Central to the work that you do with patients, families and carers is involving them in conversations that affect them, asking them about what they think is possible, and co-creating care plans with them to enable them to have autonomy in line with their condition and capacity.
This is no different than the purpose of the work with people that can support you to embed and deliver on Connecting People, Connecting Support. You know how to do this. This section provides a set of tools that can help you form amazing questions, listen well and connect people to their deeper purpose.
Hear Fiona talking about the importance of the way in which we engage others below.
Resource: Levels of Listening and Inquiry
Otto Scharmer and his colleagues at MIT have identified four levels of listening and inquiry. This is linked to the work on Powerful Questions and Appreciative Inquiry. The four levels of listening are:
Downloading
Listening from the assumption that you already know what is being said, and therefore listening only to confirm habitual judgments.
Factual
You pick up new information… factual, debates, speak your mind. Factual listening is when you pay attention to what is different, novel, or disquieting from what you already know.
Empathic
You see something through another person’s eyes. Empathic listening is when the speaker pays attention to the feelings of the speaker. It opens the listener and allows an experience of standing in the other’s shoes to take place. Attention shifts from the listener to the speaker, allowing for deep connection on multiple levels.
Generative
This deeper level of listening is difficult to express in linear language. It is a state of being in which everything slows down and inner wisdom is accessed. In group dynamics, it is called synergy. In interpersonal communication, it is described as oneness and flow.
Useful for
- Examining where you are listening from in different situations
- Linking this with the types of questions that you need to ask to gain deeper engagement from the other person
Resource: Levels of listening and inquiry
Helpful additional information
Listen to Otto Scharmer from MIT talking about Levels of Listening.
Resource: Powerful Questions
We know that questions are more transformative than answers and are essential tools of engagement. Questions create the space for something new to emerge. However, in the busy world of task, target, fix it and sort it, answers are still valued more than questions and in the short term often feel easier.
Answers, especially those that respond to our need for quick results, while satisfying, shut down the discussion and the future shuts down with them. What can make us impatient with questions and hungry for answers is that in organisational life there is confusion between the process of exploring a question and ‘talking shop’.
The latter has no meaning and leads to ego based argument, analysis, explanation and defensive behaviour. The former creates space for new thinking to emerge.
Useful for
- Evaluating the types of questions that can help you in a variety of situations
- Planning an Appreciative Inquiry
- Designing coaching and Thinking Partner sessions
- Dissipating potential conflict situations
- Holding space for innovation
Resource: Powerful questions
Resource: Deeper Purpose Conversation
The concept behind the Deeper Purpose conversation is to create space to listen. In this sense it links with Levels of Listening and Inquiry and Appreciative Inquiry.
People can think deeply for themselves and if a Thinking Space is created, that thinking can and will emerge. The facilitator is the catalyst. In this space the quality of the questions and the quality of listening are paramount.
Listening values the thinking and the thinking improves, and as the quality of thinking improves so does the quality of decision making and planned action.
Useful for
- Reconnecting teams with why they do the work they do
- Creating space to hear individual stories, which will connect people to themselves and to others on a deeper level
- Surfacing a connectedness based on listening, genuineness and not knowing
- Giving structure to the emotional dimension of the work and the workplace
Resource: Deeper purpose conversations
Helpful additional information
Watch a fun clip about the impact of engaged people.
Resource: Water Postcards
The water postcards (or any set of cards), are a useful way to gather insights into thoughts and feelings.
People are often more relaxed about describing why they picked out a specific card than speaking directly about emotions or feelings.
Useful for
- Engaging people in a different way around the area of inquiry
- Creating a visual journey of feelings and emotions as they are now and as they would like to be in the future
- Linking with Appreciative Inquiry and Empathy Mapping
Resource: water postcards
Helpful additional information
- Make your own or buy them at galleries
- We like the art box sets available at amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Box-Postcards-Phaidon-Press/dp/0714865176