[This series on listening is part of my larger series of posts on relationship-based organizing.]

In Part 1 of this series, I discussed how listening related to organizing at a more general level. In this post I get into specifics of how to practice good listening. Most of these listening skills apply to social relationships in general, but here I present them in the context of union organizing.

Motivational Interviewing

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a form of counseling that a reader first commented about on my blog, noting how it sounded similar in a lot of ways to how I write about relationship-based organizing. Piquing my interest, I started to look into MI, found a lot that I resonated with, and discovered some new angles for looking at my organizing.

MI was developed in part against traditional forms of counseling that are more top-down in style, where a counselor analyzes a client’s problem and prescribes behavior changes. The originators of MI found that for a lot of patients this didn’t work. Stephen Rollnick, one of the developers of MI, said of his early interest in MI:

The more you try to insert information and advice into others, the more they tend to back off and resist. This was the original insight that generated our search for a more satisfying and effective approach… Put simply, this involves coming alongside the person and helping them to say why and how they might change for themselves.

Similarly with organizing, I discovered that more forceful ways of trying to organize my coworkers rarely worked as I’d hoped. Most popular and leftist theories of organizing out there were still too heavy-handed or transactional to be effective in building healthy connections with coworkers. Through a lot of trial and error, my fellow organizers and I hit upon the approach that we’ve called “relationship-based organizing,” where building relationships is seen as the primary task of organizing. Direct action and radical change can only be based in worker democracy and worker interests when the relationships between workers form a healthy and robust community. All of the other aspects of organizing are sought through emphasizing the care, trust, and solidarity of the relationships at their center.

MI was developed specifically for helping people move through ambivalence towards changes that they want to make. It’s common for people to have a lot of ambivalence about making big changes (at least the big changes they haven’t already instituted on their own), whether it’s quitting smoking or standing up to an abusive boss. They might know in the abstract what the right thing to do is, but when faced with actually doing it and hitting some early roadblocks, the obstacles seem insurmountable and they quickly revert to merely coping with the status quo.

Crucial to moving through ambivalence in MI is the safety and security, provided in large part by good listening, that is nurtured in the relationship between the counselor and the client. This security provides a foundation from which people feel comfortable and supported in exploring their motivations and inhibitions. Similarly, relationship-based organizing is about fostering relationships between coworkers where they can feel comfortable and safe processing the difficult aspects of their working lives and can gather the motivation to come together with their coworkers to take action. 

The centerpiece of most union organizing technique is the 1-on-1 organizing conversation, and the version of the organizing conversation I’ve synthesized for myself from union trainings and my own experience is based on the acronym AEIOU (agitate-educate-inoculate-organize-uplift). While I use these techniques often and find them very helpful, there are clearly times when such techniques spin their wheels, which I think includes when coworkers are trapped in ambivalence. Trying to force these techniques where there’s no traction leads to getting stuck in the mud. Rather, when AEIOU doesn’t get traction you’ll often find you need to slow down and first spend time building relationships. At its best this involves practicing good listening to validate, understand, and support your coworkers.

When to Turn on Your “Active Listening” Mode

Normal conversation between friends and coworkers is characterized by give and take, whether it’s a give and take of what you both are thinking, or experiencing, or banter, or intellectual ideas, or what have you. Obviously, listening is part of this, but your listening is more geared towards moving the conversation forward as relatively equal partners.

When a coworker is struggling with something or needs to process or share something personal, a different kind of listening is required, the kind where you put their needs to share and be seen at the center. This requires a mental shift from “normal conversation” mode to “active listening” mode. You’re no longer listening so as to contribute an equal share of the content of the conversation, or find ways to riff off of what they say into new and interesting directions, or to tell your own stories that relate to the topic. Rather, you’re listening to give them as much space and security as possible to explore their feelings and experiences for themselves.

In organizing, you shift into active listening mode whenever the focus needs to be on your coworker’s grievance or on what your coworker wants to do to resolve the grievance. If you’re chatting with your coworker on your break and you start to get the sense that they’re really going through something or really need to be listened to, you can try to squeeze some of that in in the break room if it seems appropriate. However, this is often where you can follow up with them to see if they want to talk more outside of work. Part of being able to switch on active listening mode is creating the conditions, such as meeting at the park across the street after work or at a cafe on the weekend, where active listening can be practiced effectively. 

If you and a coworker both have a level of comfort and history texting with each other, most of the techniques of good listening can also be used over text. What is lost in the less personal medium of digital text communication is sometimes more than compensated by convenience and the ability to take a few more minutes to craft a response rather than feel the need to respond instantly.

OARS

An early study of the effectiveness of MI had counselors follow a manual of MI techniques with clients struggling to manage their alcohol consumption. The counseling effectiveness seemed to vary a lot case by case, but upon re-categorizing the success of each counselor according to how well they used MI listening techniques specifically, they found a striking result. “We were able to predict two-thirds of the variation in clients’ drinking outcomes at 6 months (the number of standard drink units they were consuming weekly) based on how well their counselor had listened to them!” (Emphasis in original, from pg 371 of Motivational Interviewing, 3rd Edition (MI)). That finding helped convince MI leaders to stop trying to replicate or measure success through more formulaic versions of MI and rather to focus on core skills (like listening) and processes (like relationship-building). 

Similarly, I think many organizers would do well to loosen up on more scripted approaches to taking workplace action and rather focus on their listening and relationship-building. In my very rough estimation a similar point can be made about the effectiveness of grassroots organizers as was found in MI counselors, that a large portion of organizer success in building relationships and collectively taking action to improve conditions at work is determined by how well they listen.

In MI, OARS is the acronym used to encapsulate the core listening skills of asking Open-ended questions, Affirming, Reflecting, and Summarizing. Let’s go through each of these in turn, note how they can be misunderstood, and look at how they can be used in talking with coworkers about workplace grievances.

Open-Ended Questions

An open-ended question is one that opens space for someone to speak to their concern and without your knowing or shaping in advance where they will go with it. Throughout these sections, I’ll use the example of an ambivalent coworker Connor who is talked down to and often belittled by his boss Bill. Connor isn’t resigned to this treatment, as he is stressed out by it and wants to stand up for himself, but he also gives many reasons for why he shouldn’t or can’t do so.

In such a context, a first open-ended question might be: “How have things been going with Bill lately?” or “How have you been feeling around Bill?”

Talking with an ambivalent coworker often starts out similar to how you talk to a non-ambivalent coworker at the start of agitation in AEIOU. The open-ended questions get the conversation going and keep it moving, but whereas a non-ambivalent person can move through the requisite steps of the emotion-exploring Agitate section onto the problem-solving Educate section, an ambivalent person will often get stuck. Premature suggestions of taking action will often prompt ambivalent people to reaffirm their commitment to not taking action on an issue.

As simple as it seems, there are many mistakes that can be made in trying to ask open-ended questions. The most obvious one is trying to open space but doing so through more closed questions. “What did Bill say to you yesterday?” “What did you do when Bill made that comment about you in front of Sally?” These questions focus more narrowly in a way that doesn’t give Connor the space to start with what’s at the front of their mind about the issue.

A mistake I sometimes make in asking open-ended questions is that I get too fancy in trying to ask a series of open-ended questions at the same time. “How does that feel when Bill says that? I know he’s said things like that before, but how has your dynamic around this changed over the months? Do you see this in a different light than you used to?” Intuitively, by asking multiple open-ended questions at once it feels like I’m creating more space for them to respond, but actually I’m just trying to do too much and all of a sudden my coworker isn’t sure what I’m asking. Their focus is taken away from their own thoughts and feelings and gets jumbled trying to figure out how to respond. It’s best to keep your open-ended questions simple and straight-forward.

Using open-ended questions throughout the conversation keeps the space open while encouraging them to continue exploring as much as they want to. Open-ended questions can be used to follow-up, often taking what seemed most salient about the last thing they said and opening up space to explore that further. “How did that make you feel?” “What about X made you feel like that?”

Reflecting

But if open-ended questions are all you say during a conversation, that can make you seem distant. The second most important listening skill is Reflecting. Reflections are statements you make that reflect something back to the speaker about what they said. Sometimes a simple reflection of some important thing they said is helpful, but you can also focus on reflecting specific aspects and in specific ways that make you a better listener.

Good reflections often reflect back a want (“you want more time to get trained in”), feeling (“the possibility of getting transferred is stressing you out”), or value (“being able to do your job well important to you”) that is explicit or implicit in what the speaker is sharing. Wants, feelings, and needs are often what is most important to us and when those things are reflected back, we feel seen.

Reflective listening is often best when it’s an active part of meaning-making in the conversation and not only a passive restating of something already said. To quote at length from the MI book: 

“The essence of a reflective listening response is that it makes a guess about what the person means. Before a person speaks, he or she has a certain meaning to communicate. The meaning is encoded into words, often imperfectly. People don’t always say exactly what they mean. The listener has to hear the words accurately and then decode their meaning…. The reflective listener forms a reasonable guess as to what the original meaning was, and gives voice to this guess in the form of a statement [aka, a reflection]….

Why respond with a statement rather than asking a question? … In the dynamics of language, a question requires a response; it places a demand on the person….

… Pressing people with questions to explain themselves and their meaning actually seems to distance them from what they are experiencing. They step back to analyze and begin to ask whether they really do or should feel what they have expressed.” (MI, 52-3)

And:

“Reflective listening, then, involves responding to the speaker with a statement that is not a roadblock, but rather is one’s guess about what the person means. Often, but not always, the subject of the sentence is the pronoun you.

[Gives conversation example] … Notice also how the interviewer’s reflections move forward rather than just repeating what the person has said. In essence, the interviewer is venturing what might be the next sentence in the person’s paragraph instead of merely echoing the last one.” (MI, 54)

This aspect of MI is perhaps the one that was most novel to me as I’d never seen this idea written about before. Upon first reading about reflections, it seemed kind of magical but also a bit unclear to me. Certainly in my attempts to be an active listener before I’d tried to find ways to make little comments or add things that seemed helpful, but all too often these comments seemed to pull the focus off of the person’s sharing in a way that disrupted their flow. 

The MI concept of reflecting shows how to maintain the focus on their sharing while still actively participating yourself. Eager to try it out in conversations with fellow workers and organizers, I noticed that it did really help the flow of these conversations and I felt like I was listening better. Most surprisingly, I noticed that those who I considered the best listeners I know were already doing this in their conversations with me! I just didn’t realize that’s what they were doing until I saw it explained in MI.

Like so much in mental health discourse generally, very little in MI or relationship-based organizing is entirely original and is rather an attempt to describe those social and emotional practices that the best listeners and organizers already use. Once described these practices can be molded to specific purposes and taught for those who don’t pick this stuff up intuitively or don’t have many great listener role models in their life to learn from.

Say I’m talking with Connor after work and the below exchange occurs. The background context is that I’ve tried to suggest possible ways to stand up to Bill in the past but Connor would get defensive or change the subject, so for the time-being I just want to keep building trust by actively listening to him when he has to talk about something.

Connor: Bill didn’t have to say it that way. Obviously, I screwed up but that doesn’t mean he has to humiliate me in front of the team.

Me: He could have just shown you how it was supposed to be done. (Reflection)

Connor: And now I’m too stressed to even wanna go to work tomorrow. What if I mess up again and get fired? At this point I’m not sure Bill has much more patience for me.

Me: Yea. It’s scary not knowing how Bill’s gonna react next. (Reflection)

Connor: And then where would I be? Just onto the next crap job, I guess. Here’s the thing, though. I’m trying my best and there’s no real reason to fire me. Sure, if I’m still screwing it up a couple months from now that’s one thing, but I just learned this. Give me a damn break.

Me: You just want to do your job in peace. (Reflection)

Connor: Fuck. I have to go to work tomorrow. Taking extra days off won’t pay the bills.

Me: How are you gonna feel when you walk into work tomorrow? (Open-ended question)

Reflective listening shows them you are attending to their sharing, respecting their autonomy to say it, and seeking to understand it. As a rough rule of thumb, MI recommends following up each open-ended question with two reflections before asking another open-ended question.

What makes reflections tricky is that there’s many responses that are well-intentioned and appear similar to reflections but which actually cut against good listening. Some examples are consoling (“Don’t worry, you’ll be ok”), praising (“But you’re just so strong and brilliant”), agreeing (“You’re right about that”), analyzing (“This job reminds you of how your parents were always critical of everything you did growing up”), labeling (“Oh, you’re definitely an XYZ if that’s what you think”), storytelling (“That reminds me of this time when I was dealing with …”), and justifying a grievance as normal (“Everybody has good days and bad days around here”).

Some of these things may be helpful to say in a healthy relationship at different times, but when in active listening mode, they actually get in the way. The underlying mistake of each of these is that they seek to change or influence the other person from the outside–such as make them feel better (consoling, praising), tell them something about themselves (labeling, analyzing, justifying), or taking the focus off of them (storytelling)–in a way that wasn’t part of the story or issue they were sharing about as it comes from them. 

The best reflections are often succinct enough that they don’t pull the spotlight of the conversation away from the coworker who’s sharing but are packed with meaning and connection in a way that supports and encourages them in their sharing. This is the most subtle of the listening skills in MI and one that takes a bit of practice to get comfortable at, but I’ve found that even in just starting to use them they’ve made my listening better.

Affirming

In MI, affirming is “to accentuate the positive” in what the other person says. This may appear the same as praise, but the subtle distinction is important. Affirming takes what they have said and highlights the positive in it, in contrast to praise that adds positivity from outside of what they have said and distracts from their sharing. In the example of Connor talking about getting picked on by Bill for screwing up some new job task, praise would be, “You’re smart, you’ll be ok.” An affirmation might sound like, “You’ve learned a lot of things quickly around here before.” Also: 

“In general, avoid affirmations that begin with the word ‘I,’ because these focus more on you than on the client. ‘I am proud of you,’ for example, may be well-intentioned and even well received, but clearly has parental overtones. Like good reflecting, good affirming usually centers on the word ‘you.’” (MI, 65)

Whereas reflections often highlight a feeling, a want, or a value in what the other person is discussing, affirmations often highlight a skill, an attribute, or an effort. Such an affirmation doesn’t include a judgment (which is praise) but should aim to be descriptive. “Getting that certification will be easy for you” includes a judgment and is therefore praise. “You’re working hard to get your certification” is an affirmation.

Another kind of affirmation that MI describes is the re-framing affirmation, which acknowledges what they said but then rephrases it to pull out the positive from it in order to offer another way of seeing what they’ve said or done. Returning to Connor and Bill:

Connor: Damn it, I screwed it up again, just like last week. And now Bill’s gonna find out. Why do I always screw this up?

Me: It sucks that Bill’s gonna give you a hard time over this. On the other hand, before this you went all week without screwing up once.

Summaries

“Summaries are essentially reflections that pull together several things that a person has told you. They can also be affirming because they imply, ‘I remember what you tell me and want to understand how it fits together.’” (MI, 66)

MI talks about how summaries can be used to collect various things as they accumulate in the conversation, or to link something they’re talking about now to something they talked about with you in the past, or to consolidate understanding of an issue before transitioning to another part of the conversation or the end of a conversation.

It’s often helpful to end a summary with a question either asking for confirmation that you’re understanding them correctly or asking if they have anything else to add.

Here’s an extended example of all of the elements of OARS, picking up mid-conversation with the open-ended question I asked at the end of the first example.

Me: How are you gonna feel when you walk into work tomorrow? (Open-ended question)

Connor: Like I don’t want to be here. I’ve had this at previous jobs, where I just get a pit in my stomach and go about work like a zombie until it subsides.

Me: You wish you didn’t have to go through that again. (Reflection)

Connor: Yea, it’s the same with everyone though, right? If it’s not a Bill, then it’s a something else. Maybe Bill will finally get that promotion he’s always yapping about, then I could just relax a bit more around here.

Me: Yea, Bill’s a jerk and really the main cause of your stress. (Reflection)

Connor: Yea, I guess this place isn’t so bad except for him. But we all know he’s never actually getting promoted. The guy can barely manage our little department, imagine him trying to run a store. Ha… So I guess I’m stuck with the bastard.

Me: Come to think of it, nobody around here likes Bill do they (Observation). Do you think there’s anything we could do to take the edge off of Bill? (Open-ended question)

Connor: I heard they canned Stanley in the next department over when he kept yelling at people, but Bill never yells. He may not be a genius, but he’s not so stupid that he gets himself in trouble. 

Me: Yea, but what Bill does often feels just as bad as yelling. (Reflection and observation)

Connor: Well I guess I just have to live it then, right? No way I’m sticking my neck out around here, not after what happened last time. I swore I’d never get fired for that kind of thing again.

Me: You’re gonna do whatever you need to to keep this job. (Affirmation)

Connor: It’s funny to hear that, but yea, I ain’t putting myself out of a job again. I gotta keep the lights on at home. I’ll just have to learn this new stuff so Bill backs off. I’ve learned everything else around here just fine, it’ll just take me a couple weeks to pick it up and then I’ll be in the clear. But these next couple weeks are gonna suck.

Me: I’m sorry Bill’s been on your ass about this. That sounds really stressful. Am I hearing you right that you think that you can keep this job because you just have to learn a couple things, and you’re good at picking things up fast. Then Bill will have to let up. Is there anything you need to help get through these next couple weeks? (Summary, open-ended question, and offer support)

Obviously, my aim in this conversation is not to move in the short-term to a commitment to collective action with Connor, as might be the case in a more traditional union organizing conversation using a framework like AEIOU. I hint at the possibility of action at one point (“take the edge off Bill”), and leave open him taking that up, but when he gets a little defensive I don’t push it. This is sometimes the point where organizers get frustrated and try to force their coworkers to confront their problems more directly. However, except in special circumstances, I think that most often leads to the weakening of trust rather than an increased motivation to take action. Instead, I just stay in active listening mode and try to affirm and support him in other ways.

While these concepts of MI from a counseling setting are helpful in thinking about organizing with people who are ambivalent, I think they can be supplemented and adapted for workplace organizing. Comments I make above, like “nobody around here likes Bill” are observations a counselor could never make because the counselor doesn’t know the workplace for themselves. So whereas the counselor is more apt to keep themselves focused on the client’s world only through the client themselves, I think it’s appropriate and often effective for the organizer to bring their workplace experience and knowledge into the conversation to a degree. 

This enables you to bring other elements into the conversation, add observations, make affirmations, and offer support in a way that’s not possible in a counseling setting. While in active listening mode the focus should still be on your coworkers’ relation to and experience of the workplace, and so you should be careful not to distract from that, but if done carefully you can assist them in coloring in the picture.

What good listening does is strengthen trust. Over months and years of being around the same coworkers, this trust can extend from a willingness to share about work problems to a willingness to re-interpret the source of those problems to a willingness to consider collective action as a solution.

Conclusion

I’ve long wanted to write more about listening and have tried to find good materials in the organizing literature to learn from. However, it wasn’t until I came across Motivational Interviewing that I felt like I found a framework that went in sufficient depth and was relevant to my own organizing experiences that I was able to more fully develop my own ideas about listening.

I’m certainly not a trained counselor and am at most a visitor to the world of those ideas, but their usefulness in thinking about organizing has been big for me. I’m eager to keep exploring these ideas and see how they evolve as I acquire more experience with them and reflect on them further.

The first post in this series deals with the dynamics and mindset of good listening, this post deals with specific listening skills, and the next post in this series will discuss the specific process of moving with someone from ambivalence to commitment to change.