Quality
Listening
“When no one listens to anyone”
“When what is heard is different from what is said”
Listening is not the same as hearing. Hearing is physiological: sounds reach the ear. Listening is a choice, and at bottom an ethical quality: suspending what you were about to say next, sitting with the other person's words longer than feels comfortable, waiting until you grasp what is being said before deciding what to do with it. It is not possible not to listen. It is only possible not to be interested.
Where there is genuine listening, the rest changes. Silence stops being emptiness: between two people who listen to each other, it is never mute. Difficult conversations become possible. Decisions carry a different weight. And you begin to hear what is not being said, which is almost always what matters most.
Most of what appears to be a lack of communication is a lack of listening.
Level 1
Provoke
Two to four hours for a team to discover, in practice, the difference between hearing and listening. No presentations. Exercises that reveal invisible patterns: who speaks the most, who interrupts, and who is preparing their own response while the other person is still speaking.
Academia VdA, 2025
A session with lawyers on "listening as editing", the difference between taking everything at the same level and helping the person find what is essential. The discovery at the end: listening well is not accepting everything. It is asking the right questions so that the other can hear themselves.
Level 2
Develop
Two to three months for listening to stop being an exercise and become a posture. Training in the room, practice between sessions, ongoing support. It includes work on questions, silence, listening to one's own listening, and attention to what is not being said.
PwC, 2018-2019
Mentoring programme: 30 managers trained in active listening and feedback, with ongoing support over the course of a year. Mentors learned to listen without trying to solve, to ask questions instead of giving answers, and to create space for mentees to find their own paths.
Level 3
Transform
Sometimes people know how to listen. It is the culture that won't let them. An integrated programme treats listening as an organisational quality — linked to conscious communication, feedback, metaconversation. Listening becomes part of how the organisation thinks, decides and learns.
PLMJ, 2026
A programme for PLMJ leaders, inspired by the methodology of the "Balint Groups": over the year, we created moments of conversation in which participants bring real situations to be thought through with colleagues from the organisation. It solves concrete situations and, along the way, trains listening, feedback and critical thinking.