enjoyed some podcasts more than the others, realised that when I set out to build cognition, I need to know more of what I don’t know and find interesting. But I did not switch off or change the ones that I did not connect with, I stayed with it. The impact of routine and rigour was visible as I paid attention. Since I was trying to visualise as I wrote, initially the doodling came in the way, I would stop engaging with the podcast and think about, how to draw an ape, or a forest, and that was jarring in the beginning. Then as I built a collection of visual images I got more comfortable in staying with it. This is without asking anything close to good or perfect of myself when I doodling. Some podcasts were very science-based and some sociology based, meaning there was a lot of detail that was being shared. Despite going back to the doddle a couple of days later to summarise, I was surprised at the level of detail my summary had, and by the time I got to the sixth podcast, I was making inferences and building upon information from previous podcasts. The practice was relatively straightforward and being with it was not at all difficult.

Critique and Conclusion:

1. This notion of something needing to be interesting for me to engage connected with what I had read in Fiumara’s work; she talks about the difference between having interest in something and finding something interesting. How are they different? The former needs the attentive abilities, if you are truly interested you will learn out of your own accord, whereas the latter expects a constant flow of interesting things, which eventually leads to boredom and/or indifference, and the search continues for the new and interesting without needing to engage with attention. As I think about this, I used the word interesting in my reflection as something that I did not know about a topic and to me because I am interested in the topic deeply I would find a lot of aspects of it interesting. So, if the purpose and the need of what we find interesting is connected to what we are interested in, it could work together? As long as the caveat for staying interested is not to find interesting things about a topic? This is a bone of contention for me when I work with adults or children, the need and the dependency to be given newer and interesting tools to, let’s say, learning to build attention. And if they have heard it before, there is a strong assumption that they can do it, which brings us back to the point of attention led practice, this is what we do when we are interested in something, we stay with it and build it and do not assume mastery just because we comprehend it. This breaking down of how I view interesting adds an important layer to the attention led practice, and it’s relevance when we work with others.

2. Hearing here became a given, and again the Sensing and the understanding were the after effects. As I wrote my summary the understanding fell into place and as the understanding fell into place I ‘knew’ or connected with why I love this topic so much. It is always the Hearing or that Relation we build that moves or decides the direction and maybe even the depth of the other two.

3. Did the tool (doodling) come in the way or was it a next step that I needed to take in order to make the tool more meaningful to what I was doing? I think the initial discomfort of the doodle to the visual note-taking was uncomfortable but that bridge needed to be crossed as I move further into my practice of engaging with the other and creating an environment where this tool can be used to generate new value.

This marks the end of my personal mastery and in the next two chapters I move into my professional practice where I continue to practice my engaging and also work with others to build their awareness on how they engage and explore the environments that enable us to do so. In simpler words, I included the role of a facilitator to my practitioner role.

In conclusion, the key insights of my personal mastery were: Attention is needed to engage, and it needs to be built through rigorous and routine driven practice that emerges from the strength of a purpose. And also left me with a burning question; is listening a skill that can be taught?

7. Hearing & Dialogue (Mediation)

Introduction: As the practice moved away from just me to include the other (group and/or individual), Pierce’s Mediation and Heidegger’s Discourse and Fiumara’s co-existence took center-stage. Though they use different words, the premise is almost the same; engaging with the other where the environment and the people are allowed to share and bring alive together a value that is meaningful to all involved; whether it is a decision, or navigating a dilemma or even understanding the nature of a challenge. I stayed with Mediation as it speaks to me the most articulately.

In my proposal I had broadly outlined the nature of the engagement but I think my personal mastery experiences and the relevant readings have further shaped the design of each of the modules that I rendered in ‘Building Facilitation Skills for Innovation’ workshops. The team remained the same for all four workshops; the first 3 modules were each an hour long and the last one was 2 hours long. This was the first time in my 20 years of facilitation I was practicing and rendering a session on the quality of engagement. The four areas that I talked about in the introduction emerged after my second workshop and the previous modules layered the design of each of the modules.

The intent was to retain my personal practice as I facilitated the group; my personal mastery included building a routine, ensuring rigour, staying with (visual note-taking as a tool) the engagement and to this I mapped the other (group and/or individual), the context we needed to work with and the environment that Mediation needed (as articulated in the introduction).

The environment has been a continuing thread through my personal mastery but it took a dramatic turn when the other (group and/or individual) became involved. The underpinning of my design of the environment was Anne Marie Mol’s book on care in the health sector, ‘Logic of Care’. This has become my go-to for the environment that I would like to perennially create and be a part of. Mol in the context of healthcare writes, “that good care is not a matter of making individual choices but is something that grows out of collaborative and continuing attempts to make aware knowledge and technologies to diseased bodies and complex lives”. An environment needs to be able to hold what is necessary for that moment, a decision, a thought and or movement and it should not have the rigidity to hold the same for another moment, which however similar is still very different. If the people I work with use this one principle, I think many a problem would become redundant. The corporate world (purely my experience and therefore conclusions), where I work with building facilitators is a land that needs certainty, process, structure etc. All great characteristics but cannot be applied for human related challenges which constitute a majority of the challenges. When the environment like Mol says, can allow, “to act without seeking to control, persist while letting go” then true Hearing is possible. The key insight for me is that an environment should help recognize that a choice can be made only for that time in space and can change when that moment changes, even if the environment remains the same. The rigour never compromised and the individuals never controlled, despite the hierarchal structures and the rigid systems.

In Discourse, Heidegger calls upon us to dwell on the true meaning of collaboration, “to lay, to put down, to gather”, and not to drive, judge, bully or control. Fiumara says engaging (listening) does not fight to replace another logic with its own logic, as it does not have one of its own (no agenda to listening), engaging allows for building a new path with the people present towards the context at hand and in an environment that is co-created by all.

The context variable is something that comes from my years of experience; it is single most important aspect of collaboration. It shapes every decision that is taken afterwards. As Heidegger says, “quality of listening determines the next action or word”. And therefore why would you not spend as much time as possible to understand the context completely and together?

Design, Notes and Critique for each of the workshops

The following remained the same across the modules:

1. I played the role of the facilitator, as I guided the conversation, paused when there was discomfort, intervened when the Mediation methods were disturbed, added my thinking but not my opinions and managed the energy of the group.

2. The environment (which was part of the facilitative role) that I provided was a mix of all three thinkers mentioned above, which manifested (through conversations or just shared) as:

• All thoughts need to be given importance

• When someone shares and you do not agree, try to understand by asking questions rather than judging

• Stay in silence if there is a need as it can be a powerful bridge that connects the inner thinking and the external world

• No one opinion shall prevail until all thoughts are shared - we are to not replace one logic with another

• Dissuade frontal attacks (Safir in his book, The Listening Leader talk about how the limbic system (lizard brain) disengages completely when it feels attacked - made insecure, ridiculed, questioned, aggressed upon etc.)

Module 1: Engaging in its Entirety

Introduction & Design:

• The intent was to arrive at consensus over a dilemma that the team was going through; do we keep or let go of an overly competent team member who was abrasive, rude and downright awful to the rest of the team?

• The group that was not directly involved in this decision was asked to be observers and take notes on the process, not the content.

• The team was asked to first pen down their thoughts and then build consensus within their group and finally work with the other group to arrive at a complete consensus.

• Post workshop processing starter questions: How did we engage compared to how much we spoke? What role did we each play in arriving at a consensus? Was consensus possible? What should have been the mode of engagement?

Notes on the Practice (Refer Appendix 4.1):

There were clearly two sides - they started talking to each other politely first, waiting for each other to finish sharing their point of view on whether the employee should be kept or let go. But after the first 5 minutes it turned into a full on argument where no one was listening to anyone and focused only what they wanted to say. Went on for 15 minutes, post which I intervened.

I put my visual notes of the process and the conversation focused on the approach they took in the conversation; talked through the four questions.

The activity was set up to bring alive listening and make them aware of how much listening do they actually do while they have to make someone understand their point of views. We talked about the focus we have on 'saying' rather than listening.

Acknowledging the need to engage was greeted with, “why are you telling me the obvious?” We moved as a group to acknowledge the varying degrees of engaging that they normally do. The assumption they operated from was that they always engaged well. Speech can have nuances but listening is listening is what they concluded. So introduced the three modes of engaging, which is Sensing, Hearing and Mediation - stayed at a very basic level, as we needed to establish the importance of engaging without making it a compulsory.

Engaging is always assumed, and therefore the first experiment/prototype that I ran was around making the participants aware of how they engaged and in Mediation what should be the way they approached.

Critique:

• The process was experiential, dialogued about it and then arrived at takeaways that fit well for each of them. Never shared any tool explicitly, which I am not sure why I did not. My focus was so much about highlighting the quality of engagement that I did not talk about or even create with them what could be a few things they would like to keep in mind to increase the quality of engagement.

• I held up the doodle as I shared my observations but I think I couldn’t really highlight the value of what that bad drawing meant. It could be that I was not clear of the purpose in a Mediation setting or my articulation was incomplete. Maybe it is more of a tool for me and not so much for the group?

Module 2: Engaging and Questions

Introduction & Design:

Here the intent was to understand the other, dive deep into who they are as people and what their needs are.

The teams were given clear instructions to understand the other through Hearing, we spoke and together arrived at a set of principles they would use as they engaged with their consumer:

1. Started with talking about ‘being there’ and ‘staying with’ and ‘engaging in’ all at once (indirectly brought alive Attention)

§ Ensure they do a check if the other person was comfortable, and was recording the session okay and shared that it would be a confidential conversation

§ The basic physical cues were to be kept in mind

§ Minimise self-projection, build questions from what they are saying

§ Display equality, they know just as much as you do but about different things

§ Questions need to be to understand (de-layer) the other rather than investigate (their word)

2. They broke into triads - one consumer, one who needed to understand and an observer to map the process.

3. We would then close the session with processing how the Mediation went.

Notes on the Practice (Refer Appendix 4.2):

Many of them fell into the pattern they were used to, instead of understanding they started selling! Incidentally they had a background in sales and marketing and had moved to a different vertical. I used the session to highlight the difficulty in breaking any habit, as we all like to operate from an area on expertise and comfort. In some situations the questions were so focused on selling, this participant was promising a cell phone with 48 hours battery if the other bought it! And this company doesn't even sell phones. A tool only goes so far, telling someone only goes so far (actually not as far as the tool cause no one likes to be told), and when I am engaging with people for those two days how I bring about that awareness that they will take with them is and has been my challenge as a facilitator. Conceptually they understood the tool and it seemed like they could relate to it too - how do they internalise it, especially when they do not see the value in listening as much as they see in sharing?

Critique:

1. What is my intention? Clearly the way I was rendering was not going beyond the comprehension arena. They got it but somewhere the old ways take over, the comfort they take in their expertise is very strong. And as facilitators their ability to build the stance of openness is crucial. They are comfortable talking and sharing and not really keen on knowing the side that can actually help them sell better! I did not expect an overnight shift, though J.Krishnamurti insists it can happen in a moment. What is it therefore I need to highlight that worked well for me when I resisted or blocked?

2. Upon reflection, I arrived at would explicitly add to the next experiment:

• Stating intentions or setting a purpose

• Articulating what comes in the way of them being with the other person (I could also share my thoughts about this) and addressing that with some solutions

• Tools that can help them; like doodling

• Stances that might be of interest beyond openness (we have to tackle the belief that we think we are open - Fiumara), for example, curiosity, ideating with the other, connecting on a personal level etc.

• Share this with them and have a conversation about it - Fiumara talks about how questions are or need to be admissions of ignorance in order for us to truly listen (engage). And should questions be asked to seek or understand, and what is the difference between the two

• Context should have been articulated in detail

• Spent more time de-layering the ways we need to engage or done a couple of practice rounds before they started, or maybe even a demo so that they could mimic to begin with and then think about how and if they want to take it further.

Module 3: Engaging and Questions

Introduction & Design: The format remained the same as the second module and I implemented the critique part of module 2 into module 3. Along with the flow, format and the conversation, I gave some direction to the way the questions can happen - I said, that they were allowed to ask a question only about what the sharer was talking about, other than the initial statement which should not be a question but more of an invitation, for example, please share your experiences, thoughts, ideas wishes etc. And also ran a mock session where I played the role of the person who needs to understand; we dissected my way and arrived that the few things they would keep in mind.

Notes on the Practice(Refer Appendix 4.3): It definitely went better than the previous one, but I think the conversation post the activity was what enhanced the experience. The questions varied:

1. From how do we know whether we are truly listening

2. To what they want to say to how do we know that they are okay with what they are sharing (during and after) and

3. How do we ensure that it is not only about what we want to know?

During this conversation I brought out the doodle again, used it to bring alive some of the ways of engagement that I had recorded; like how the conversation in the first group organically moved from uncomfortable to comfortable or does gender affect the way we engage, there is a stereotype that women make better listeners etc.

Critique:

The parts that went well:

1. The group was slowly warming up to the idea of engaging as an important aspect of work and life in general.

2. There were more requests for some of the readings I had mentioned during the session.

3. There were more questions the time around which showed that they were thinking about the conversations and also reflecting about the experience itself.

4. They loved the shift from seeking to undersatnding, which has the connotation of hunting to de-layering or unraveling - the mindset needed for the latter is so much more different.

The parts that I need to build on further and bring to the forefront:

1. A conversation around why do we not engage the way that is needed, and what are the factors that come in the way

2. How do we take decisions without the complete understanding of the context

3. Time is a premium, and this will take time, so how do we ensure a higher quality of engagement with the time we have

4. Hierarchy is huge challenge, when the leader speaks others rarely refute. And we do not even know if someone is saying what they want to say or they are just saying which they know is ‘acceptable’ by the hierarchy. How do we handle this?

5. Personal mastery in attention led practice, do we see the value in attention as a practice that will then help us contribute to the Mediation in a meaningful manner

6. The environment is crucial, especially the tonal quality of it, whose responsibility is that.

7. And finally, what should be your responsibilities towards the other in a Mediation

It seemed like the more I delved into this, the more questions and concerns arose and the more I as a facilitator needed to do.

The fourth module was not planned, it seemed important to run one more as I wanted to take the opportunity to prototype some of the aspects that came to light after the first three modules and also after synthesising for Seminar 2.

With the same group I ran a 2-hour module around building a common understanding of their challenges for the next year as they try to accomplish their goals for the year 2019-2020. The leader of the group was to be part of the conversation, and his listening stance was at best impatient and at worst dismissive. As an external consultant but still part of the group, I have been, in parallel working with the leader to bring some degree of attention to how he engages and what that does to the others in the team.

Module 4: Context and Mediation

Introduction & Design: This module incorporated all the aspects that were raised in module 3 and continued the aspects that worked well from the other 3 modules. I also requested the team to map the Mediation individually, they were instructed to use two coloured pens, one for when they say something and the other for when someone says something, and I did the same.

The intent was to arrive at a collective context before we built our schedules for the year, and the format/environment was Mediation (reiterating the definition: a deliberate engagement with the self, with another or with many but with a purpose. The purpose could be co-creation, building meaning, cognition or learning).

We arrived at our mode of engagement, what would we do when we disagreed, how would we take a decision, the level of openness to the other person that we would maintain and the responsibility we would take for upholding the mediating environment.

• We spent a few minutes mapping out why we do not listen, the mind map below illustrates some of the points we talked about - I introduced some of the prompts and they shared some from their experiences.

Notes on the Practice(Refer Appendix 4.4):

The group did exceedingly well, this was a live situation and it also was relevant to their professional space. I prompted the discussion by saying, ‘to begin with, please share what are the few things that you see as challenging to your performance for the year’. The conversation was fluid and everyone spoke and shared.

Few observations:

1. The hierarchy was a disruptive influence, some people responded by agreeing in order to avoid conversation (conflict) and some others pushed their agenda over the others.

2. They tried to understand the other when they were opposed, most of the time

3. The leader took some decisions unilaterally, the group refused to comment on whether it was okay or not.

4. I observed many people be present and listen attentively almost throughout the hour, and the ones who stepped back for a bit, always joined in.

5. We could not completely close the session, and have scheduled on more for May to arrive at some conclusions

6. The discussion around the process was enriching, they opened up on their discomfort, airtime, what tools they were using to engage with the group, how they were watchful of the environment so worded their thoughts keeping others in mind, and shared that they see a movement in the quality of engagement as individuals and as a group.

7. One individual came to me post the session and we had a nice chat around building attention as a practice.

Critique:

The movement was visible but still ways to go. Mediation for co - existence is no puny task. I was not able to counter the time question other than by saying, that it needs rigour and practice and time is an investment they need to make. And also was not sure if the hierarchal influence was minimised or if it came in the way. I think I will know more as we do the second round of conversations. The flow could have been tighter and there was no clear measure for movement beyond my qualitative comments, maybe creating a purpose at the beginning with the group as where they want to reach (capabilities) by the end of the engagement as a group and as individuals would be useful.

8. Conclusion & Way Forward (Artefact: Workshop Design)

The importance of engagement magnified as I closed on my experiments for my Capstone. And the need to bring the balance between hearing and saying has certainly gained a level of urgency for me as an individual. Learning from my personal mastery and my professional practices has allowed me to build a robust design to build engagement and also given me enough fodder to highlight the importance of engagement when I talk with stakeholders to make them aware of the need for improving the quality of their engagement and the groups that they are a part of.

The output of this Capstone is a workshop design whose sole purpose is get participants to become aware of current ways of their engagement, understand how to build it at an individual (if they feel the need) level, practice these skills in a group setting and create a simple process (routine) that as an individual and/or group they would use every time they engaged.

I began this journey with the title of ‘The Action Listening and Cognition’, and would now like to shift it to “ The Action of Hearing and Understanding for Engagement”.

The following insights and tools formed the basis of my workshop design (for a facilitator) for engagement that was the outcome of this Capstone.

What & Why (personal mastery): One has to choose to engage, and Hearing (Peirce’s description) is the first step, building the relation (animate or inanimate) is key to understanding or sensing through engaging. Hearing manifested in my experiments as Attention - ‘being there’ and ‘staying with’ and ‘engaging in’ all at once. The most effective way to build attention is through practice - which needs rigour and routine and having a purpose (understanding content, building mastery over a topic, making a decision, resolving a dilemma, arriving at a solution, etc.) for the practice strengthens the practice. There are multiple tools that can be used to practice attention, and the one that that worked for me was; Attention Led Practice: 1) observation of how I engaged, 2) identifying and recording what helped and what hindered during engagement, and 3) reflecting on how to make it better – this was the routine I built and practiced. Once this was in place, the Sensing and Listening (Peirce’s description) happened depending on the purpose I pursued.

What & Why (professional practice): with my professional practice, the experiments were designed to make Hearing happen for one or more people at the same time – and this brought in the dynamics or the environment and the context, which was there in personal mastery too but was well within the control of the self. Here the role of the facilitator was crucial, their ability to ensure balance that was needed for the purpose to be fulfilled in the most effective way possible (bring about a common understanding, a new way/approach or even a decision that everyone has equity, in an environment that allows for listening, engaging, responding, creating new meaning and movement through dialogue). Based on my experiments and reflections, the following ways are what I arrived at for me as a facilitator:

a. The fact that I am continuing to build my personal mastery in Hearing should be visible or made explicit

b. The context should be clearly aligned by all

c. I need to allow space for silence, discomfort and discord without bypassing or minimising it.

d. Hold the space for all opinions – step in when this is compromised by making the group aware of the discrepancies

e. Surface the assumptions and beliefs of the group and re-craft it to the task at hand – hierarchies, social structures, biases, etc.

f. Ensure that they stayed in ‘Relation’ to the present and responded to the task at hand.

How: The four variables mentioned in my introduction: self, the other, context and the environment play a role in each of the steps.

1. Intent: The intent (purpose) needs to clear and aligned by all. Tool: post its, share purpose and expectations and build in together without talking to each other (use silence). Once they are done, talk to them about the process and about what was accomplished without saying and if words would have made it easier to arrive at a common purpose. Do a quick check if they are okay with the purpose, iron out the differences before moving on to the next step.

2. Objectives: Ask the question; ‘what are the 2-3 things we need to accomplish in order to complete the purpose?’ Facilitate a discussion, ensure all speak and build a quick consensus around it.

3. Experiment: Before starting the activity, encourage a dialogue about, what their experience was in the earlier two steps with respect to listening. Questions to start with: how did you listen – were you with the speaker or formulating a response; did you say everything the way you wanted to say; what helped you listen, what came in the way etc. Post these questions you should be able to generate more questions from the group itself. Talk about the role of attention in the way they listened (helped or hindered), when they did not feel heard, what could have been done (by the other) to make them Hear again, when someone strongly disagreed with them how did they respond (Hearing shift) etc. Close this discussion by talking about the need to Hear and be in attention and what it entails. Also talk about the reasons why we do not listen and therefore the impact of that. Bring to the forefront the importance of Hearing as it contributes directly to the quality of the decisions we take. Ask them to take a few minutes and arrive at, how they want to Hear as they proceed with the activity. Let them write it down, this would be a good time to introduce any tool that you use to increase your level of Hearing (visual note taking). Then run the activity.

4. Observe and Record: through visual note taking and do not stop facilitating as the group will still need guidance.

5. Reflect: On the process mostly (as the purpose is used so they can experience the process and sometimes one conversation may not be enough to arrive at a closure of the purpose). This time ask them to write down questions they have about what they did and how it went. Use the questions to arrive at what really worked as they were dialoging and what came in the way. The intent here is to arrive at a way or process that they would engage in every time they were in a dialogue.

6. Learn and Implement: before the session is closed, each member should have their individual Hearing routine and the group should have a collective Dialoging routine, which ideally, should be practiced every time they sit to arrive at the new.

Finally let me take a moment to state, that I am going to create a movement (small as it) at a systemic level. Increasing the quality of engagement is of least interest and priority to many that I have encountered, and I am convinced that it will be life-long endeavor to bring back the balance. I am reminded of the lyrics of a beautiful song by the Indie band Noorie, “Jo Na Jaane Ne Haaq Ki Taaqat, Rab Na Deve Usko Himmat” loosely translated, it means those who do not know the power of right(s), the universe does not give them the courage. Feels like a good fit for what I am attempting with my practice, one person at a time, starting with me

Annotated Bibliography

1. Fiumara, G. C., & Lambert, C. (2005). The other side of language a philosophy of listening. London: Routledge

The history of listening from a Greek and eventually a western perspective is what she write about - especially the word ‘logos’. This word was and is the root of all that is communication, very interestingly held multiple meanings, one of them was to ‘to lay’, interested as ‘putting it out there’, laying our thoughts next to each other’s. But as time passed, logos became all about thinking, saying, dialoging etc. and completely dropped the other aspect of its meaning.

2. Safir, S. (2017). Listening leader. Place of publication not identified: John Wiley & Sons.

A book about building a listening culture in the education system. This book is a treasure trove of tools and ‘how to’s’ and frameworks for listening at all levels - individual, group and community.

· Listening with the brain - understanding the play of the lizard brain, and the neo cortex - rewiring the brain to listen to all and not to things that do not ‘threaten’ you - social or to self.

· Tune into the biases- culture, gender, and unconscious in order to start building the climate for listening. Listen for equity, which for me translates to value.

· The listening posture takes time to build, as it needs trust as its foundation. Take your time - look in the mirror, step into their shoes and be neutral.

· Listening is about building a relationship. Deep listening requires presence, mature empathy and affirmation.

3. Fiumara, G. C., & Lambert, C. (2005). The other side of language a philosophy of listening. London: Routledge

The history of listening from a greek and eventually a western perspective is what she write about - especially the word ‘logos’. This word was and is the root of all that is communication, very interestingly held multiple meanings, one of them was to ‘to lay’, interested as ‘putting it out there’, laying our thoughts next to each other’s. But as time passed, logos became all about thinking, saying, dialoging etc. and completely dropped the other aspect of its meaning.

4. Jko. (2017, October 30). The Art of Listening. Retrieved from https://www.jkrishnamurti.orgcontent/art-listening

“Hearing is doing nothing to stop seeing. But if I listen to you completely without a single interference of thought or ideation or mentation, just listen to that, the miracle has taken place. Which is my total attention absolves me, my mind, from all the statement. Therefore my mind is extraordinarily free to act.”

5. Wheeler, M. (2011, October 12). Martin Heidegger. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/

The reading into phenomenology* was enlightening and insightful, it connected to many things that were already in me. Heidegger’s Dasien (Being - having to be open and resolute), his take on the relationship with the world and how we experience was almost a ‘how to’ for J. Krishnamurti’s direct hitting; just be aware and everything else will sort itself out.

6. Bodie, G. D., & Crick, N. (2014). Listening, Hearing, Sensing: Three Modes of Being and the Phenomenology of Charles Sanders Peirce. Communication Theory, 24(2), 105-123. doi:10.1111/comt.12032

Most valuable find to base my personal practice on and eventually add to my ‘building facilitators’ toolkit. The authors propose building a strong listening practice which is based on the phenomenologist Charles Sanders Pierce, whose seminal work on listening is timeless and relevant today. The premise of breaking it down to three different modes helps in going deeper into each layer of listening - from the singular which allows for nothing other than to hearing which builds the day to day engagement and the need to be present to listening which fulfills the need to co-create, learn and build cognition.

7. Andru, James Patrick. (2011). Listening to Each Other, Ourselves, and the World:A Study of Heidegger's Concepts of Discourse and Language (Unpublished master's thesis). Rice University, Houston, Texas.

A paper that presented multiple people who dissected Heidegger’s work with respect to language and Discourse - was there a difference, did his ‘turn’ later on mean that he shifted from one point of view to the other or did he just go deeper in one and not the other. Exhausting to read the mind a beautiful, lyrical and ambiguous mind and the surety that each of the researchers have on what they are saying - amazing. Though it is clear that they left out a few pieces in order to make their piece stronger (according to the author). Andru’s thought process and interpretation of Heidegger’s Discourse and language made sense to me.

8. Mol, A. (2008, July 23). The Logic of Care: Health and the Problem of Patient Choice.

Listening needs to be situated in an environment that is one of enabling and comfort. In the ‘Logic of Care’ Annie Marie Mol explores the environment through her experiences and experiments with diabetic patients.

She questions the notion of choice in a very fundamental way, which is diametrically opposite to how we (I) view choice. Is it really good to give a choice when there is way to do something that is most beneficial for you not the easy thing but the beneficial one.

She also highlights the fluidity of the factors that contribute to making a choice, which adds a dimension of impossibility to making a choice. The factors are constantly changing therefore a choice is good as long as the factors that influence it remain the same.

So she recommends that it’s a continuous dynamic thing and you can choose only for that time and therefore not have the expectation that it will remain the same every time.

Her Method:

‘Events somehow tend to fit together; there are affinities between them’. It resembles

Discourse which means words, materialities and practices hang together is a specific, historical and cultural situated way.

Modes are plural; invites a comparison of different ways of thinking and acting that co-exist in a single place and time.

Ordering involves continuous effort and that it may always fail.’

9. Rohde, M. (2012). The sketchnote handbook. Berkeley: Pearson Education.

Always have been a doodler (please seeSeminar 1 blog) and a class in my second semester that got me interested in looking at visual note taking. I doodled to focus on what was being said without being distracted but this book helped me to look at creating value from what I was capturing. Instead of writing words and drawing random doodles as I listened, I MOVED TO integrating what I wrote and drew as I Listened.

These visuals also helped me immensely in summarising when I went back to my notes. They were richer and I was able to derive meaning beyond the obvious.

And as I read more about it in this book and others, it seems to be a proven tool to ground our attention and focus it on what is being said.

10. Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

The construct that the world and the organism (human) are in continuous engagement and impact each other and therefore are constantly changing together and individually. A very important

concept when we think about listening in conversations.

References

1. Merieb, E. N. & Hoehn, K. (2007). Human Anatomy & Physiology 7th Edition, Pearson International Edition.

2. (n.d.). Augenklinik Stralsund. Retrieved from https://www.augenklinik-stralsund.de/

3. Jko. (2017, October 30). The Art of Listening. Retrieved from https://www.jkrishnamurti.orgcontent/art-listening

4. Gandhi, Tagore, R., & Bhattacharya, S. (2005). The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and debates between Gandhi and Tagore, 1915-1941. New Delhi: National Book Trust, India.

5. Hiriyanna, M. (2000). Art experience. New Delhi: Kavyalaya.

6. 10, 65354, 21803, & 390. (2016, November 19). Social Constructivism in Education. Retrieved from https://www.theedadvocate.org/social-constructivism-in-education

7. Kahane, A., & Senge, P. (2007). Solving Tough Problems An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities. Oakland: Berrett-Koehler.

8. Daniel Wilson. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.pz.harvard.edu/who-we-are/people/daniel-wilson

9. Andragogy. (2019, February 10). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andragogy

10. Wittgenstein on the Way We Make Meanings with Language | Chapter 7: Knowledge and Learning | New Learning | New Learning. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-7/wittgenstein-on-the-way-we-make-meanings-with-language

11. Garrido, A. (2018, July 12). How Your 200-Million-Year-Old Lizard Brain Is Holding You Back. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2018/07/12/how-your-200-million-year-old-lizard-brain-is-holding-you-back/#5f353b3c7424

12. Courneya, C. A. (2012, September 04). Medical doodles: 30 minutes well spent. Retrieved from http://www.cmaj.ca/content/184/12/1395?related-urls=yes&legid=cmaj;184/12/1395

13. P. (2016, June 08). Retrieved October 08, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nThcaiYGs0Y. P. (2016, June 08). Retrieved October 08, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkH-eO6zAEo

14. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://chomsky.info/on-the-evolution-of-language-a-biolinguistic-perspective/

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