Too often those of us in the nonprofit world sit in our offices and boardrooms, hashing out messages with our colleagues and allies - people who share our values and think like we do. We argue amongst ourselves for hours over exactly which words and phrases are most correct and precise. And then we wonder why our messages seem ineffective, while our opposition keeps making inroads.

Activists, and members of nonprofits often feel we are not being heard, and spend a lot of time trying to get our message across in various ways - TV, radio, social media, protests in the street. And when it feels like we are still not being heard - we try even harder.  In a bid to get our message across and achieve our goals, we often forget a hugely important part of the communication equation - listening. And yet listening is crucial. We need to listen to better understand our audiences, where they are coming from and how they understand the world. Without that understanding, we cannot hope to communicate effectively. 

I regularly ride the subway in New York City, and the train drivers are constantly making announcements - about which stop is coming up next, or more important messages about delays or rerouting. More than half the time the loudspeakers are so bad and the train is so noisy, you can hear that somebody is trying to say something, but it’s impossible to make out what they are saying. To me, this is a perfect example of too many nonprofit communications efforts. Like that driver we’re doing our duty, shouting into our loudspeakers making ourselves hoarse - but because we never put ourselves in the position of the passengers we never realise that absolutely none of it is getting across. We are simply talking to one another. 

A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to join a number of human rights activists behind a one-way mirror, listening in on a focus group where a group of regular people were sharing their views about democracy, their country, women’s rights, and related issues. Afterwards, the activists said they were stunned: “they don’t talk about these issues the way we do,” “our concepts and messages are not connecting,” “people explain their opinions through stories and anecdotes, not through the abstract concepts that we like to talk about.” It was a revelation, and it prompted that group of activists to completely rethink their approach to communications. No amount of lecturing from communications experts would have had the same huge impact as this listening exercise did.   

Corporations and political parties understand the importance of listening, and spend millions each year on audience research to help them craft messages that win. Most nonprofits simply don’t have the money for expensive surveys. But while we may not have the budgets for rigorous quantitative research, there are cheaper ways to learn how your audience thinks. Many years ago my colleague Shepi Mati and I worked with community radio stations across South Africa to map their communities and find out what was important to them - to help in planning programing and news coverage. Station teams simply walked the streets and asked people questions like:

‘What’s important to you?’
‘What are the main problems and issues in this community?’
‘Who are the local leaders you turn to in a crisis?’
‘What topics would you like the station to talk about?’

Often, the results of this simple and low-cost exercise were a revelation - station members discovered all sorts of issues, views and opinions they previously had no idea about. And yet, sometimes even when we have done the research and know how our audience thinks, we insist on sticking to our own preferred messages because we are deeply uncomfortable with anything else. 

Some time ago I heard a fascinating presentation by a Mexican human rights group. Their research told them that members of the community they worked with thought of abortion as a moral dilemma. But this group of women felt that to talk about abortion as a moral dilemma would betray their deeply held beliefs that abortion was a matter of bodily integrity - their preferred slogan was, ‘my body, my choice!’ Despite the clear evidence that this slogan was backfiring, they could not bear to part with it. It took them many months of internal discussion and hand-wringing before they were able to start engaging the audience on its own terms - and as soon as they did, they began making progress. 

This is why I am talking about listening, not just about research. Listening is about more than research. Listening involves playing close attention to the other person, opening our ears and our minds to what they are saying, doing our best to understand, and then acting on that understanding.

*This article is the first of a two-part series. Read The Neglected Art of Listening (Part 2)

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