David: Would others say that you are a good listener? To be asked that question kind of out of the blue, could take some thought. Let me ask it one more time. Would those who know you fairly well say that you are a good listener? What do you think?

Intro: Welcome to the Before We Go podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David: Last visit on Before We Go, I more or less interviewed my wife Karen about the importance of listening and what having someone really listen to them does for people. I felt good about all that she was saying and me not talking as much because she is passionate on this topic. But we got to the end, Karen. And I had this feeling that we may have used some terms, or you did, that people might not understand. For example, we talked about listening groups. And I think it would be good to define that and talk about it a little bit more.

Karen: I am passionate about the listening process. And I think it’s one of the great gifts we can give to people in the world. And last podcast we talked about how important it is to feel heard and understood. So, I had read about spiritual leadership or spiritual direction in small growth groups. I wasn’t so much interested in the spiritual direction part. That’s people are often trained to be spiritual directors. Some of them for two or three years of training.

David: They’re wonderful.

Karen: Those are wonderful. But I wasn’t interested in that as much as what happens in a listening group process. So, we began to design what I call an architecture. But let me give you a definition for a listening group. The architecture of the listening groups is designed to provide a safe and regular place where people know they will be fully heard and understood. So how do we do that? So let me just describe what a listening group looks like. And then I can talk about my experience with it because we ran these for seven years. The listening groups were three and four people.

David: How often did they meet?

Karen: They met once a month. When I was starting, I had like five listening groups going at one time. So this is what we designed a listening group to look like. And this came after some trial and error as we began to redo them and discuss how they were working and how we could improve them.

Basically, I, as a leader in a group, would move the group along and keep it functioning, make sure it stayed within the description that we had designed. But if there was time, then I would share as well. Now, the interesting thing was, even when I didn’t share, I felt listened to and I’ll talk about that later. Everyone is given the same amount of time to share. One person may act as a gentle timekeeper.

David: So just to help me a second, when are you meeting?

Karen: Doesn’t matter. It can be morning, noon, night, whenever.

David: So these are all women?

Karen: They’re women. They can be men and women. Yeah.

David: Mixed group?

Karen: Yeah, I have had one mixed group. It was a great group.

David: Okay, so let’s say this is an evening group. And it meets once a month.

Karen: Once a month.

David: And you have either three or four people plus yourself.

Karen: Yeah. So we begin by centering.

David: Oh, just one second. Where are you meeting?

Karen: In our home. It can happen in an office. It can happen anywhere.

David: So that’s irrelevant.

Karen: That’s irrelevant. As long as it’s not in a place where you’re interrupted. But I think actually you could do this in a busy place, a cafeteria, a coffee shop, where you had a little table unto yourself, although I don’t think that would be ideal. The group begins by going into silence. We center ourselves in silence and in silent prayer. Lord, help me to be open to this. Let me hear your voice speak.

After four or five minutes, and I might say, okay, I think we’re ready. Who’s ready to share? And then that person takes like 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes to share. Sometimes if there’s a crisis or a stress point in their lives, they’ll take a little bit longer. And the group is great about letting them take the time they need. But I don’t let them go over 20 minutes. They don’t talk for 45 minutes.

David: So they means an individual.

Karen: An individual, yeah. Some folk don’t have an instinct on time, and so it’s perfectly appropriate to remind them that they are coming up to time. Say, we’re almost done now. Do you have more that you want to say, or can you pull it in, pull it and finish up? No one else speak the whole time those people are talking, that one person is talking. We don’t interrupt them. They may have stress in their lives, but you don’t interrupt them. Church-related people often want to go and give them scripture and comfort them and pray with them or say, or get a little sermon at.

David: Okay, just a question. I’m trying to picture this. Sometimes do someone cry?

Karen: Oh yeah, tears a lot. Very often there are tears. I mean, they’re bringing real life into this, and you never know when a listening group starts.

David: Do these people know each other, Karen?

Karen: No, the ones I’ve run, none of them know one another. Okay, they just sign up, and they sign up when they can make it.

David: Do they pay for this?

Karen: Not me.

David: It’s unfolding better, but I’m glad we’re taking this time.

Karen: Yeah, so again, that point was that no one interrupts that speaker. When that person is speaking, they know they will not be interrupted.

David: Okay, so it’s also answering a question in my mind. I don’t want to sidetrack, but it means your meeting is going to be something like two and a half hours?

Karen: Two and a half hours just about. Yeah, thanks.

David: Okay, I got it right.

Karen: You did your math. So when that speaker is finished, then the group goes back into silent prayer.

David: For how long?

Karen: Well, just we sort of wash that person’s talking with just silence. And when we go into silence, and generally that allows us to think about what we’ve heard. Okay, sometimes the silence is broken by the speaker who says, “I need to share one more thing.” That speaker may all of a sudden recall that there’s something they need to share that they didn’t share. Or “I have nothing more to say.” And then I invite questions from the group.

Now, see the speaker has spoken. We go into silence. And then I ask the group if they have any questions, and that is the only way they can respond. This is the hardest part for all of the people who’ve been in the group. When that speaker is done, the rest of the group can respond, but only with questions.

The group attempts to ask open ended questions about what they have heard and what that person has said. I might say, “How did you feel when that happened?” Because I don’t know how they felt. I’m basically listening and encourage them to define more through our questions.

David: Was the group good at this?

Karen: That’s the hardest part for people to, first of all, just to ask questions. And one of the things I teach is, after the person who’s been sharing stops speaking, you go into the silence, and then you listen and see the Holy Spirit begins to nudge you with questions. And those questions that come up from the Holy Spirit, I remember from our deepest inner selves, for those who don’t function on a Christian spirituality language level, those deep nudges are often very profound questions. So, when we rush in and don’t listen to what we have heard, again, after the person has done speaking, we don’t often come to those profound questions that get asked. So, I as the timekeeper or the keeper of the architecture keeps an eye on the clock, or wrist watch or cell phone, allotting about one half hour to each person and the questioning of them.

After that questioning is completed, the group goes back into silence for several minutes. Okay? So let’s just, we’ve only had one person speak so far. And then when I feel like we’ve been silent enough, we move on to the next person. That’s why with three or four people, it takes about two and a half hours.

David: So we’re on to person number two. Yeah. Same thing, I assume.

Karen: Yes. And then we repeat that process for all three people. And if there’s time, depending on how long each person has taken, then I’m going to repeat that process for all three people.

David: I think it would be best to go first.

Karen: Not really. It doesn’t really matter because very often someone is in crisis and the group will just naturally, out of difference for that person’s need and distress, allow them to even take a little bit longer and then people sort of adjust. It’s just really lovely, lovely to watch this happen.

David: So I’m assuming in a lot of ways that the silence is kind of a glue apart from spiritual things. The presence, maybe it’s the silence that allows for the presence of the Lord to be felt in the group.

Karen: Yes, it is. And I think because I’m a native Christian to my very core, that God functions in all of our actions when we give Him a moment to do so, whether we believe in them or not, because He’s love and because He cares for us. Now when we’re all done, all three or four people and we’re about ready to go, if we have 10 to 15 minutes left, then we debrief. We open it up and say, “Is there anything anyone more would like to say or did you observe something in this listening group process that you’d like to share with the group? Has this worked for you? What is the hardest part of the time together? How can we improve?” And then we attempt to end on time. But if there is time, we allow for a debriefing session.

Those are always very healthy and they’re fun too because people will say, “Oh, I had no idea. Oh, wow. Well, we were talking and in that silence, I realized that there was an urgent question I needed to ask when it was time.” So they go away really high on the process.

David: Okay, now just I’m fixing in my head because I’m trying to picture this. They meet once a month. Once a month. And that’s for how many months?

Karen: We went for seven months, which is a long enough time because you are only meeting once a month. Now, there would be nothing wrong with meeting twice a month. That’s not a problem. I’ve not done that, but it’s not a problem. I just think that the human pathway, our lives shift and change in over a period of seven months was just one meeting per month. There’s enough time to get the life stuff in. The interesting thing was that as people drove to my house because they were not close, they were maybe 20 minutes away, maybe half an hour away. And my list is large. They would take a lot of time in that car ride to think about what is that I’m going to share today. So that car ride was even a transit for them from their busy real life worlds to a place of silence and sanctuary.

David: Were you a key to it, Karen? Could anybody do what you did?

Karen: Okay, good, good question. So I did training for listing group leaders.

David: Where did you get that?

Karen: My team and I designed training for listing group leaders. And I would say that of the 20 people who came to be trained, maybe one was really capable of carrying it off. And they’d been in listening groups, one or two. So I haven’t unpacked that. There’s something about the gifts of the leaders that is important.

David: So just putting anyone in charge doesn’t work.

Karen: Even when they’ve had like an afternoon of training. So at this point in time, I would probably invite a professional to come with me.

David: Ask, “What am I doing that others don’t seem to be able to do?”

Karen: What do I do that others don’t know how to do intuitively or instinctively? Their gifts aren’t in that direction.

David: How do you know that these others didn’t, it didn’t work? Because they said so?

Karen: Well, they quit their groups halfway through or something. Yeah, something that just was not working for them.

David: Were you involved watching those?

Karen: No, I wasn’t observing. That would be a flaw on my part because I’m not a professional psychological counselor who’s had that kind of training where those sorts of things go on and I would need to work with a professional in order to do that really well. So that would be a gap. I suspect that it’s a person who is intuitive, who feels comfortable with silence, who perhaps has some personal authority that the group can trust, that they know that person knows what he or she is doing. But it is an open-ended area where I need to, if I’m going to continue with this, correct or figure out how leaders need to be trained so that they feel comfortable leading listening groups.

It doesn’t sound all that difficult, does it, to do that.

David: Let’s kind of wrap up. What did you learn through all of this?

Karen: Well, I learned that listening groups can provide a safe and regular place where people know they will be fully heard and understood. And again, as we said before, when a person feels heard and understood, which is exactly what goes on in the group, listening group is designed to do that, then the brain actually stimulates all the areas of the brain that are comfortable with human attachment. The brain is affected by this listening process. I had gals who had severe, noticeable neuroses, for instance, who within the course of those seven months came to recognize their problem, came up with a design to correct their behavior, and had dealt their problem by the end of those seven months. So, this is not normal in a positive way.

Most people deny they have a problem. They’re in denial. But that means that the brain has been stimulated in the kinds of ways that allow it to heal the personality, the personality, the person that that brain belongs to. That’s pretty powerful stuff, I think.

David: I have a feeling that one of the lessons learned was that people discovered that sometimes it was good not to talk all the time, that you have this impulse. Is that something I really need to say?

Karen: Yeah, I need to be more careful about. They would say, I used to think it was a great listener, and I realized I was not a great listener at all. But after the listening groups, I have become a much better listener.

David: That’s huge.

Karen: Yeah, that’s huge.

David:  In this noisy world, we would all do well to develop the skill of being good listeners. Does that summarize it?

Karen: Yes. That’s excellent.

David: I just, this real fast question, and I thought about this as you were talking, do you think Jesus was a good listener? I’m thinking of Jesus picking up on what people are saying. Not just the blind beggar hollering out, even though there’s a crowd all around. He heard certain people, but he heard what the disciples were talking about. I think I’m bigger than you in the status line here. And then he spoke to it. He was very sensitive to what people were saying. Well, he listened to his Father in heaven too. That’s a good question to explore.

Karen: Yeah, that would be good to explore. There’s not a doubt in my mind about what he was a good listener, but I can’t prove text to it.

David: Another one of those areas that you are fascinating to me as a wife, you’re always exploring different areas. Loneliness is something you’ve been talking about. And loneliness relates to listening, being heard, being understood. So, I’ve reserved one more podcast next time we get together. And we’ll talk about loneliness and how listening well relates to that. Okay, that sounds great. Okay, we’ll look forward to it.

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