Calling all Zoomers – why it is important to talk AND listen

By David Lewis

In our normally fast paced world, we have so much to do.  Work commitments, family commitments, a plethora of entertainment choices, cinema, theatre, pubs, clubs and cafés. In our haste and busyness, it’s hard to get the balance right between talking and listening. We either talk too much, or too little and listen with impatience as we run through in our mind what we are going to do next.  Then came a global pandemic, cinemas, theatres, pubs, clubs, cafés and offices closed.

Zoomers – it is important to talk AND listen

Strangely, this enforced isolation has left us more exposed.  Whether we are feeling the increased pressure of what to do to safeguard our careers, or the pressure of sudden idleness and loss of purpose, we are all more vulnerable. What we have taken for granted, the opportunity to express ourselves – to talk,  the feeling that people are interested in us – being listened to, vanished overnight; until we discovered Zoom.

If listening and talking were important before COVID-19, they are even more important now. Not only because our emotions are on steroids, up-and-down, feeling anxious for ourselves, worrying about others, but also because we need the contributions of all to recover, to invent, to care, to rebuild, and if possible to rebuild better than before. Empowerment is no longer a matter of debate it is essential to our recovery.

Our connection with each other through Zoom, presents a great opportunity to create more empowering relations. Why, because it gives us an opportunity to see each other differently. To see each other for who we are not just what we are.  We see the person beyond the suit, the job title, the position in the hierarchy. We see the person who hasn’t had a haircut for two months, we hear their three-year-old demanding their attention as they try to ask a question of their colleagues.

And we have the opportunity to have different conversations, more humorous, more personal and more honest about how we feel. We should seize this opportunity with both hands. There are no barriers within Zoom to talking openly and honestly and listening appreciatively.

The Zulu greeting Sawubona means ‘I see you’ and the response, ‘Ngikhona’ means ‘I am here’. Central to the exchange, is the sense that until you saw me, I didn’t exist. But it is more than simply recognising another person’s existence, it is a recognition of their importance, that they count. Through this mutual recognition both parties are empowered and what they can achieve together is transformed.

With my colleague Alison Reynolds, we conducting a study into how the way we behave helps others to recover from emotional shock. The findings will not surprise you, at least not in terms of what works, and that is to listen and be non-judgemental. The more revealing part of the study is that this is not what people do when others are emotionally distressed.  Even with the best of intentions we often get it wrong, we talk too much and we offer platitudes that make things worse.

Now is the time to get it right. In our zoom conversations and meetings we can see people for who they are, we can tell people how we are really feeling, how we want to contribute, what ideas we have. We can talk and we can listen as one person to another.

Martin Buber, the Austrian born philosopher helps us understand the power of person-to-person interaction which he calls encounter. He differentiates between I-It relationships and I-Thou relationships. An I-It relationship focuses on others as a means to an end, as someone we need to engage in our agenda, or get to buy-into our ideas, or persuade to do what we need them to do.

When we relate to others in an I-Thou relationship we see people as an end in themselves. We encounter others as people with passion, values and agency. We are open to what we may learn from each other and we create new insights and value together.

Through talking and listening we better process our emotions, we learn more about the people we have in our teams, the skills they have, the ideas they have and we build more trust – the foundation for performance.

In a conversation recently, the CEO of a 30,000 person international business told me how in this current crisis he had taken to running short daily webinars for his staff. He simply talks about how he is feeling, shares what he has picked up from other conversations about how others are feeling and offers his support. There was no immediate task, no immediate request, simply sharing of feelings. To his surprise, each day the audience got bigger and each day the emails of appreciation increased.

David Lewis is Programme Director for Executive Education at London Business School and co-author of What Philosophy Can Teach You About Being a Better Leader, published by Kogan Page, priced £14.99.

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