Listen And Believe Your Community Members
This is part of the Safer Space Series .
“When someone tells you their experience, believe them.”
To create safer spaces, one of the most important things we can do as organizers is create feedback loops to engage the various communities we serve. Each individual comes with a unique mix of experiences, cultural background, and psychology. When we listen, we become more educated on how to best serve them, the communities they are part of, and how to increase their security and safety.
There are behaviors that most humans see as threatening or dangerous, such as the act of punching someone angrily with force. However, if you have systems in place to listen more deeply, you begin to pick up on other factors that may be negatively impacting your community’s sense of safety.
The Digital Rights Community Example
In the digital rights community we have found that people’s sense of safety is affected when they are in a physical space where photography is permitted without parameters. As such, for events that serve this group, we implement stringent privacy and security guidelines that may seem excessive for people outside of the digital rights space. However, this makes members in this community feel more at ease.
Deeper Feedback Loops, Means Better Awareness
We also find that by increasing the depth of our feedback loops we become aware of other factors that may not be on our radar, such as a groups preference in communication style. We also become more aware of our personal and systematic limitation, which ultimately help us grow as organizers.
Real listening can be difficult because communication challenges always arise. This means,you won’t always be perfect, people that approach you won’t always be perfect, and sometimes you won’t have the power or resources to address their concerns. However, the better you get at listening, the more your community will feel comfortable approaching you and being direct and honest.
Active Listening is an Essential Skill
Maya Angelou has a great quote: “When someone tells you who you they are, believe them.” We modified this quote a bit, and made it one of our mantras:
“When someone tells you their experience, believe them.”
It sounds easy enough, but you would be surprised at how hard this is.
People often forget that their lived experience is not universal. During conversations, it’s not uncommon for people to begin formulating their response or position to what is being shared rather than genuinely listening.
Your first step as an organizer is to practice active listening, an essential skill that will allow you to obtain important information and, most importantly, learn. While it is at the core of interpersonal communications, it requires a lot of practice to do well. In addition, this is complicated by the fact that not everyone you encounter will be a good communicator, and language and culture barriers makes it more difficult to do well.
Resources
We encourage you to research resources or trainings that can help you improve in this area, as best practices exist. However, we have learned that at a minimum the following two approaches are essential: Give 100% of your attention, ensuring that you are not distracted and can focus on the conversation wholeheartedly; and routinely repeat back what is being shared with you to ensure you are comprehending the messages correctly.
It is difficult to recommend one specific resource because what strategies you use can be dependent on context. However, some of us have been inspired by John Francis, who willingly stopped talking for 17 years, and shares the benefits of listening: https://www.ted.com/talks/john_francis_walks_the_earth