Deep Listening: Transform Your Relationships with Family, Friends, and Foes

BBC journalist Kasriel debuts with a valuable guide to listening in a way that’s “transformational” rather than transactional. Explaining that people tend to get in their own way by fidgeting, silently formulating a reply, or generally tuning in “only long enough to mentally sort what your speaker is saying into ready-prepared bins,” she contends that such “performative” listening flattens conversational complexity and reduces the openness of one’s interlocutor, who anticipates interruptions and has less time to formulate their thoughts. Kasriel outlines eight steps readers can take to become more active listeners, among them cultivating genuine curiosity, using silence to signal respect and give the speaker space to think, and “reflecting back” what one’s conversation partner has conveyed. Listening in this way allows for collaborative interactions that expand perspectives and mental frameworks, “liberat[ing] us from being marooned in our small lives,” she argues. Interweaving research from psychology, peacebuilding, management thinking, and philosophy with personal experience as a reporter in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Pretoria, South Africa, Kasriel makes a wise if occasionally idealistic case for listening as an underutilized tool for building relationships and bridging divides. It’s an encouraging resource for fostering more productive interactions in a polarized world. (June)