September 23: Listening Without Needing To Have The Same Experience
Listening Without Needing to Have the Same Experience
We often talk about the importance of listening, but perhaps one of the most important things about truly listening is accepting that we do not have to have experienced something ourselves in order to care about it, understand it or make space for it.
Today is International Day of Sign Languages, a day that celebrates the diversity and importance of sign languages around the world and helps to raise awareness of the rights and experiences of Deaf communities. It is a wonderful opportunity to think more broadly about communication, because communication is not simply about the words we speak. It is about how we share information, express ourselves, connect with other people and make ourselves understood.
Accessible communication is about making sure everyone has a meaningful way to participate.
There is more than one way to communicate
For many of us, speaking and listening are so familiar that we barely notice them. We talk in meetings, pick up the phone, send a voice note, join a video call and assume that everyone around us can access information in broadly the same way. Communication is much richer than that.
Sign languages are complete, natural languages with their own grammar and structures, and Deaf people around the world use different sign languages within their communities. British Sign Language, for example, is a language in its own right rather than simply a visual version of spoken English.
Listening is not always about hearing
Perhaps International Day of Sign Languages offers us an opportunity to reconsider what we mean when we say we are listening. Listening is often described as an auditory activity, but at its heart it is really about attention. It is about being present with another person, taking their words, expressions or communication seriously, noticing what they are trying to convey and giving them the opportunity to be understood. That can happen through spoken language, sign language, writing, visual communication, captions, technology, facial expression, gestures and many other forms of communication.
In workplaces, where so much depends on communication, these considerations are key. Meetings, training, policies, presentations, emails, social events and informal conversations all shape whether people can fully participate in working life.
Accessibility should be considered before someone asks
One of the most positive shifts we can make is thinking about accessibility from the beginning.
If we are organising a meeting, have we considered captions or an interpreter where appropriate? If we are sharing a video, does it have accurate captions? If we are running training, are there different ways for people to access the information? If we are communicating something important, are we relying on a single format?
These considerations allow us to remove barriers before they become someone else's responsibility to point out. When we design communication with accessibility in mind from the outset, we often make things better for far more people than we initially expected.
Captions can support someone who is Deaf or hard of hearing, but they can also help someone working in a noisy environment, someone who processes information better visually or someone who simply wants to follow a video without sound. Clear written information can support someone with a communication difference, while also making things easier for someone who is joining an organisation, working in their second language or trying to understand a complex piece of information. Remove barriers for some often makes communication better for everyone.
We do not need the same experience to show understanding
The other important part of today's theme is accepting that we don’t need to have experienced the same thing as someone else in order to listen to them and accept their realities.
I will never know what it is like to move through the world as a Deaf person so instead I must listen, educate myself and believe their experiences. I can create space for them to share their experience in their own words, rather than filling in gaps with assumptions.
Don't make people do all the work
There is also an important distinction between listening and expecting someone else to educate us. Inclusion should not mean that the person who experiences a barrier has to become solely responsible for fixing it. Organisations have such an important role to play in building accessible communication into the way they work.
We can learn about accessibility ourselves, we can seek guidance from people with relevant expertise and lived experience, we can review the systems and formats we already use and ask whether they are genuinely accessible and when someone tells us something is not working for them, we can take yesterdays blog seriously and become curious.
Think about the communication you don't notice
One of the challenges with accessibility is that the barriers are often easiest to see when they affect us personally. This is why that favourite of ours - curiosity - is so important.
Look at communication through a wider lens, ask questions - not because you fear getting something wrong but because you want to make things better and more accesible.
We can all become better listeners
International Day of Sign Languages is an important reminder that communication is wonderfully diverse. It can also be a wider lesson that listening is something we can all practise.
Listen without assumption, comparison or concern over making the right response.
And sometimes listening means being willing to change what we do to find a better way to create equal opportunity to participate.
Making room for every voice
A genuinely inclusive workplace does not require everyone to communicate in the same way, think in the same way or have the same experiences. It creates enough flexibility for different people to participate and enough respect for different perspectives to be taken seriously.
Belonging is about developing the curiosity to understand people who are not “like us”, listening when their experience is unfamiliar and valuing it. And from that place of listening, we can begin to create workplaces where more people can communicate, participate and belong.
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