Thoughts on being a listener in residence.
For around ten years (until 2004, which seems more recent than that!), Kelsey Grammer played Dr Frasier Crane on the show “Frasier”, as a radio psychiatrist who welcomed each radio caller with the phrase “I’m listening”.
I am endlessly curious about people and ideas, and though in conversation I can often be energetic and full of ideas myself, my main reason is to stimulate ideas and energy in others so that I can listen to them once they get going in expressing themselves. Beyond social environments though, my role is as a professional listener.
For clarity, I am no psychiatrist, I am a trained coach, from which I carry a belief that the client has the answers within them, so my role is to ask the right questions, sometimes stimulate thought by sharing related or even tangential stories from my own experience and expertise, all in service of the client and supporting them around what they are focussed on.
Whatever I am doing or saying, though, I am always, always listening.
This thought takes me back to 2018 when I first went to the Modern Elder Academy in Mexico at the invitation of Chip Conley. I was quite organically asked to listen to almost all of the cohort to help them work something out for themselves. As the week went by, I even seemed to sit in the same chair at the same time of day, then someone would inevitably come to sit with me and talk.
More recently, I have proposed to the curator of a similarly residential retreat to offer my time to them for a week this year, not as a member of their faculty presenting to the cohort that week, but simply as a “listener in residence”. I am interested in what happens when someone is given that role without further explanation to those in attendance.
Today I am about to get on a flight home to Cayman for a week, where I’ll be working with clients based there as well as meeting up with various family, friends and business contacts. I look forward to a week with much stimulating listening!