Listening Skills & Bohm Dialogue Learning Journey
Delivery:
Facilitated, interactive small group learning delivered online or in-personSuggested delivery is 1 session per week for 1 month, however, the frequency and duration of delivery can be adapted to your needs
Format & duration options, choose from:
4 x 2 hour sessions delivered online3 x 2 hour sessions delivered online + 1 x 3 hour session delivered in person4 x 3 hour sessions delivered in person
Group size:
6 - 16 participants
A four-part interactive learning experience for teams or groups, that introduces a holistic approach to listening; combining guided meditations, partner and small group creative activities and a range of communication methods to explore and improve interpersonal communication skills.
Listening is a foundational value, skill and practice. We all possess the capacity to listen but that capacity remains largely untapped as few of us have learned to truly cultivate it. Research suggests that a scarce two percent of people are effectively skilled in active listening despite the fact that listening is as essential as speaking.
This Learning Journey, consisting of 4 modules, is grounded in three approaches unique to Creating Meaning
WHOLE BODY LISTENING - understanding how our emotions, feelings, and thoughts influence and guide how we react or respond, and how this can give us more autonomy and agency in how we choose to communicate.
THE THREE MODES OF LISTENING IN A BOHM DIALOGUE PRACTICE - increasing our awareness of how we listen to ourselves, to other people, and to the world around us, and how this can improve our communicating, relating and thinking skills.
A RECEPTIVE, REFLECTIVE, RESPONSIVE guiding framework - recognising that we need vital skills of openness and curiosity, reflective learning and inquiry, and creativity and wisdom, and how this can support us to thrive and foster healthy relationships and ways of working.
Listening is as essential as speaking
The benefit for you and your organisation
IMPROVED RELATIONSHIPS & INCLUSION
Understanding how we listen in connection to our values, assumptions and judgements gives greater awareness of the different perspectives and needs of ourselves and the people we are communicating with.
MORE EFFECTIVE MEETINGS & COLLABORATIONS
Developing self-awareness fosters agency and accountability, supporting trust and psychological safety in groups and relationships. Improved listening skills can avoid misunderstanding and miscommunication, and ensure everyone has the confidence to contribute their point of view.
NEW WAYS OF THINKING:
Dedicating time and space to listen deeply together as a group/team, allows for deeper thinking, generative co-inquiry and creates shared understanding, allowing the people involved to benefit from bringing together diverse perspectives.
Is this Learning Journey right for you, your group or team?
This Learning Journey is designed for individuals, community groups, purpose driven organisations and managers and team leaders.
The online learning journey provides participants with
Time and space to reflect on the qualities, skills and conditions for good listening
A holistic approach that supports wellbeing and improves emotional intelligence
Processes to explore and co-inquire into how we listen to ourselves, others, and the world around us
Easy to access theory and supporting resources
Practical and engaging activities and group discussion
The experience and knowledge to deepen understanding and skills of interpersonal communication.
Groups will particularly benefit if
You are looking to embody and enact your organisational values in new ways
You want to ensure that everyone feels confident and enabled to be seen, heard and appreciated
You are looking for simple practices that you can embed in your everyday ways of working to improve communication and relationships
You hope to develop more trust and psychological safety
You recognise that listening is a vital skill for enhanced creative, critical and systemic thinking skills
FAQs
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All sessions are recorded and shared with participants and supporting resources are provided.
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The Learning Journey is designed to be interactive and provide everyone with an opportunity to engage. If you are looking to run the Learning Journey with larger groups, we suggest running it in parallel with groups, with an additional large group session to share learnings across all groups.
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Improving listening skills is the most effective way to develop other vital human skills for communication, relating and thinking. The Learning Journey culminates with an opportunity for participants to experience the potential of listening and thinking together in a Bohm Dialogue. This deceptively simple practice can be easily embedded into existing ways of working to cultivate and maintain the trust, understanding, and collective intelligence needed for groups and teams to be adaptive and responsive to challenges and opportunities.
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At Creating Meaning, we are passionate about Bohm Dialogue because of its distinct ability to develop individual and collective agency, and essential communication, thinking and relating skills, by creating a respectful space for freedom of thought, feeling and experience to be shared and acknowledged. Unlike other Dialogue methods that focus on decision-making and consensus as a result of the process, Bohm Dialogue removes the pressure for agreement or outcomes, enabling groups to surface deeper understanding on the assumptions and biases that often block our ability to listen freely to others, and allowing new thinking and fresh perspectives to emerge.
