Do You Hear Me, Or Are You Just Listening?

In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive world, it’s no secret that effective communication is a critical ingredient for success. However, often neglected is the importance of listening as an integral element of communication. Listening is more than just about hearing words; it’s about understanding what the speaker is saying and replying in a way that shows you have truly heard them. In fact, listening is a skill that can make or break your relationships and career.

Falling into the vast realm of power skills (previously referred to as ‘soft skills’), learning how to do this properly takes deliberate focus and unyielding empathy. You’re not just listening to what your conversation partner is saying, but the undertones of why they say it. It is what they are not articulating–what is between the lines that are most profound. Our past leaves a trail of breadcrumbs with clues of what shaped us into who we are today and the belief system we hold true. Learning from our biography is telling. In adult learning, we call that an educational biography.

The educational biography helps adults better understand their learning process and, in turn, their search for meaning. These life history narratives reveal how our personal and societal aspects are interwoven, creating a tangled web unraveled through a unique process. Done appropriately, the life history narrative is prepared by an individual but shared with a group for a collective reflection; each person brings a distinct perspective which together brings infinite possibilities to derive purpose and meaning. It requires a certain level of trust for someone to be vulnerable and share their story. The person at the center of this exercise becomes the subject of their own life.

Dr. Michel Alhadeff-Jones, the Executive Director of the Sunkhronos Institute in Switzerland and Adjunct Associate Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, studies this practice and teaches adult educators how to lead others through an educational biography.

“Sharing one’s life narrative provides each member of the group with the opportunity to reinterpret their life experiences. During the discussion, participants may ask for clarification or formulate questions about what has been left out of a narrative. Such an exercise brings them to critically reflect on the ways they give meanings to their past and present experiences, and more specifically the taken-for-granted assumptions that frame the ways they relate to the world, to others and to their own existence. Doing so may sometimes trigger transformations,” shares Alhadeff-Jones.

This listening and reflection process is very similar to a TED talk; one person shares a story, thousands or even millions of people hear it and each can share their perspective through comments, discussion and personal reflection.

Putting words to an experience is powerful. Being able to make connections others don’t yet see is a skill. Nobody does it better than Maoush Zomorodi, the host of the TED Radio Hour on National Public Radio (NPR). Zomorodi just celebrated three years of hosting the show. Her small team searches and curates TED and TEDx videos that share a compelling and unanticipated story. She then tries to ask the questions her listeners might not have realized they wanted answers to.

“My job is to talk to people, really listen, and ask the questions going through the listeners’ minds. Those are the moments I live for,” shares Zomorodi.

When Zomorodi was hired to fill the host seat, her first show was set to launch on March 11, 2020. Needless to say, the plans changed. The first six shows had to be scrapped. Zomorodi recalls the period between potentially being labeled tone-deaf for talking about non-pandemic issues and people being tired of talking about Covid. But what is a safe topic to discuss when people are stranded at home? There was a fine line, and she was learning as she went.

Studios were closed, and for the first few months, Zomorodi recorded the shows of the famed NPR show from her closet at home. So how exactly is this show created?

A small team of about half a dozen people scours the TED and TEDx presentations, looking for the best talk they can find with something unexpected. They then build a story around it and find another TED talk to complement it. The process takes months to complete.

You may hear one message if you listen to the TED talk independently. When you listen to the backstory, you hear the parts unspoken, the significance which may not have been apparent at the onset. The NPR TED Radio Hour may very well be the next generation of educational biography, out of the classroom and onto the sound waves.