Why It’s So Hard to Listen When You Disagree | Emily Kasriel | TED — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:04You know, there's something quite strange going on,
2. 0:08because most of us believe we should be better listeners,
3. 0:11but, as I found in my research,
4. 0:14we find it so hard, especially when we disagree.
5. 0:18There's a kind of psychological bug that gets in the way.
6. 0:22We fear that if we listen to people whose ideas we find unpalatable,
7. 0:27we'll be contaminated without realizing it.
8. 0:31We've bought into a dangerous myth --
9. 0:34listening means agreeing.
10. 0:37Listening means agreeing.
11. 0:39So we avoid it,
12. 0:40and instead, we fixate on trying to explain ourselves
13. 0:43more loudly, more fiercely, more insistently.
14. 0:46"If only they'd understand."
15. 0:50You know, I should know,
16. 0:52because I threw away a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
17. 0:56to understand one of Africa's most intriguing and powerful leaders,
18. 1:00because I wasn't ready to listen.
19. 1:04So let me tell you about a time when I was in Ethiopia,
20. 1:07reporting for the BBC at the start of my career.
21. 1:10I landed an interview with its president and later prime minister, Meles Zenawi.
22. 1:16I was so proud. This was my big scoop.
23. 1:20But it was also a time when his opponents were tortured or disappeared.
24. 1:24So the president,
25. 1:25he was keen to talk about his record crop production
26. 1:29of maize, of sorghum and barley,
27. 1:31critical in a country with a history of famine.
28. 1:34But I refused to listen, incessantly circling back to human rights.
29. 1:40To be honest, my questions,
30. 1:42they were masks for my desire to confront the president.
31. 1:46And what did he do?
32. 1:47He edged further and further away from me,
33. 1:51behind his vast wooden desk,
34. 1:53and then cut the interview early.
35. 1:56You know, it wasn't so much that I was wrong to hold the president to account.
36. 2:00That was essential,
37. 2:02but my lack of curiosity and my inability to listen
38. 2:06caused him to put up his defenses,
39. 2:09and so I walked away empty-handed.
40. 2:13And over the years, I've learned from my mistakes as a journalist
41. 2:16and my work as an executive coach,
42. 2:19and I've drawn on scholars and psychologists and peacebuilders,
43. 2:23and I've woven these ideas together into a book
44. 2:27and an approach I call Deep Listening.
45. 2:30Because the standard way we so often perform listening,
46. 2:35it starves us of real connections.
47. 2:38We struggle to engage with our coworkers, with our family --
48. 2:43just ask my own --
49. 2:46[with] anyone from a different background or generation,
50. 2:49anyone whose ideas conflict with our own.
51. 2:52Now you see, I think I’m rational,
52. 2:55and my sense is that you think you're rational,
53. 2:58but we're all driven by our judgments,
54. 3:01by our emotions and our past,
55. 3:03clinging onto the moral high ground.
56. 3:07The problem is that, from an early age,
57. 3:09we've been brought up to believe that listening means agreement,
58. 3:13that listening signals obedience.
59. 3:16You know, I remember my first teacher yelling at me, "Listen to me."
60. 3:20What she meant [was], “Obey me.
61. 3:22Keep quiet. Put those crayons away."
62. 3:25[It] wasn’t really an invitation to listen --
63. 3:27it was a command to comply.
64. 3:29And this muddling up of listening and agreement means that now, as adults,
65. 3:33we fear listening to people whose ideas might disturb us.
66. 3:39"Will I lose myself?"
67. 3:41"Will I be forced to change my mind?"
68. 3:44"Will I be changed?"
69. 3:47At a primal level,
70. 3:48it can feel scary to open ourselves up to ideas which clash with our values.
71. 3:54And the result?
72. 3:55A world in which we think it's better,
73. 3:57even more moral,
74. 3:59to sidestep any encounters across divides.
75. 4:03But in avoiding these exchanges,
76. 4:05we only help deepen the fault lines of polarization
77. 4:08that are tearing our families, our communities and,
78. 4:11of course, our nations apart.
79. 4:15So let me give you an example.
80. 4:16Take the Baltic state of Latvia,
81. 4:19which has a traumatic history of decades under Soviet rule.
82. 4:23And not long after the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine,
83. 4:27feelings there were running deep and high, threats of reinvasion were real,
84. 4:32and suspicion was falling on the one in three Latvians
85. 4:36who spoke Russian at home.
86. 4:39So I was invited to train people from both communities together --
87. 4:43that's the Latvians and the Russian speakers --
88. 4:45so they could practice Deep Listening to someone from the other side.
89. 4:49But how can you listen when your feelings are so strong,
90. 4:53and when there's so much at stake?
91. 4:55So can I tell you about Ilona?
92. 4:58She's a Russian-speaking Latvian.
93. 4:59And to be honest, at the start,
94. 5:01when she started using the Deep Listening steps,
95. 5:03it felt pretty unnatural.
96. 5:05It was hard for her to stay curious
97. 5:07and accept she didn't yet know what her neighbor might be thinking.
98. 5:12But cautiously, she began putting the eight steps to work --
99. 5:16taking time out, for example, to listen to herself first,
100. 5:20and notice what her neighbor might provoke in her.
101. 5:25Maybe they reminded her of a bullying older sister,
102. 5:28so she felt eight again, powerless and trapped.
103. 5:33Or she might notice how judgmental she was feeling.
104. 5:37"That neighbor. She's selfish, for sure."
105. 5:40Or she might realize that she'd projected,
106. 5:45like most of us,
107. 5:46the parts of herself she found hardest to accept
108. 5:50onto her neighbor.
109. 5:52Because after all, we see the world not as it is,
110. 5:56but as we are.
111. 5:58Slowly, Ilona learns to put her own stuff aside
112. 6:02so she could be more present with whatever unfolded,
113. 6:06whatever her neighbor wanted to share.
114. 6:09She didn't manage it every time, mind --
115. 6:11some conversationsstill left her tight-jawed and defensive,
116. 6:15but she began to notice that in the moment.
117. 6:19And then, she experimented with something simple.
118. 6:22(Silence)
119. 6:24I meant to do that. Silence.
120. 6:27The warm, empathetic kind,
121. 6:29to allow her neighbor to reflect more,
122. 6:32and give Ilona a chance to make more sense of their perspective.
123. 6:36Ilona found out that she could tap into something called your “Third Ear,”
124. 6:41which is about tuning into what's important but unspoken.
125. 6:45And I like to think the Third Ear is located just next to our heart,
126. 6:49and our Third Ear can be more insightful than our conscious intelligence,
127. 6:53which relies on the two ears [on] either side of our brain.
128. 6:57Afterwards, Ilona reflected
129. 6:59that maybe she could enable her neighbor to feel safe
130. 7:02so they started to trust her and shared more of their deeper story.
131. 7:07What Ilona discovered isn't unique to her.
132. 7:11We ran a big global research project with the BBC and the British Council,
133. 7:15recruiting over 1,000 people across 100 countries
134. 7:20to train in Deep Listening.
135. 7:23Something remarkable happened.
136. 7:25People didn’t just feel safer to
137. 7:28expressing themselves and more connected --
138. 7:31they also started to question their own attitudes.
139. 7:35And I've seen other research that shows that when people feel truly heard,
140. 7:39they actually soften their beliefs.
141. 7:43Now that’s a powerful incentive for all of us to deeply listen to others.
142. 7:48So there's this woman, Hawraa.
143. 7:52She's a Lebanese Muslim,
144. 7:53and she wanted to learn how to listen more deeply.
145. 7:56Now her father was determined that she restrict her friendships
146. 8:00to those with a similar upbringing,
147. 8:02and she carried those judgments into adulthood,
148. 8:04telling me that she used to be against Syrian refugees in Lebanon,
149. 8:09staying clear of them because some allowed their girls to get married at 11 or 13,
150. 8:15"not living a proper Lebanese life," she said.
151. 8:18I got to know her while training communities from Lebanon,
152. 8:22and her breakthrough moment came when she understood,
153. 8:25not just intellectually but emotionally,
154. 8:27that listening to someone with different perspectives
155. 8:30is not a surrender or a betrayal of your values.
156. 8:35Today, Hawraa has become something of a poster child for Deep Listening.
157. 8:40Every Tuesday, she now works with teenagers
158. 8:43at a school for Syrian refugees.
159. 8:46And by listening in this new way to her students,
160. 8:49she’s come to understand [that] more than one perspective is possible.
161. 8:54"It felt like a glimpse of light," she told me,
162. 8:58though it still takes strength, patience and an open heart.
163. 9:02Hawraa is aware of the tensions
164. 9:04which still exist between her ideas and those of others,
165. 9:07she's still passionately against child marriages,
166. 9:10but she's finding ways to try harder to open and deepen her understanding,
167. 9:17while keeping true to her values.
168. 9:20Now I have a piece of good news for you.
169. 9:23You don't need to live in a conflict zone
170. 9:26to practice Deep Listening while disagreeing.
171. 9:29So I'd like to offer you a small, slightly risky experiment.
172. 9:34I'd like you to think of someone you know who sees the world differently.
173. 9:38Not the most extreme case,
174. 9:40but someone [with whom] the disagreement really stings,
175. 9:43and then take time out to deeply listen to them
176. 9:47with as much curiosity and openness as you can manage.
177. 9:51Notice your discomfort.
178. 9:54Notice your resistance.
179. 9:57And notice, too, if you have the courage to move past both,
180. 10:01even if it feels a little awkward.
181. 10:04I’ve found that, over time, these experiences make me feel more alive
182. 10:09as I open myself up to profoundly connecting with another person,
183. 10:13whatever their beliefs,
184. 10:14and giving them the gift of feeling truly heard.
185. 10:19So Deep Listening, it's about respect for the other person's dignity
186. 10:24and the fullness of their humanity,
187. 10:26whatever they stand for.
188. 10:28And now, with the stakes quite so high in our polarized times,
189. 10:33just think what might be possible
190. 10:36if we firmly and permanently separated listening from agreement.
191. 10:43Thank you.
192. 10:44(Cheers and applause)
193. 10:47Thank you.
194. 10:48(Cheers and applause)