Facilitation listening as meditation

Most weekdays, my wife and I join a fifteen-minute online meditation offered by teachers at the Insight Meditation Society. The other day, teacher Matthew Hepburn introduced a dharma practice of meditating, not on one’s breath or body sensations, but on another person. As Matthew talked, I realized that I experience good facilitation listening as a meditation.

Matthew Hepburn, sharing about listening as meditation
Matthew Hepburn

When I’m listening well, I’m practicing a form of meditation where I focus my awareness on the person who is speaking. Not just what they are saying but the totality of their being in the moment.

I believe that being truly heard and seen at meetings is a gift, because someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.

Giving the gift of listening is hard work—until it isn’t. Sometimes, facilitative listening is simple because it’s all that’s going on. The speaker has my full attention. That’s it.

Distractions

At other times, unfortunately, I’m feeling hungry, wondering if we’re on schedule, noticing that the carpet is ugly, etc. A myriad of possible distractions seduce me from full attention, and I succumb to them over and over again.

This is just like meditation.

In doing either, there are moments when you’re just here, and then all the moments when your attention wanders. Facilitators and meditators do the same thing: we notice that our attention has wandered and then bring it back to the object of attention. Over and over again.

Practice

Of course, facilitators don’t have the luxury of devoting their entire allotted time to meditative listening. We have other responsibilities: bringing sharing to a close, breaking on time for lunch, and framing the next segment of our work, to name just a few. Preparing for these transitions requires us to leave listening as a meditation.

But when we’re listening to people, treating such time as a meditation with the speaker as the sole object of our attention is a great practice to practice.

If you’re a facilitator, do you experience facilitative listening as a meditation? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments below.

The loneliness of the long-distance facilitator

long-distance facilitator. Black and white movie image of Colin Smith, the protagonist of the 1962 film "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner". Smith is wearing running clothes with the number 14 on his chest, standing in a field with flags and another runner behind him.Right now, I am a long-distance facilitator. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I only facilitate meetings with people who are not in the same room. Often, they are thousands of miles away.

And, like Colin Smith, the protagonist (played by Tom Courtney) of the classic 1962 film The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, I sometimes feel alone.

Meeting via Zoom is far better than not meeting at all, but it doesn’t compare with being with people face-to-face.

I love to facilitate in-person meetings, and I miss the personal connection possible there.

The Invisible Man

But even when I facilitate in-person meetings, there are times I feel lonely. No, not while I’m working! Not when I work with clients to design great meetingscreate safety, uncover participants’ wants and needsmoderate panels, crowdsource conference programs and sessions, facilitate group problem-solving, and run community-building closing sessions.

But there are times during the event when I’m not working. While the sessions I helped participants create are taking place. During breaks when I’m not busy preparing for what’s to come. And during socials.

At these times, I feel a bit like The Invisible Man.

Why? Because, though I may have facilitated and, hopefully, strengthened the learning, connection, and community of participants present, I’m not a member of the community.

In the breaks and socials, I see participants in earnest conversations, making connections, and fulfilling their wants and needs in real-time. But I’m hardly ever a player in the field or issues that have brought them together. (Usually, as far as the subject matter of the meeting is concerned, I’m the most ignorant person present.) So I don’t have anyone to talk to at the content level. I’m physically present, but I don’t share the commonality that brought the group together. It’s about participants’ connection and community, not mine.

I may have made what’s happening better through design and facilitation, but it’s not about me.

Every once in a while, participants notice me and thank me for what I did. It doesn’t happen very often—and that’s OK. My job is to make the event the best possible experience for everyone. My reward is seeing the effects of my design and facilitation on participants. If I were doing this work for fame or glory, I would have quit it long ago.

If you’re at a meeting break or social and see a guy wandering around who you dimly remember was up on stage or at the front of the room getting you to do stuff?

It’s probably me.

No lonely breaks online

Paradoxically, when I facilitate online meetings there’s no “invisible man” lonely time. Whenever we aren’t online, we’re all alone at our separate computers. We can do whatever we please. We were never physically together, so we don’t miss a physical connection when we leave.

If I had to choose…

The loneliness of the long-distance facilitator is accentuated at in-person events by the abrupt switches between working intimately with a group and one’s outsider status when the work stops.

At online events, we are all somewhat lonely because no one else is physically present. Our experiences of other people are imperfect instantiations: moving images that sometimes talk and (perhaps?) listen.

It wouldn’t be a no-brainer choice, but if I had to choose between facilitating only in-person or online meetings, I’d choose the former. The intimacy of being physically together with others is worth the loneliness when we’re apart.

Image from The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

I am the second sort of escapologist

the second sort of escapologist: a photograph of a man upside down in a closed vertical glass case full of water. Image: Andrew Basso, The Escapologist. Photo Credit: Joan MarcusI am the second sort of escapologist.

“I read once that the first time they put an escapologist in a tank of water, he or she will have one of two reactions, and which one determines the course of their life.

The first sort of escapologist is an ordinary person who has come to the trade organically, by whatever curious sequence of opportunity and happenstance—and that sort will panic. There is very little that is more appallingly unnatural or frightening than being lowered, bound, into a confined space containing an atmosphere you cannot breathe. … Some people just never go back in the tank. … Some get right back in and they master their fear and they go on to be as good as their skill allows. These last are most compelling to watch.

The second sort of escapologist is the sort that doesn’t panic. They touch the water and relax, as if just now realising where they truly want to be. … This sort of escapologist tends not to be very successful commercially, because their contentedness in the tank disturbs the audience. …

The second sort of escapologist … invites a placid contemplation of mortality that is nowhere on the razzle-dazzle shopping list and which will certainly not get you laid. Audiences come out of the theatre sober and chilled, and a little while later they make life changes and spend more time with the people they love.
—From Gnomon: A Novel by Nick Harkaway

As a facilitator, I am the second sort of escapologist. Because it’s not about me.

Image: Andrew Basso, The Escapologist. Photo Credit: Joan Marcus