Why listening to someone with a different opinion can be so hard
An interview with listening expert Corine Jansen about real listening and how to handle disagreements.
It’s time for something different. For a change, I am occasionally going to publish an interview with someone who can contribute a special perspective on the theme of toleration. Let’s kick off with the theme of listening.
Corine Jansen and I have known each other for years. As a teenager I wasn’t always able to express myself fluently. Corine was one of those people I knew who could take the words out of my mouth, who could formulate what I wanted to say better than I could. She has been able to combine her empathetic nature, her clear way of communicating and her analytical nature. She is now a worldwide authority in listening.
Corine Jansen studied communication and technical business administration. One of the jobs in her career was communication manager at a water board. During that stage in her career she started a mediation course.
“In that course I discovered that people can be opposed to each other and tolerate very little of each other. People in mediation often go through a very toxic period. I noticed the power of listening, how important it is to really connect people with each other. They need so much to feel seen and heard!
I was still head of communications, and I said: let’s open up, talk to people, listen to what they want, instead of us spending tons on communication, on things that no one wants at all. I also had an assignment in youth care; there I sometimes found it harrowing to see how little attention was paid to young, damaged people.”
After that, Jansen became involved in innovation in healthcare; she became Chief Listening Officer at Radboud Academic Medical Centre. Her mission was to listen more to patients in order to achieve the best innovations and quality improvements.
Now she has her own consultancy, and advises organisations on the role of listening to become more inclusive, diverse, and also more effective. And that journey isn't always easy:
“Because that also shows a form of vulnerability as an organisation. Because you don't know what you're going to hear and whether it fits.”
Why is listening so hard?
“For several reasons. Listening is very often seen by people as some kind of a mnemonic. As long as you ask questions and summarise, you’re doing it right. And that always fails. Which makes sense, because listening is not a mnemonic. If you really want to listen, you have to use yourself as an instrument. You choose to offer attention and space to someone else. Making yourself available to another at all times, in all situations, in all encounters. But the way we are at five past nine in the morning, we don't have to be at four o'clock in the afternoon. And of course there are all kinds of encounters and people calling on us throughout the day. We can't do that all day."
In her work, Jansen often refers to the Stoics Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, the psychiatrist Victor Frankl and the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas was much concerned with the relationship between ego and the other, a seemingly inaccessible creature that we, if we are not careful, tend to treat mostly as a means.
“When does someone appeal to you? And do you always have to respond to that? Once you make yourself available to someone, you dedicate yourself to postponing your own judgments, your own assumptions, and your own perceptions in favour of someone else's story and perspective.
That is hard because, especially in our times, we tend to express opinions rather than to form opinions. Expression seems sexier, more appealing. The media plays into that too. But we need to give people more space to think. What are you asking now? What are you saying? What does this mean now? What's the context?
In short, listening requires immersion, and a lot of self-knowledge. Because once we actually choose to listen to someone, we will also try to understand as well as possible. And that's not easy: I can't look into your head, and you can't look into my head, even though we've known each other for a long time. We just can't. And yet we think 'oh yes, but you did it that way then, that must also be the case now.' And it’s actually much more difficult with familiar people, with people who are very close, than with strangers. Because we can still show a certain curiosity with strangers.
In addition, listening is also difficult, because once we hear things, this information can come across differently than the other person intended. We can be cognitively very different. We have to deal with cognitive diversity. So you listen to me, you make a story out of it and I think: but that was not what I said or meant at all! How come you heard this? And that's also because we don't focus enough on that cognitive diversity. We are talking about diversity of religion, of colour, race, gender, sexuality, but not of cognition. And I'm not talking about people who have been diagnosed with ADHD or brain injury. No, just you and me, we just, ‘just’, have a cognitive diversity. So that makes it difficult.
And we are above all a speaking being, especially here in the Netherlands. The Netherlands is a speaking country. You see that less in the Asian countries, for example, which are more listening countries. We talk easily. And as Dutch people we are also quite direct. We don't always look for the depth that is required to understand the context of someone's story.”
What does this cognitive diversity consist of?
“Cognition is how your brain processes information and then interprets it again. And there is enormous diversity in that. In 2017, researcher Graham Bodie described no less than 41 different cognitive profiles. And that does not mean that there is a stamp on your forehead, saying: this is you. But it's about ways in which people process information, give language to it and link non-verbal behaviour to it. That’s the cognitive diversity around listening.
I recently had a conversation with a professor. I knew what her cognitive profile was, because she had done an assessment with me. I asked her: how are you doing? And then she fell silent. I said: ‘you don't like that question at all, do you?’ She: ‘I find that utterly uninteresting! I don't want to know how you are either.’ And that was right, because she really just wanted to do some brain picking. She wanted to know what's in my head about this subject. And how I was doing, that was not interesting to her at all.”
What happens in your head when you talk to someone you strongly disagree with?
"Resistance! That is the most important. ‘This is not okay! This can't be right! Where did you get that from?’ So a lot of condemnation, a lot of assumptions. For example: ‘where is your intellect? Do you think at all?’ We have an opinion right away. And anger can also come from it. Real anger. Everyone has different filters. In addition to our moral compass and our personality, these also have to do with that cognitive diversity.
What you see then is the ego. You actually have to park it while listening. Ego always sounds a bit negative, but I hope you get what I mean. It wants to speak right away. It immediately wants to say: 'It's not right. It's not true. How did you get there?’ That’s what happens.”
Why does your ego want that?
“I mention the word ego and by that I mean your I. Your humanity. The moment you get information, and anyway, when you listen, your brain does a lot at the same time. It will interpret, omit, distort and generalise. But it will also try to understand and to evaluate. And the evaluation actually immediately goes wrong as soon as someone says something that makes you think: This. Can. Not. Be. Right. That’s when listening really becomes a huge task.
Too many people think that listening implies to agree with someone. And that is not the case. You can still have very different opinions. But your ego has much more trouble forming that opinion in order to investigate what someone wants, because you think: this is from a completely different planet than the one I live on.
This is also because we are taught from an early age that speaking and expressing what you think is valued much more than thinking. Letting it come to us, hearing arguments, gathering perspectives, slows us down. Then you might actually be perceived as a bit too introverted. People might think that you don’t really understand, that you might find it difficult. In short, we all have judgments when people don't speak.”
Could it also be that, when we are confronted with a different opinion, we resist because it makes our life even more confusing? The world is already so complicated. We have already put in so much effort to get a coherent picture of reality. Then someone comes in between with views based on a completely different picture of reality. We resist because we actually can't process that new information. We actually want to shout: leave my world view alone, that is my foothold and you may not undermine it!
“This touches on the essence of listening, because in listening you actually open yourself permanently to those new perspectives. That makes listening so difficult. That you don't know what you're hearing. If you hear something new, it may also change you. Just so you think, I've never thought about this before. Or this is a very interesting angle. So it also has to do with how people bring that different perspective. If you say in a nice dialogue, 'Gosh, I hear you say this now, but I look at it very differently', then the other person is actually much less bothered by the ego and by what that does to their world view.
If you choose to listen to someone, your world view is by definition no longer at rest. That can change everything. And that takes energy, it takes courage, it takes guts. Because even if you thought: what I think is right, it could just be that someone brings in something new that makes you think:’ well, I didn't look at it that way.’ And that you might think: ‘hey, this is interesting’.”
We just talked about cognitive diversity. Are there different ways in which people who are cognitively different react to information they cannot have?
“For example, when you look at someone with a reflective profile, they will immediately start searching in their own mental library. What do I know about this? Where can I read more about this? Have I ever heard this before? What was my conclusion then? So they go inside. And they do not respond at that moment, because they first want to investigate: what is going on here? They can ask further questions, but more focused on questions like: who is your source, where did you read that, when did you read that, who said that. So it mainly collects information and then uses it to conduct its own research. And they will therefore not react as quickly as: this is ridiculous, because they have to investigate that first. They first want to know how or what.
Someone with an analytical profile will say okay, facts, dates, tell me. I want to know now. So they don't reflect. They want to know at that moment. So while reflective listeners start gathering information to process whether this can be true, listeners with an analytical profile will say: okay, tell me where, when did he write that? And they will immediately look it up and then immediately say, no, you misunderstood that. You are now saying that 86 percent of humanity thinks this is the case. Well, it says here that it is very thin because there is still a lot more scientific research to be done. Period.
Someone like me, with a connective profile, will ask: what experience have you had that made you think this way? What questions would you like to ask me about my opinion? Why? Because I'm very much focused on the relationship, I want to keep that relationship intact. And also a good question, I think: what facts, if proven to be true, might cause you to think differently about the subject? I ask those kinds of questions because I want to maintain that relationship and also sincerely try to get as close to someone as possible.
Until, well, someone said to me at some point during the pandemic: so you are actually just such a docile citizen who does everything the government asks you to do. Then I went: bam. I said: might it also be that I am someone who has thought for myself and made my own decisions? Something snapped in that relationship, because I felt being judged. And in a split second I got back at him. Even after that event, that relationship remained cold for a long time. It was cold because I couldn't find that rapprochement anymore.
And listeners with a conceptual profile, those are the ones who are like: okay, let's sit down for a while. Bring on all those stories. Could it be? They will actually explore, they will discover all kinds of movements, without actually coming to a conviction. They are boundlessly curious how it could have come to this, without finding the relationship interesting, but above all to think, does it perhaps offer new opportunities to come up with a different theory, to arrive at a new insight.”
When do people argue? Arguing is really about stopping listening, isn't it?
"Yes. Quarrelling actually arises the moment you feel that you are no longer seen and heard in your humanity. And underneath often lies fear and great sadness. But: you don't know that yourself at that moment. I myself, from a stoic philosophy, am not prone to anger. Some say it has a function, but I think it's a waste of time.
For example, let's look at the farmers in The Netherlands. The farmers have long felt that they have not been taken seriously in everything they have to do and what they experience, what they go through. Their life system is stuck. They don't know where they stand anymore. One time it is this European regulation, then again this Dutch legislation. And in everything they try to communicate, they fail. And that is also, I assume, because not everyone can find language about what is actually happening to them. They don't have that language, they can't reach it.
And somehow the government system is geared to language, to a narrative that is rock solid. While no narrative stands like a house. Because our narratives change permanently with what we experience and with what happens. If you want to discuss an issue with the government, that question must fit within the system we have devised for it. If you have a question from the living system, then that question is not in line with the government system.
The system therefore no longer fits in with people's living environment. Every time a question reaches the government, you see the civil servants struggling: that question doesn't fit into our system at all, we don't have an answer to that. And then they answer by law so-and-so: this is the box in which your answer should possibly be found. Then the citizen thinks: what are you talking about? This is not an answer to my question. No, but we don't actually have an answer to your question because your question originated from outside the system. And that means that people are constantly getting answers that are perceived as not being seen or heard by the system that is supposed to take care of them.”
What can we do better societally to ensure that we can listen to each other a little better, that we can see eye-to-eye together, that we can keep communicating. Do you see any low-hanging fruit that we can start working on right away?
“Well, low-hanging fruit is that the media, in the way they report news, are very focused on expression of opinions and not on formation of opinion. You don't get on a talk show if you take your time to explain the context. I think the media can play an important role by - with all due respect - not immediately bombarding the first artist who has no understanding of this at all into an expert. There are so many people who are now experts in something they never delve into. That creates intolerance, because those people keep speaking on a surface level and don't dare to go into depth, simply because that is not their expertise. So then you get superficial conversations with a lot of one-liners. That doesn't help.
In education, I think much more needs to be focused on critical thinking. For example: where does this information come from? Who owns this newspaper, that media outlet? What are they fed by? We don't learn that. We have to learn to peel that onion. Also because we don't take the time for it, because social media is quick, and quick is often dirty.
And what also doesn't help is that politicians don't give each other time. When I see how many parliamentary questions are put to the minister and how much pressure is applied to answer those questions within a few days, while it should take weeks. That does something to the answers, the context and the content. Then the MPs say 'this is not an answer'. What do you expect when you put the pressure on time to get answers? That doesn't work well.
And of course we see that the populists are increasing, on all sides of politics. Populists behave like: 'I ask questions and you are going to answer me and otherwise I will think something of it'. As a result, we see leaders cutting corners. I recently saw an interview with a politician and she was messing around with facts. When she was approached about this, she said 'well, it's about the idea that people understand that I just don't agree with it.' So, she is now saying something that is simply factually incorrect. And she knows it.”
What does that have to do with listening?
“Well, if the media pay attention to people who just want to express opinions and not to form opinions, then they don't want to listen. Because if you want to listen, you want to form an opinion. Politicians who just want to put pressure on a result are not interested in the real context. Of course, listening is not just using our ears. The point is that in listening we are curious about the context, about the background, about what is going on in order to be able to oversee the entire palette. And that is not how we have set up our system anymore.
At school, listening equals obeying. You shall do what I want. And if you don't do what I want, then you're not listening. But listening is about critically questioning someone, and critically questioning yourself. What are they actually saying? What does that mean?”
Further reading
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Ad Lucilium epistularum moralium (1st century AD)
Marcus Aurelius, Ta eis heauton (2nd century AD)
Victor Frankl, … trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen. Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager (1946), translated as: Yes to life: in spite of everything
Emmanuel Levinas, Totalité et infini: essai sur l'extériorité (1961), translated as: Totality and infinity: an essay on exteriority
Graham Bodie, Listening. In: Owen Hargie (red.), Handbook of communication skills (2019)
Avi Kluger, Guy Itzchakov, The power of listening at work. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior (2022)
Corine Jansen’s website: corinejansen.com