Savoring work and life celebrations from 2025

Hello and Happy New Year! If you got this post via email, thank you for subscribing to the “Listening Arts” blog. I recently wrote on LinkedIn about my gratitudes for 2025, yet wasn’t able to squeeze in all the folks I wanted to mention. Then, while writing this expanded version, I realized there are some […]

The Art of “Balancing Openness and Judgment”

Today I am celebrating Martín Carcasson, awesome professor of communication at Colorado State University and director of the Center for Public Deliberation at CSU. He recently wrote a post on Linked In wondering about the relationship between “openness” and “judgment”… which is what prompted this blog post. In his post, he writes, “Democracy needs more […]

Love, Systemic Intelligence, & the Climate Crisis: What’s listening got to do with it?

I was recently blown away by a deeply powerful post on Linked In. Strategic leadership coach David Hutchens quotes Chilean bioethicist Humberto Maturana, who wrote: “Love is the only emotion that can increase the intelligence of the system.” Then David follows up on this by asking us, “Does that stop you in your tracks like […]

Easing shifts in group dynamics, with a new twist on the conventional “agenda”…

Agenda…  the word is loaded with meaning, spanning both one realm that is extremely logical and rational, as well as another that is deeper, more fraught, and generally less conscious.  I recently made a discovery that fits somewhere in the dance between these two…. This particular small group seemed to be in the throes of […]

May travels and learnings…

My goodness! It’s already July, and I’ve still not written here about my recent flurry of listening-related activities and thoughts… so here it is, at last! Elders and Fellows Gathering in Sausalito, CA. The beginning of my journeys, back in early May…  This was a small invitational gathering with a small circle of “Elders” in the field […]