Listening is the first step
“Today, in conversation, I try to constantly remind myself: only react, only intervene, when invited or when it will obviously be welcome. This takes practice, possibly endless practice.” - Carl Rogers
This quote inspired me to create a design exercise with my team. How can you practice active listening? What is active listening?
For me, it’s the ability to let go of your thoughts and feelings and formulate questions about what you hear. In other words, to be actively curious. This means going from a passive state of absorbing knowledge to an active state of thinking about what you heard and formulating questions based on that new knowledge—a practice driven not by self-interest but by curiosity.
This unlocks a whole new world where you can move beyond your thoughts into someone else’s ideas.
The exercise I devised for my team was to watch three videos and, after each video, spend 5 minutes writing down the questions that arose for each of them from watching each video.
Here are the three videos I used.
Andy Goldsworthy on the work of art
Lewis Hamilton on teamwork
Brian Eno on culture and creativity
After 30 minutes of this exercise, we generated over 60 questions as a group. This started a wide range of conversations among the team. For me, this is a victory for listening and curiosity, two vital skills for creativity to thrive.
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