Communication depends on listening as well as speaking up: it’s a two-way street. It would be a mistake to imagine that only leaders need to improve their communications skills. You can help improve your own communication by helping others to practice and learn communication skills. How can you help to enable listening in the communities you serve? Here are some thoughts, but add your own ideas too:
In conversations and decision making – are good listeners rewarded? Or is it the case that ‘he who shouts loudest, gets most’?
- are listeners favoured by certain kinds of conversation – perhaps online?
- can you encourage active listening by actively facilitating conversations – helping people to speak up, rather than by just letting it be a free-for-all?
- can you make time specifically to allow reflections on, and summaries of, what is being said – things which show people are thinking about what they, and others, say?
What local forums are there for listening and learning – as opposed to speaking and preaching?
- if meetings are hosted at different venues, can you treat each meeting as a study visit and get the host to show people around so they can listen and learn?
- rather than inviting people to take part in consultations by saying people can ‘have their say’, could you advertise local conversations which you could invite people to ‘join’ instead?
- could you try organising meetings as focus groups or workshops – where you ask people to respond to an idea and work together to improve it – rather than as debates between opposing sides?
Finally – can you lead people by example? If a leader shows people how to listen, then perhaps they will get better at listening – and leading – themselves?
Now what?
If you haven’t already, it might be good to:
check out what the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy can teach us about communication
Otherwise, why not either head back to the Practical Action summary to look up a different subject or follow the menu on the right to have a look at other parts of the guide?