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CHIEF LISTENING OFFICER
“At the center of Kirsten’s work is empathy, and seeing others more fully.” -Workshop participant, Norton (MA) public schools, April 2009
Chief Listening Officer
At Old Sow Consulting, we believe listening is the most important consultative act.
Our listening practices are founded on three precepts: that mindful listening requires calmness (spiritual and body quietness), an open mind (a capacity to hear another without being crowded by one's own agenda or movement towards response), and focused attention (the capacity process and remember what someone has said, with empathic engagement). We believe that our clients are "listened into being" through the act of telling their stories, being heard empathically, and having the space to reflect on their experiences. Chief Listening Officer Kirsten Olson's listening apprenticeship began when she entered meditation training with Tara Brach, the author of Radical Acceptance, at the Kripalu Institute; and at the Shambhala Meditation Center of Boston. Her work continued with Ken Nelson, experiential educator and yoga master, at the Kripalu Institute, and in a two-year facilitator training at the Center for Courage and Renewal with Parker Palmer, in Bainbridge Island, WA. Kirsten has also worked with John Fox, of the Institute for Poetic Medicine, and the author of "Deep Listening"; and Harville Hendrix and Helen LakelyHunt's listening practices grounded in Imago Relationship theory. Old Sow Consulting offers interactive listening workshops, to deepen and focus listening practices, in addition to placing listening at the center of the consultative relationship.
Deep LIstening Is The Way Of Change
Deep Listening Is The Way of Change
Description of listening is appearing soon at life.by.me, a website where dynamic individuals describe their professional practices. By Kirsten Olson I am inspired by the greatness of other people. I lead workshops where ordinary people talk about confronting sexual abuse, racial injustice, and systems of privilege, systems that have told them they are worthless, or next to worthless. In those moments, when I see people step forward and say, my shame will not keep me silent--because shame loves privacy, shame loves keeping you all alone--I feel uplifted by the bravery, resilience and possibility of other human beings. These people become my teachers, my gods and goddesses. The ways in which I see people recognize their own divinity, and hold it in balance, with humbleness and a sense of gratitude, is awe inspiring to me. These experiences of the divinity of ordinary people inspire me to take risks in my own life. When I first began to confront my own woundedness, which lead me to make myself seem bigger, in a conventional sense, than I really am, the field in which I could begin to heal was a field of kindness. So our path to our divinity, for me, is in loving community, in fields of non-judgment and empathic listening, lead by kindness. In my work my title is Chief Listening Officer. I think of listening as a very active and also very passive thing. To listen deeply I begin by emptying myself out, by putting my feet on the floor, by breathing deeply, and clearing space to hear, to allow someone else to come into my being, whatever it is they have to say. The space you clear must be very big and have very little furniture in it. Your spirit is there to comfort the other spirit as they go on their journey of listening to themselves. It is almost like their voice, and their experience, is pouring into you. You hear them into being, you bear witness to their experience of their own divinity. I see that happen again and again. It is the only thing I know that really creates change, and it is the only thing that has ever really healed me. The thing I find intriguing about this is that it is all about practice. This isn't something you can read about or study. You have to do it, again and again. You have to find ways to be quiet enough, and non-struggling enough, and non-agenda-ed enough, so that this kind of loving journeying can happen with other spirits. You also have to notice when you're not doing it, when you're thinking about your next meeting or what else is coming today or how what the person is saying is freaking you out. It's a noticing practice, and you have to practice and practice, and notice and notice, and not judge yourself when you're all crazy. But just try again next time with an intention to improve your practice. Increasingly, I'm thinking about my own life this way. You go to the mat of your life every day and try, with lovingkindness towards yourself, to do a little bit better, to try something new, to take a chance, for a little microchange. It's not very dramatic, it isn't very stagey, but these are the things that prepare you to be a guerilla fighter for freedom. The pieces of softness and forgiveness and daily listening practice that also allow you to be a fierce fighter for what you believe in. Listening Resources
A listening story...Henning Mankell's experience of learning to listen in Africa...
OPINION The Art of Listening
By HENNING MANKELL
Joe Villion Maputo, Mozambique I CAME to Africa with one purpose: I wanted to see the world outside the perspective of European egocentricity. I could have chosen Asia or South America. I ended up in Africa because the plane ticket there was cheapest. I came and I stayed. For nearly 25 years I’ve lived off and on in Mozambique. Time has passed, and I’m no longer young; in fact, I’m approaching old age. But my motive for living this straddled existence, with one foot in African sand and the other in European snow, in the melancholy region of Norrland in Sweden where I grew up, has to do with wanting to see clearly, to understand. The simplest way to explain what I’ve learned from my life in Africa is through a parable about why human beings have two ears but only one tongue. Why is this? Probably so that we have to listen twice as much as we speak. In Africa listening is a guiding principle. It’s a principle that’s been lost in the constant chatter of the Western world, where no one seems to have the time or even the desire to listen to anyone else. From my own experience, I’ve noticed how much faster I have to answer a question during a TV interview than I did 10, maybe even 5, years ago. It’s as if we have completely lost the ability to listen. We talk and talk, and we end up frightened by silence, the refuge of those who are at a loss for an answer. I’m old enough to remember when South American literature emerged in popular consciousness and changed forever our view of the human condition and what it means to be human. Now, I think it’s Africa’s turn. Everywhere, people on the African continent write and tell stories. Soon, African literature seems likely to burst onto the world scene — much as South American literature did some years ago when Gabriel García Márquez and others led a tumultuous and highly emotional revolt against ingrained truth. Soon an African literary outpouring will offer a new perspective on the human condition. The Mozambican author Mia Couto has, for example, created an African magic realism that mixes written language with the great oral traditions of Africa. If we are capable of listening, we’re going to discover that many African narratives have completely different structures than we’re used to. I over-simplify, of course. Yet everybody knows that there is truth in what I’m saying: Western literature is normally linear; it proceeds from beginning to end without major digressions in space or time. That’s not the case in Africa. Here, instead of linear narrative, there is unrestrained and exuberant storytelling that skips back and forth in time and blends together past and present. Someone who may have died long ago can intervene without any fuss in a conversation between two people who are very much alive. Just as an example. The nomads who still inhabit the Kalahari Desert are said to tell one another stories on their daylong wanderings, during which they search for edible roots and animals to hunt. Often they have more than one story going at the same time. Sometimes they have three or four stories running in parallel. But before they return to the spot where they will spend the night, they manage either to intertwine the stories or split them apart for good, giving each its own ending. A number of years ago I sat down on a stone bench outside the Teatro Avenida in Maputo, Mozambique, where I work as an artistic consultant. It was a hot day, and we were taking a break from rehearsals so we fled outside, hoping that a cool breeze would drift past. The theater’s air-conditioning system had long since stopped functioning. It must have been over 100 degrees inside while we were working. Two old African men were sitting on that bench, but there was room for me, too. In Africa people share more than just water in a brotherly or sisterly fashion. Even when it comes to shade, people are generous. I heard the two men talking about a third old man who had recently died. One of them said, “I was visiting him at his home. He started to tell me an amazing story about something that had happened to him when he was young. But it was a long story. Night came, and we decided that I should come back the next day to hear the rest. But when I arrived, he was dead.” The man fell silent. I decided not to leave that bench until I heard how the other man would respond to what he’d heard. I had an instinctive feeling that it would prove to be important. Finally he, too, spoke. “That’s not a good way to die — before you’ve told the end of your story.” It struck me as I listened to those two men that a truer nomination for our species than Homo sapiens might be Homo narrans, the storytelling person. What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people’s dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats — and they in turn can listen to ours. Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening. So if I am right that we are storytelling creatures, and as long as we permit ourselves to be quiet for a while now and then, the eternal narrative will continue. Many words will be written on the wind and the sand, or end up in some obscure digital vault. But the storytelling will go on until the last human being stops listening. Then we can send the great chronicle of humanity out into the endless universe. Who knows? Maybe someone is out there, willing to listen ... Henning Mankell is the author of many books, including the Wallander novels.This article was translated from the Swedish by Tiina Nunnally from the Swedish. Other Listening Resources Brady, Mark (Editor) (2003). The Wisdom of Listening. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications. Fox, John ( 1997) Poetic Medicine: The Healing Art of Poetry Making. New York: Tarcher Publications. Palmer, Parker (2000). Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Palmer, Parker (2004). A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Ping, D. (2006). Are You Listening? Spiritual Opportunities Surround Us When We Take The Time To Listen. Outreach Magazine. http://www.equippingministries.org/fileadmin/articles/Outflow/Outreach_05_Listening.pdf Shafir, Rebecca Z. (2003). The Zen of Listening: Mindful Communication in the Age of Distraction. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books
Professional Development Workshops
Do teachers find it difficult to cooperate effectively? How are at-risk or disengaged learners spoken about? Is your school a place you'd like to go to learn?
 Old Sow Consulting offers a variety of experiential, interactive learning experiences around reluctant and wounded learners. We ask participants to consider…
· What drew you to your work in schools? · Who are you in the institution (what is your professional identity)? · Is your professional identity who you really are?
Using data from your school, and from student experiences, we look at: · Understanding the culture of your district or school, from a learner’s point of view · Making “success” more available to all · Reframing deficit-based language about learners We offer evidence that describes how every adult’s orientation towards learners and learning reluctance “matters” in school.
WHAT WE DID LAST YEAR...
See the PDF below for a list of topics and brief descriptions.
Download PROFESSIONAL_DEVELOPMENT_OFFERINGS_001.pdf Keynotes"The Power of Relationships In Drop Out Prevention" Presented at America's Promise Drop Out Summit, Pressley Ridge, West Virginia April 2009
"You Matter, You Make a Difference" Presented at Wheaton College May 2009 "How Do Students Heal from School Wounds?" Presented at Teachers College Columbia University May 2009  "Thank you for your visit to Teachers College and presentation. The topic is so very timely and so willingly swept under the rug, as educators strive to convince themselves that we are doing all that we can. We're not, and your courage in pointing that out is invaluable and necessary!"
-Bill Lundgren, National Academy for Excellent Teaching, Teachers College Columbia University, May 2009
Download educate_to_graduate_2_ppt.pdf Courage and Renewal Experiences"As good teachers weave the fabric that joins them with students and subjects, the heart is the loom on which the threads are tied, the tension is held...Teaching tugs at the heart, opens the heart, even breaks the heart--and the more one loves teaching the more heartbreaking it can be. The courage to teach is the courage to keep one's heart open." -Parker Palmer, The Courage To Teach (1998)
Courage to Teach (http://www.couragerenewal.org), based on the work of Parker Palmer, is a national program for the personal and professional renewal of teachers and other professionals. Along with the Courage and Renewal Northeast (http://www.couragene.org), we offer professional development experiences that emphasize the inner life of teaching professionals, and explore the paradoxes of that work. Kirsten Olson is a Courage and Renewal facilitator, and collaborates with other Circles of Trust and Courage to Teach facilitators in designing Courage to Teach experiences. Below (PDF) is an example of recent Courage and Renewal workshop.
Download standing_in_tragic_gap_wksp_dscpt.pdf Strategic Partners
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