Transformational Listening Series: 4 Sessions Covering the Basics of JUST Listening

This JUST Listening series teaches skills for building relationships grounded in trust, empathy, and understanding. Over the course of 4 sessions, participants improve listening and communication skills by cultivating awareness of common communication challenges and ego-driven behaviors and practicing skills for listening with intention, to ourselves and others, and responding with humility and curiosity.

Our methodology is grounded in self-reflection and awareness based-systems change. We provide weekly self-reflection activities to encourage self-awareness of personal communication challenges and emphasize the importance of micro-practices-small, intentional actions that, when practiced consistently, lead to transformational change. 

Sessions provide an overview of relevant research on human behavior and neurobiology as well as opportunities to practice listening and communication skills in a caring environment. Participants leave with practical tools for building relationships, supporting decision-making, and responding peacefully in the context of conflict.

The workshop will be delivered in a series of four 1.5-hour online sessions taking place Wednesdays 10-11:30am EST. 

What We’ll Cover:

• July 8 – Session 1: What Gets in the Way of Our Listening? : Empathy, Othering, & Perception  
  • The physiology of empathy & othering
  • Understanding how our empathy is activated
  • The role of empathy and primal brain responses in our current context 
  • Tools & Micro-practices for reflection rather than reactivity

• July 15 – Session 2:  Listening Filters 
  • Overview of the Listening Filters that distort what we hear
  • Tools & Contemplative Micro-practices for Overcoming Listening Hurdles
  • Opportunities to practice cultivating awareness of filters

• July 22 – Session 3: From Division to Dialogue
  • Research about the emotional and psychological aspects connected to beliefs and values
  • Tools for turning down the temperature in heated conversations and connecting on a deeply human level, even amidst disagreement.
  • Tools for engaging perspectives that differ from our own and expressing our own views effectively, transforming potentially divisive encounters into meaningful exchanges.

• July 29 – Session 4: Responding Wholeheartedly to Others
  • The importance of knowing what conversation we are in
  • Guidelines for engaging in dialogue
  • Open and Strategic questioning- tools for supporting decision making without imposing our ego