The Art of Really Listening

Looping is a technique from mediation practice: you reflect back what you heard until the other person says “yes, that's it.” This is harder than paraphrasing. It is not a summary. It is the experience of being understood. When it works, it changes the chemistry of a conversation in ways that are hard to describe but immediately recognizable when they happen.

This month also introduces the levels of listening, a framework developed across coaching, organizational learning, and communication research that describes how we move from self-focused listening (planning your response while someone speaks) to focused listening (attending to their words) to global listening (attending to tone, body, and what is not being said). Most people in most workplace conversations are listening at the first level. Looping requires the third.

This month’s move: Looping. Once a day, in one exchange, make it your only job to reflect back what you heard until the other person says “yes, that’s it,” before you say anything about your own view. Use the prompts: Do I have it right? Is there more? What matters most to you about this?

Recognition cue: A conversation is ending and you realize you understood their position but not what matters to them about it, or you notice you could not restate their view in a way they would accept.

Write one line on your log each day you run it.

Run the rep in any conversation, work or not. Looping does not require a partner who is also doing the curriculum. Find one person for a single 10-minute looping exercise mid-month, then debrief what it felt like to be on each side.

Looping prompts:

• Do I have it right?”
• “Is there more?”
• “What I am hearing is ... Is that accurate?”
• “So from your perspective, what matters most is... Is that right?”
• “And the impact on you is that you feel ... Is that close?”

Meeting hook for this month: In one conversation where tension is present, make it your only job to loop until the other person says “yes, that's it” before you say anything about your own perspective. Use the looping prompts.

Looping is not paraphrasing. You reflect back what you heard until the other person says “yes, that's it.”

The sequence:

1. Listen without planning your response.
2. Reflect back what you heard in your own words, not a transcript.
3. Check: “Do I have it right?”
4. If the answer is not a clear yes, ask “Is there more?” or “What am I missing?”
5. Repeat until they say yes.

Prompts:

• “Do I have it right?”
• “Is there more?”
• “What I am hearing is... Is that accurate?”
• “What matters most to you about this?”

What this is not: agreement. You can loop someone fully and still disagree. The loop creates the conditions for the real conversation.

Four parts, in order:

1. OBSERVATION: What I saw or heard. No evaluation. “When I see/hear…”
2. FEELING: What I feel in relation to what I observed. “I feel…” (not “I feel that you…”)
3. NEED: The underlying need connected to the feeling. “Because I need/value…”
4. REQUEST: A specific, doable action. “Would you be willing to...?”

Example: “When the meeting ends without a decision (observation), I feel frustrated (feeling) because I need clarity to do my job (need). Would you be willing to close with a clear next step? (request)”

For working with someone resistant, entrenched, or seeing the situation very differently:
L — Listen. Fully. Without planning your response. Your job is to understand, not persuade.
E — Empathize. Demonstrate you received what they said: “That sounds really frustrating.”
A — Agree. Find any genuine point of agreement, even one thing. Not false agreement.
P — Partner. “What would it look like for us to work on this together?”

The sequence is deliberate: you cannot move someone toward your position until they feel fully understood in theirs.

SCENARIO 1
A board member opposes a strategic direction and seems unwilling to engage with evidence. In pairs, one plays the resistant board member. The other’s only job for five minutes is to loop them until they say “yes, that’s it.” No persuasion. What is hard about staying in the loop?

SCENARIO 2
A colleague tells you in a one-on-one they feel left out of decisions. Write what you would say using NVC: observation, feeling, need, request. Then say it aloud. What feels awkward?

SCENARIO 3
Two colleagues keep having the same disagreement. Person A states their position for two minutes. Person B loops it. Person A confirms or corrects. Swap. Does anything shift when both people feel genuinely heard before anyone advocates?

Media for this Month
Required before the live session: the Voss podcast (item 1). Budget for it; it runs about an hour and is worth every minute.

1. REQUIRED · LISTEN Knowledge Project: Chris Voss The FBI's lead hostage negotiator on tactical empathy and looping.
2. LISTEN Negotiate Anything: The Compassionate Curiosity Framework Explained (Kwame Christian) The host of the popular negotiation podcast on his three-step framework, validate emotions, get curious with compassion, joint problem-solving, which maps almost one-to-one onto looping before you advocate.
3. WATCH Julian Treasure: 5 Ways to Listen Better TED Talk
4. ARTICLE The Heart of Nonviolent Communication (Marshall Rosenberg) An excerpt from Rosenberg's book introducing the NVC framework directly in his voice
5. ARTICLE Marshall Rosenberg Article Archive (NVC Center) Collection of interviews and short pieces by Rosenberg directly in his voice
6. ARTICLE Excerpt: You're Not Listening (Kate Murphy) The opening chapters that set up the book's central argument
7. ARTICLE A Conversation With Kate Murphy on Listening Murphy interviewed on why listening is a skill, why we lose it, and what it costs us. It’s a sharp read applicable to any team context
8. ARTICLE BIFF: 4 Ways to Respond to Hostile Comments (Bill Eddy, Psychology Today) Overview of the BIFF method (Brief, Informative, Friendly, Firm) for responding to charged written communication without escalating. Applies to email, Slack, donor letters, social media, and any inbox message that raises your pulse.
9. WATCH Oprah Winfrey talks with Thich Nhat Hanh about deep listening Thich Nhat Hanh on compassionate, deep listening: listening with the single purpose of letting the other person empty their heart. Ten minutes that reframe the entire month.
10. OPTIONAL | BUY THE BOOK *You're Not Listening* (Kate Murphy)
11. OPTIONAL | BUY THE BOOK *Improv Wisdom* (Patricia Ryan Madson)

Total time for required media this month: approximately 2 hours 30 minutes. The Voss podcast is the longest single item at one hour.

Week 1: In your next significant meeting, track how long you go before you stop listening and start planning your response. What prompted the shift?

Week 2: Practice looping once in a non-work conversation. What changed about how the conversation moved?

Week 3: Think of someone whose perspective you find genuinely hard to understand. Apply the 5 Whys to their position. Keep going until you find something you did not expect.

Week 4: Think of a recent message you received when someone was clearly activated. Rewrite your reply using BIFF: Brief, Informative, Friendly, Firm. What had to change?

Discussion questions for pairs or the full group:

• What did it feel like to be looped, to have someone reflect back until you felt understood?
• How often does that happen in your regular work?
• What made it hard to loop accurately?
• Where did you find yourself wanting to jump to your own response?
• How does the NVC distinction between observation and evaluation show up in how this team communicates?
• What would change in our meetings if we made “do I have it right?” a standard question before anyone advocates?

Before the next session, check in with yourself:

• Did I loop at least twice in real conversations this month?
• Did I act as conflict miner in at least one meeting?
• Can I distinguish between understanding a colleague’s perspective and agreeing with it?

• The triad exercise is the most important practice in Month 3.
• Give it the full 30 minutes.
• The observer’s job is to say what they noticed, not what they would have done differently.
• After the triad, ask speakers what it felt like to be looped, then ask listeners what was hard about doing it.
• The contrast is the learning.
• One note on NVC, which appears in this month's handouts: social justice practitioners raise a fair critique that NVC, used badly, slides into tone-policing, privileging calm delivery over legitimate grievance.
• Teach it as a tool for the speaker's own clarity, never as a standard to impose on how someone else expresses hurt.
• The looping prompts feel stilted at first.
• Name that.
• The goal is to internalize the intent, not memorize the prompts.
• If the group is large, run multiple triads at once and debrief together.
• Watch for listeners who paraphrase their interpretation rather than reflecting what was said (ask: did the speaker say that, or is that your interpretation?), speakers who choose easy scenarios (encourage real tension), and the person who says “I already do this” (invite them to demonstrate; almost everyone finds room to grow).
• Month 3 is often when the group starts to feel like a learning community rather than a task group.
• That shift is significant.
• Name it.