Hear This: Three questions to help build a listening culture
Grace Pollard explores how organisations can ask themselves: How are we listening? Who are we listening to? And does our listening lead to action?
In any conversation about community power, it’s not long before we start talking about the importance of listening.
Organisations that are serious about community power recognise that institutions alone cannot address many of the big challenges we face. Communities have expertise and insights into the issues that matter to them.
This is why it is essential to really listen to communities, as well as to the people in public services who work most closely with them.
But what does it really mean to be a listening organisation or to build a culture that’s truly attentive to staff, service users and the general public?
We all like to think we’re good listeners. It’s something we take for granted. But listening is a skill that as individuals we need to hone and nurture. And the same is true for our organisations.
We should ask ourselves and our teams:
- How are we listening?
- Who are we listening to?
- And does our listening lead to action?
How are we listening?
So perhaps listening isn’t as easy as we first thought. But encouragingly there is a growing movement of people in councils finding purposeful ways to build better listening cultures while developing skills and practices to underpin this.
Building a culture where being a good listener is valued
If you want a listening culture, you need staff who have the skills, time and permission to be good active listeners. At Wigan Council this idea of paying attention to how we listen is really taken seriously.
As part of the Wigan Deal, staff across the council have been trained in skills drawn from ethnography. In practice, a central part of this was developing staff’s confidence to have “different conversations” with people, to understand what they wanted to achieve and how they could work with them to do this.
Key to being a good listener is also feeling confident you will be heard. Senior leaders and team managers should model the value of listening and think about the quality of dialogue in their teams.
Participants reflected on this idea in a New Local peer-learning session, particularly on what it could look like to put aside more time for deliberation in teams.
Practical ways to listen to communities
Councils are increasingly making use of a variety of practices and approaches to help them listen better to communities:
- Citizens’ assemblies have become a popular way to involve communities in setting strategic priorities and deciding how to tackle the big local issues. Newham Council has built on this idea even further by setting up a permanent assembly.
- In service areas that work closely with individuals, frontline staff are increasingly using strengths-based approaches to help them listen to and work with people accessing services.
- At a service design level, co-production is a well-known approach to involving people in dialogue about how services are designed and delivered.
Who are we listening to?
At New Local, we often hear people’s enthusiasm about participatory and deliberative approaches. But one of the common concerns raised is the risk that a council will only end up hearing from a relatively small group of people. Councils will always need to work hard to address this, and while there is no single solution, there are plenty of practical steps to take:
- Start with data – understand whose voices you’re hearing and who might not be part of the conversation. Combining qualitative approaches with quantitative data can help build a better understanding of this.
- Look at the range of practices and approaches – there isn’t just one way to listen. Go back to that question of how you are listening, draw on the right approaches and seek out best practice.
- Think about location – go out to people, don’t only expect them to come into the council or to formal meetings and events.
- Consider who should do the listening – sometimes voluntary sector partners or community members may be better placed to have conversations with people.
Does our listening lead to action?
Listening shouldn’t just be a passive exercise – so reflect on its purpose.
Ensuring that listening leads to action is essential for building good relationships and trust with communities. People want to know that showing up and sharing their thoughts matters.
So, whether it’s a big event like a citizens’ assembly or a focused co-production exercise, reflecting what was said and how the council acted on it is important. It won’t be possible to act on everything and a conversation may generate more questions than answers. But honesty and ongoing dialogue is vital.
But there can be a tension between listening and action. Sometimes you will want to listen to directly inform a pre-determined issue that the council plans to act on. But if the council always sets the agenda, then conversation in unlikely to stray far beyond the given topic.
Finding opportunities for ongoing dialogue and conversations without a pre-determined agenda creates ways to deepen understanding of communities’ aspirations and challenges.
Unexpected insights from these exchanges could reframe or unlock ways for the council to work with communities on issues that matter to them.
So, this tension between listening and action can in fact be productive.
In some instances, listening may well be followed by prompt action. But listening can also deepen or reshape understanding of an issue or problem.
It’s worth returning to the principle of community power and the reflection that institutions don’t have all the answers.
So sometimes, listening may require you to stop, reflect and reconsider before rushing to a response.
Combining reflection and practical action
Asking these three questions and returning to them over time can help us to reflect on how well we are listening.
But this should also be a catalyst for action – recognising that listening is a skill that needs to be honed, not just by those with ‘engagement’ in their job title, but by the whole organisation.
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