Creating Power through Listening: Blog post 1

By: Paige Drennon

In Ann Russo’s Transformative Silences, she states that active listening is an important and forgotten skill that creates hegemony and power in society. The thing that I took out of this reading the most is when Ann Russo says that “Stepping back from speaking and stepping up to active listening is one method of undermining the presumed entitlement to be at the center of the conversation, to speak in universals, and to determine the direction of the conversation and agenda” (p. 36). I think this is a very accurate and eye opening statement.

I think what I find most eye opening about this quote is the fact that it is so very true that by not practicing active listening we continue to empower and entitle those who have had power and held power over those who cannot have power. When we don’t practice active listening, we do not empower ourselves like we may think we do by having the ability to consistently speak up in the face of those who cannot. If we were to actually practice active listening, we would understand the experiences of others much better than we do when do not practice it. I believe that is the reason why our world is the way it is. As a society, we don’t typically practice or praise active listening. We praise being outgoing and only speaking. We look up to those who speak out and speak their minds. I grew up in a culture where this was always the case. I surrounded myself with people who believed the same thing. I was consistently reminded that this was the case in my surrounding society.

            Being a minority, this was the way that I could make myself have power. As I got older, however, I found that listening was more and more important. I did seem to have power when I talked but it wasn’t the right kind of power. I felt uneasy and still feel uneasy if I sit and listen and don’t speak up for myself, but I found that the more I listened the more others listened to me. In a Ted Talk done by William Ury called “The Power of Listening” he talks about how listening has much more power than we think. He talks about how in our culture we don’t listen, we react. He says that we take listening for granted that’s “something easy and natural”. This, of course, has been ingrained in our minds by our surrounding culture, but we can reap huge benefits. We essentially can learn to share the power within a dialogue he says, because “everyone wants to be heard”. Listening is a powerful tool that is the half of communication that is forgotten.

Here is the link to William Ury's TED Talk