Listening to Others
4.3 TED Talks on Listening to Others
TED is a non-profit organization that sponsor’s “talks on TED” that are open access and seek to, “. . . discover and spread ideas that spark imagination, embrace possibility and catalyze impact . . . [Ted talks are] devoted to curiosity, reason and imagination . . . knowledge and wonder . . .”[1] I found thirty-five TED talks on listening to others,[2] review each talk for “best listening practices,” and summarize findings.
The TED talk speakers varied from high school and college students (two of thirty-five) to professionals (e.g., musicians, journalists, and entrepreneurs) to academics (e.g., schoolteachers and professors). Very few speakers cite listening research. Most speakers use personal narratives as evidence for their claims. Reviewing the titles of the TED talks show the relationship of listening to power, understanding, and learning. Clustering key ideas from the content of the talks, I find two broad types of best listening practices that I label “good listeners” and “radical deep listeners.” I describe each of these types of listeners and discuss the implications for listening to others.
Good Listeners
Summarizing the best listening practices for the TED talks, “good listeners” engage in the following kinds of behaviors and attitudes. Good listeners minimize distractions in the environment and put away personal distractions (like mobile phones) to afford the other person with some degree of privacy, and to provide them with a feeling of safety and comfort. Good listeners focus and attune to the other with undivided attention. They invite the other to speak through open-ended questions and do not interrupt except to periodically paraphrase the other’s ideas to ensure that the person feels heard and that they as a listener are accurately understanding the message. Good listeners do not make moralistic judgments about the content of the message or the speaker. They show continued interest in the other person by asking questions that invite the other to explore deeper without turning the focus back on them as the listener. Finally, good listeners attend to the emerging agenda, goals, emotions, and needs of the other person. Taken together, these best listening practices are likely to facilitate the other person feeling heard, listened to, understood, validated, affirmed, cared for, and even loved.[3] These “good listener” practices are further enhanced through a deeper kind of listening that emerged from the TED talks.
Radical Deep Listeners
Radical deep listening moves beyond good listening as it requires more mindfulness, compassion, and self-discipline on the part of the listener. Radical deep listening begins with a mindset of openness, humility, vulnerability, and compassion. In radical deep listening, the listener lets go of the arrogance that they already know the answers, the assumptions of their personal world view, and the fear of what the other may request of them. In radical deep listening, the other person is viewed as a potential teacher, someone to learn from.
The most difficult part of radical deep listening is overriding our biological response to opposing views[4] in favor of choosing an open, humble, vulnerable, and compassionate mindset. Human brains have evolved to respond to threats of various kinds by triggering the amygdala stress response of fight, flight, freeze, or faint. To illustrate, when we disagree with another’s point of view, we often experience dissonance and a cascade of emotions that may include feelings of discomfort, disrespect, frustration, and anger. This is a natural innate human response to a perceived threat or attack on our opinions, beliefs, worldview or person.
Instead of following our human nature, the radical deep listener recognizes the biologically triggered stress response and chooses to override their biology by mentally and behaviorally reaffirming their desire to listen with humility, vulnerability, and compassion. Ideally, the radical deep listener becomes more curious about the other’s views, metaphorically moving next to the other, seeing the issue through the other person’s eyes. The radical deep listener is conscious of their interconnectedness with the other person, and more importantly, they feel this connection with the other. None of the TED speakers address how to override our stress response biology and engage in practices that cultivate becoming an open-hearted radical deep listener. The best advice they provide is, “lean in and learn to be comfortable with the discomfort.” I suggest another way to cope with the biological stress response that better cultivates the ideals of the radical deep listener.
Practicing meditation is a concrete way for a listener to become more comfortable with the discomfort of disagreement with others by cultivating a predisposition for equanimity when a stress response is triggered. Research suggests that the systematic practice of mediation assists in coping and managing stressful situations[5] like those encountered in radical deep listening. There are many kinds of meditation training that are appropriate for cultivating a radical deep listening response to stressful situations.[6]
Some Eastern meditation practices emphasize transcending the personal ego.[7] A few TED speakers follow along this line of reasoning, advising listeners to put aside the ego, empty the self, and create a nonjudgmental space for the other person to speak into. My understanding of ego is that, short of mystical states of consciousness, most individuals will carry their ego with them into the listening situation. Ego as personality, preferences, expectations, and judgments is a part of our humanity. Moreover, there is a healthy sense of ego that we also bring to our listening encounters. For example, self-monitoring our egoic energy levels to determine if we are capable and ready to listen is vital if we are to listen with equanimity, clarity, and caring.[8]
- Quoted from the TED home page website, https://www.ted.com/about/our-organization. ↵
- In 2023, I initially searched the TED talks database using the keywords "listening" and "listen" and found less than ten talks. Next, I performed an internet search for "TED talks on listening" and found additional TED talks. Appendix A lists the thirty-five TED talks reviewed. For ease of access and comparability, I locate the TED talks on listening to others in Appendix A rather than in the Bibliography. ↵
- For empirical evidence of the feeling of "being listened to" see, Elizabeth Moore, "Being Listened To With Empathy: The Experience and Effect for Emerging and Middle-Aged Adults." Master's thesis, Old Dominion University, 2020. ↵
- Some of the TED talks suggest that opposing views create conflict and the feeling of being threatened or attacked. Siegel's hand model of the brain shows how "flipping our lid" when stressed (i.e., being verbally threatened or attacked) shifts our biological brain activity from the frontal cerebral cortex to the base of the brain resulting in the activation of the instinctual flight, flight, freeze, and faint responses. Daniel Siegel, Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Tenguin, 2013), 85-88. ↵
- Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson, Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Mediation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body (New York City: Avery, 2018). ↵
- Some of the sources for meditation training are as follows. Marcia Z. Nelson, Come and Sit: A Week Inside Meditation Centers (Woodstock: SkyLight Paths, 2013); Herbert Benson, Relaxation Revolution: The Science and Genetics of Mind Body Healing (New York: Scriber, 2011); and, Shinzen Young, Unified Mindfulness Meditation: CORE Training Program (website), 2023. Additional information about the neuroscience of activating the stress response in the amygdala and how to self-soothe using self-havening (gentle self-touches combined with affirming words and imagery) is described by Kate Truitt, Healing in Your Hands (Eau Claire: PESI Publishing, 2022). ↵
- For example, Transcendental Meditation, https://www.tm.org/. ↵
- Victr Pierau, Leadership in Listening: The 7 Levels of Listening for Professionals (Hilversum: Booklight Makkum, 2020). Additionally, the "new age" ideal of dissolving the ego can be a form of "spiritual bypassing" detrimental to our well-being, and to our ability to authentically listen to others. Robert Masters, Spiritual Bypassing (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2010). ↵