Listen First, Speak Later: A Musician's Guide to Strategic Conversations
Do you ever find yourself in the middle of a conversation and completely zoning out? You get lost in your thoughts, or find yourself too focused on what you are about to say rather than listening to the person you are talking to.
This happens to me, and this happens to everyone else. In the age of ever-shortening attention spans, what can set you apart is being able to actively listen.
While attending Berklee College of Music in Boston, most of the time my role was to actively listen. When I tell someone that I studied the Mandolin at Berklee, I am often asked if I played music in every class. While that would have been great, the majority of my classes had to do with internalizing music through listening and analysis.
Active listening is a practice of concentrating on a number of elements of a piece of music, live or recorded. As a musician, this practice allows you to understand the music that you are hearing. You can find out the style, the tempo, the content, and many other facets of a piece by paying close attention.
What does active listening in music have to do with strategy, communications, and Jewish nonprofits? A lot, it turns out!
While attending my first year of grad school at Brandeis University, I discovered quickly that my job as a student was to learn from people through conversation. Sure, I have had to write papers and take accounting, but the core theme of my studies has been synthesizing information through listening to people talk.
From my first semester I was interviewing stakeholders of nonprofits and finding out what people liked and disliked about the organizations they were connected to. I found that my experience of listening to music actively and intentionally translated to listening to what people had to say. My first year of graduate school was successful as a direct result of the years I spent listening to music.
Luckily, it does not take years of music school to become good at active listening. This is a skill that can be practiced and honed.
How can you practice actively listening to music?
Start by listening to a song you know well. Identify an element of the song you have never paid attention to before. This can be lyrical meaning, context of the song, instrumentation, arrangement, tempo, feel, key, timbre of voice and instruments, an instrumental solo, chord progression, bass line, drum part, melody shape, or your personal emotional response.
Follow one of these elements through the entire song. If you lose focus, that’s okay. Note when that happened and find your way back to what you were focusing on.
The next step is to choose another element, start the song over, and repeat the process, which can be done several times.
Finally, write down what you noticed. How did the meaning of this song, or the experience of listening to it, change between these listens?
Now try this for a song you have never heard before. Pay attention to what you notice. What did you feel when you listened to just the bass line? What about the lyrics? Did the song make you want to dance or want to cry?
The next time you are interviewing a stakeholder or talking to someone new, try this same technique.
Listen to what they are saying first and foremost, but also pay attention to specific elements of the conversation. This can be their tone of voice, physical body language, or their pace. Through focusing on these elements, you as an interviewer can pull more meaning out of your conversations while also being more actively tuned into what you are hearing.
Tiny Windows focuses on helping Jewish leaders and organizations tell their stories from the inside out. While that may seem like a mission that begins with speaking, it really starts with listening. When you know how to hear the music your community is making, it's that much easier to get everyone to sing along.
