In this episode, Katie talks with CRR Global faculty member and founder of CRR Japan, Yuri Morikawa about how listening is healing. Across the episode, they discuss listening as a superpower, what it means to really listen, the potential of listening in Relationship Systems Work, healing through listening, and how to truly listen to ourselves, our clients and the world around us at a deeper level.
Yuri Morikawa has been an active player in the professional coaching field since 2004. Prior to her career in coaching, Yuri worked as a management consultant specializing in organizational and leadership development for 13 years. After being a trainer for Coaching Training Institute (CTI) for 8 years, she launched the Organizational and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) program in Japan and founded CRR Japan in 2009. Currently, she is a global faculty member of CRR Global, developing professional organizational coaches around the world such as in Japan, China, Singapore, South Africa, Australia. She is passionate about bringing her professional experience to the bigger social context and works extensively with NGOs in Social Sectors such as Kamonohashi Project supporting survivor leaders of human trafficking issues in India and Asia Rural Institute educating organic farming and developing servant leadership for rural leaders in Asia and Africa.
For over 18 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time
We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.
In this episode, Katie talks with CRR Global faculty member and founder of CRR Japan, Yuri Morikawa about how listening is healing. Across the episode, they discuss listening as a superpower, what it means to really listen, the potential of listening in Relationship Systems Work, healing through listening, and how to truly listen to ourselves, our clients and the world around us at a deeper level.
Yuri Morikawa has been an active player in the professional coaching field since 2004. Prior to her career in coaching, Yuri worked as a management consultant specializing in organizational and leadership development for 13 years. After being a trainer for Coaching Training Institute (CTI) for 8 years, she launched the Organizational and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) program in Japan and founded CRR Japan in 2009. Currently, she is a global faculty member of CRR Global, developing professional organizational coaches around the world such as in Japan, China, Singapore, South Africa, Australia. She is passionate about bringing her professional experience to the bigger social context and works extensively with NGOs in Social Sectors such as Kamonohashi Project supporting survivor leaders of human trafficking issues in India and Asia Rural Institute educating organic farming and developing servant leadership for rural leaders in Asia and Africa.
For over 18 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time
We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.
Relationship Matters Season 3 Episode 14
Key
KC – Katie Churchman
YM - Yuri Morikawa
[Intro 00:00 – 00:06]
KC – Hello and welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast. We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature to the larger whole. I’m your host, Katie Churchman, and in this episode I’m thrilled to be talking with CRR Global faculty member Yuri Morikawa about listening and its power to heal. Yuri Morikawa has been an active player in the professional coaching field since 2004, she has trained and coached more than 1000 leaders and coaches globally, from various backgrounds such as corporate executives, NGO leaders, business owners, independent professionals and dream seekers of their own. Prior to her career in coaching Yuri worked as a management consultant specializing in organizational and leadership development for 13 years. After being a trainer for CTI for eight years, she launched the organizational and relationships systems coaching program in Japan and founded CRR Japan in 2009. Currently she is a global faculty member of CRR Global developing professional organizational coaches around the world, such as in Japan, China, Singapore, South Africa and Australia. She is passionate about bringing her professional experience to the bigger social context and works extensively with NGOs in social sectors such as Kamonohashi Project supporting survivor leaders of human trafficking issues in India and Asia Rural Institute educating organic farming and developing servant leadership for rural leaders in Asia and Africa. Across the episode we discuss listening as a super power, the potential of listening in relationships systems work, healing through listening and how to truly listen to ourselves, our clients and the world around us at a deeper level. So without further ado I bring you the wonderful Yuri Morikawa.
KC – Yuri, it’s a breath of fresh air to have you back on the show with me today.
YM – Thank you Katie for inviting me again, I have been looking forward to this moment again, spending time with you and enjoying what’s going to happen and emerge between us!
KC – Yeah, today we’re talking about listening and how it can be healing and I’m wondering, do you think that listening can be considered a super power, not just for coaches but also for human beings in general?
YM – Absolutely, absolutely. And this is not something that from my own experience but that I have witnessed is happening and I also have learned from many people, my clients, my teachers, and also amazing people that has a very deep story in their life, and experience, and has been proven.
KC – I’m wondering, because I think so many of us say that we’re good listeners, but what does it mean to really listen do you think?
YM – I like to start from we have a Japanese character in Japan which meet with the listening and that has the parts to it but it says, first part is ear and the other part is 14th, the number and the last part is heart. So in Japan we believe that listening is about putting your ears towards the person with 14 hearts.
KC – Awww, I love that.
YM – And for me that shows, that teaches us about how we listen and it is like, listening is not only be ear or minds or eyes, but really it’s full of heart and if it feels received we feel we’re being listened.
KC – Yeah, feels wonderful to be really heard.
YM – Without judgement and no worry about how the other people would think of, but be able to blurt and really tell what’s in my mind, truthfully.
KC – I notice something you did, when I asked the question, you really digested it for a moment. Sat with it. Whereas I think so often in life, this is something I do a lot, I’m thinking about what I’m going to say whilst the person’s speaking and I think that’s a sort of level of listening that so often doesn’t happen, we’re not listening to the spaces in between, we’re predicting.
YM – That’s right! Isn’t it so hard to be in the moment, we so want to go ahead. You know, it’s not only you Katie, me too, me too! I do that all the time.
KC – Yeah, it’s so hard, because also you get enthused by certain conversations and your brain is thinking about the next thing to add in but then you’re missing what they’re actually saying or how they’re being in that moment.
YM – Yeah. Sometimes silence is, has so much wisdom within and we forget to listen to the silence, the moment in between which is right here, we want to go jump onto the words or what is visible and that’s usually ahead of us or in the past of us and not in the moment. So, yeah, stay in the moment, I think it’s one of the keys for listening, isn’t it?
KC – Yeah, and it’s very hard to stay with silence because I think, as a society in general, as a world, we tend to sort of think about silence as a negative thing, as if something’s going wrong and I might be wrong about that globally but at least in the West it does feel like if we’re not filling the silence something is going wrong.
YM – Mmhmm. I think it’s the same here. Although we have the culture too unpack the silence and revalue the silence, however in the modern world and our, you know, digital, fast society, we ignore silence and also we are afraid of silence because it’s the moment unknown, the moment of uncertainty, the silence, it’s like nobody knows what’s going to happen next. So I think we are afraid of unknown, stepping into the unknown.
KC – And we’re trying to micromanage and control everything by jumping in and then missing the moment.
YM – Yeah.
KC – I’m wondering where you think this listening process starts because when you were saying then about being on our phones and this 24/7 world we live in, it made me think about how little time we often spend listening to ourselves and what’s going on there, and I’m just wondering, does it have to start first with the individual at that emotional intelligence level?
YM – Yes.
KC – Yeah, because I guess if you don’t listen to yourself, how can you listen to someone else and understand what that means?
YM – I cannot agree with you more and I also think that listening to ourselves, actually EQ, we tend to put it aside and we tend to put it last I think. Yeah, I think that is why we have the work called coaching because this creates the opportunity for us to listen to ourselves and, yeah, it’s the real basics and it helps that we have EQ and listen to ourselves, that’s why we can listen to others. However, it’s always the last, at least, in the busy life like this, that’s how it happens to me.
KC – Yeah. I’ve never thought about coaching as facilitating for that to happen and you’re right, it’s a mirror for everything you’re saying and it’s the questions that we ask that encourage people to start having that dialogue internally.
YM – Yes, I think so. And especially the challenging moment, environment, bring us the very unfair situation to us, right? And we think, people think that we have to move on and we have to bring the solution to the issue and problem, so we tend to forget about staying right now and listening to ourselves. So I think listening to these kind of moments really helps, and I think that listening works and if it is a super power, it has a super power, especially in those moments of challenge.
KC – Yeah, I think our default is quite often to be ok with things that aren’t ok because we’re trying to look after everyone else, and to fix others when they’re in those moments, sometimes when we’re in those moments all we want is someone just to hear us, to hear us rant and rage about whatever’s going on and how that, that can be healing in itself.
YM – Mmhmm, yeah. Thank you for saying that, I believe that listening is healing and I have learned that from actually one of my clients. There was one of the moments that I visited and I went there as a teacher of coaching. And I’m saying it with a smile on my face, here’s why. Because I thought that I was there to teach about listening, right, so I said ok, chapter number one, lesson number one. What is listening? I asked the participants. And the group was the leader of NGOs and one of the leaders from India, she raised her hand and said listening is healing. That was the moment that I thought ok, thank you very much. I’m going home. I have nothing to tell you more.
KC – It’s such a simple definition and yet I think we all understand that on a sort of instinctual level, when you said that I was like yeah, yeah I’ve been in a moment where I’ve been really heard and being heard makes you feel truly seen in the world which I think so often we don’t. And it’s not often about fixing or making it right, it’s just a big exhalation isn’t it?
YM – Yeah. And the background, thinking of the background of her saying it, that it was not only her saying it, it was her tribe back in home and her people, community, and that’s how they held their community from the primitive lights and they have had many civil wars and there was a fight between the tribes and there was war, you know, in the community, and that’s how their tribes maintain the connection of the people and heal each other, heal the community, heal the tribes, by listening to each other. So, yeah, that was the moment that I learned from her about what is listening.
KC – I guess I’m wondering, Yuri, do you feel like there are different types of listening? Because it feels, or maybe certain types of listening aren’t listening at all, maybe that’s what I’m talking too, but I don’t feel like all listening is healing.
YM – Yeah, I think so. Well we have a good truth, good moral to describe that, right? Three levels of reality and we can always communicate with a consensus reality level which is important in daily lives and to move the light forward, however once we tap into the level of listening to the dreaming and listening to the emotions and feelings and sensations, what’s there, and that helps us to connect to are deeper level of, almost feel like connecting to the experience of human beings, it’s not only us, me, but how the people have lived, and I think that listening is a tool that has been with the human beings since the primitive lights, since we acquired a language.
KC – Yeah, I think maybe that’s why it gets disregarded because it’s sort of seen as primitive, simple perhaps, but not easy and maybe that’s why we’re so often missing the magic of what this could be, what this could mean for our clients, our organizations, teams.
YM – Yes.
KC – So I’m wondering, that buzzword active listening comes up a lot in coaching, and what makes a process an active listening process instead of just a normal conversation?
YM – Urm, you know, I’m not a teacher of active listening so it might be different from the, what the other teacher’s teaching. However, from my point of view, active listening is really about curiosity and is really about a willingness to step into a known, not waiting for the answer that’s already fixed. So willingness to explore the magic of unknown, for me that’s active listening.
KC – And how do you help yourself get into that state, perhaps before a challenging client engagement that you know sometimes triggers you into a way of being that isn’t necessarily helpful.
YM – For me the open door is emotions, I think it’s different by people by people. But for me the entrance is emotion, emotional field, right there. And once I get, I feel the sense of the emotion of this person or field that I am right there and open the door, what’s there? Because underneath the emotions, usually there is a deep, you know, dreaming and hope and stories and very authentic experience is awaiting for that. And I find it’s so valuable and so magical and be able to listen to that is kind of like being invited into the story, adventure story, of that person’s life.
KC – And I guess then it stops you from picking up all these ideas about who they are before you’ve really met them in the moment, as they are.
YM – Exactly. Exactly.
KC – How do you catch yourself when you’re not in, whatever you want to call it, an active listening or a deep listening space with a client?
YM – Yeah, yeah. One of the thing is when I notice myself not really being synchronized with this person, when I’m thinking alone, myself, and the other person is talking about her history and there is a separation, right. And when I find that not being with and me not feeling and sensing that what this person’s experience is, that means I am not there. I’m not listening to what’s there or I’m analyzing or I’m interpreting in my own head. So that’s how I catch it.
KC – Yeah, I think, I had a client I was working with today actually, she’s dealing with a very difficult colleague and we were real playing the conversation that she’s going to have and she kept on saying I hear you, I hear you, and I ended up reflecting back I don’t know if you’re hearing me! Because you haven’t used any of my language and it was just fascinating that use of I hear you. But are you? Are you actually hearing me?
YM – Mmm. Isn’t that the stressful moment? And I notice that, of course I’m on that end as well in both sides, so it is like a sense of the blockage or some arm is coming right in front of us in both sides and we are not listening to each other but we are just throwing out the words to each other.
KC – Yeah, we’re throwing out the identity of being a listener, I hear you, I hear you, I’m listening, but you’re not at all.
YM – Yeah, and deep listening, actually helps. It is like a disarmament, putting the arms aside and putting the hard shell on the side and open heart and be vulnerable and willing to receive and give, and that’s the power and the magic of deep listening isn’t it?
KC – Yeah, I was just thinking about sort of that healing quality of listening that you mentioned earlier and do you think it’s that fully being seen and heard in that way, it’s such a rare experience in our day-to-day lives that it sort of takes us to a different level of our beingness, I don’t know if that’s the right way of putting it, it sort of takes away all of the stuff, the trappings that gets us lost.
YM – Yes. I have several experience myself and also by my clients, and in the systems coaching also that I have a privilege to meet with, to be with the community or the company who had a very challenging moment, by listening to each other and they, you know, healed each other, and they decided to move forward collectively. So I think it’s not me, I’ve been told and witnessed that this is really possible, healing is possible.
KC – And I wonder, sort of the flipside of that, what’s it been like for you to really feel listened to in this way, this healing way?
YM – Urm, I remember, 3/11this one of the time that I learned so much about listening as healing, and myself, I’m living in the place called Tochigi prefecture and that is about 100km from Fukushima and right after the 3/11s explosion of the nucleur powerplant and I wasn’t sure if it is safe to live here with my young daughter. So I decided to kind of like be the refuge of having no home and escape us to move to a place called Nagasaki which is a place that is the southest, south east part of Japan, and when I was there I was so lost, I, you know, I didn’t have a home, I only knew my mother in law and I didn’t know what was going to happen now, I was very sad and depressed. And that time I was amazed the power of listening, of just, it wasn’t the coaching, it was just people there, local people and local elderly lady and old man or, you know, people on the street waiting for the bus. And they could, you know, listen to me and they were really, where are you from and, you know, why are you here, and I start telling them a little bit of my story and they just listened to me. I just can’t believe how much they healed my heart and how much just an open heart, curious eyes and no judgement and a bit of sympathy and heart, compassion, and they were so kind. I’ll never forget that moment, never forget that experience.
KC – It’s just such a beautiful example of, they didn’t try to fix anything and in doing that, just listening, they did, it sounds like, so much for you. It makes me think, do we get this sort of coaching thing… do we complicate it in a way that we have our tools and we put all these things in our toolkit and yet is it very easy sometimes to lose sight, particularly a new coach, of this superpower that sort of should live foundationally under everything else?
YM – I cannot agree with you more. Yeah. Tools are fantastic and skills are very useful, for sure, yeah. And we so easily forget that our work is deep listening, it’s coaching, and that’s a basic.
KC – I wonder, would you go so far as to say that coaching and listening are synonymous?
YM – Yeah. If you let go of all the tools, all the skills, and what’s the core, never change, I think it’s the deep listening. I think that’s our work and that has a power to transform the system and that has a power to heal the pain and cleanse the wounds of the system, and once the system becomes healthy and allows what happened, they are ready to move, they are ready to transform. And that is system and that is us.
KC – Yeah, it makes me think Yuri, so often I go into an engagement and I feel like I don’t have enough, I have these tools which are generally quite simple and my competencies as a coach, but I think the beauty of coaching is in its simplicity. And it works every time. People love to be heard and I think I’m always amazed by ever kind of person that I think gets that much from just being in that space of feeling heard.
YM – Yes. And the best thing about systems coaching, it’s not the listener, it’s not only the coach, everybody is the listener and they get to listen to each other and I think that is one of the biggest powers, biggest magic, of the systems coaching and the tools and skills facilitate the safest space in a very, you know, intentional way and too enable that deep listening for each other.
KC – Yeah, that’s a good point, that you don’t have to hold all of that as coach because some of the tools like lands work enable people to listen in a different way.
YM – Yeah. Especially for those challenging moments for the system and when system wants to transform but doesn’t know how or not quite ready for it, and I think that’s the best, so the moment of change, exchange right? I think systems coaches is, and it’s loosening is the most powerful for those moments, so that the system listens to each other and really heal themselves and ready to transform.
KC – Yeah, when I think about change management, that seems to be the bit that we so often jump over and I realize I came onto this call sharing some challenging news, big, big, big change, and my default was to make it ok and you really sat with me in the, this must be really hard. And I think that’s based that ability to grieve and to be disappointed, the disappointed dream. We need to create more space for that because otherwise we can never fully then, surely, move into that next phase or chapter, whatever it may be.
YM – Oh my god, yes, absolutely. The power of grief or the ability to grieve, right, I think that’s the ability that the system has and we have and that’s how, that is the ability that the system naturally has, it’s a resource. And we don’t really overlook and try to fix things but who can, who can beat that natural power that the system has? I once had experience, may I share? Working with a lot relating to 3/11th. I had been working with one of the nuclear related plant and had been working with the management team, and by the way I’m speaking about this with the permission of them. So that plant that the team of the management, the story is after, after 10 years of the 3/11thearthquake, but because of that disaster and guilty feeling they hold and disappointed they feel about themselves and the sadness and the grief for people they lost, even after the 10 years it almost like, the clock stopped as 2011, March ’11, and it was a tool, a tool I used was actually myth change. It’s a combination of original myth and myth change, when we walked the history of that plant and people started speaking and when they speak about the past they speak with such a joy, proud and hope about all the dreams that they had and all the achievement that made until 2011, March ’11. And in that moment they had so much stories. So I decided to, me and my co-leader, stop the moment and ok, so really let’s listen to what happened and what’s there and they start telling the story and it’s, it’s a pile of such a small events however the very deep stories that they forgot about. For example, in that horrendous moment of that everybody stay in the plant and the plant is exploding, the other plant is exploding, tsunami is coming, not knowing if everybody is safe and not knowing if there family is safe, and in that crisis there is such a moment of beauty and also guilt, for example like that moment that everybody is thirsty, everybody is hungry and there is no food, no water coming in, and this person came in with a bottle of water. Everybody is tired and sleepless night for three days and my boss said go back in the room and take a nap, the rest I take care of it. So those moments of the warmth of people and the gratefulness and the little moment that couldn’t say thank you because they were such in chaos. Or the moment that one person is coming from the other plant with possibility of nuclear contamination and the moment that I could not open the window, door, for him because the moment that I thought this person may carry the contamination of nuclear and he still carries that guilt after 10 years, about that small moment and we just talked about it, I think, hours. And we noticed, very step by step, slowly, slowly, the field became lighter and they started breathing and air coming in and their face started to change, and when I look back that was the period of them listening to each other and healing each other.
KC – That’s so powerful.
YM – Yeah, and after that finally, clock started ticking toward future. 10 years the clock stopped. Right at the moment, 2011, 3/11, 2.46pm. Stop.
KC – It’s incredible that something so simple, I think I keep coming back to the idea that listening is so simple and so often overlooked and misunderstood can shift a system like that, in that way, in such a powerful transformational way.
YM – Yeah, they taught me the power of listening. Nothing else worked.
KC – and I think the thing that shows up for me is that no one fixed anything, no one made it ok, no one tried to brush it under the carpet like we do in the UK, it was just listening in the most holistic sense and that served the system more than anything else probably could of.
YM – Yeah, yeah.
KC – Wow. I’m wondering, Yuri, this superpower of listening – what do you think would be possible if we brought more of this into our lives? Not just into our coaching practices but to our families, to our friends, to the checkout lady we meet in the supermarket. What might be possible for our world?
YM – Yeah, we will be living in more kind world, we can be kind to each other and also kind to ourselves because shit happens, right? It’s part of our lives! And it’s normal and still, life goes on and we can live and it’s ok.
KC – I love that, shit happens. I think sometimes when you’ve had a really crappy run of news, whatever it is, losing someone you love or having to move your life to another country unexpectedly, any of those things, sometimes just having someone to listen and say god, that’s really rough, I’m sorry to hear that.
YM – Yeah, and tell me, what is it like for you?
KC – We don’t want fixing, we just want listening which is the healing in itself.
YM – Yeah.
KC – Ah, I feel like I’ve been in such a listened to space today Yuri so thank you.
YM – Thank you so much for listening Katie.
KC – This is such a powerful and important place and I know I’ve been banging that drum but I don’t think I expected to see listening as such a significant ally for us as human beings.
YM – Yes, yes. I think so, it’d our ultimate ally.
KC – It really is.
YM – We don’t need anything, right, just us.
KC – Yeah. We have everything we need, we are the resource.
YM – That’s right, that’s right.
KC – Thank you so much Yuri, this was a beautiful conversation and I’m taking away so much.
YM – Me too, me too! Thank you for this opportunity and this space you created, it was listening, really deep listening, by you. Thank you Katie.
KC – Thank you Yuri, take care.
[Outro begins 33:37]
KC – A huge thanks to Yuri Morikawa for that beautiful discussion around listening. My key takeaways are as follows. When we jump straight to words and skip over the words in between we miss the wisdom of silence. Silence is a moment of uncertainty and a moment of unknown. This may be why so many of us struggle to be with and stay with silence. Listening is a superpower, particularly during moments of challenge. It doesn’t try to fix or change anything, it heals simply through witnessing where someone is. We can listen at different levels of reality. At the dreaming level we can listen for emotions, feelings and sensations that help us to connect at a deeper level. Deep listening is at the core of coaching. It has the power to transform, heal and cleanse the wounds of the system. And once a system becomes healthy they are then ready to move. Grief is an important stage, it is a resource. When we don’t try to overlook and move past this stage we can heal through listening and through being heard. Listening is an ally. It can help us to embrace our experience of life in its entirety. To find out more about Yuri’s work do check out CRRGlobal.com. For over 18 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time. We believe Relationship Matters from humanity to nature to the larger whole.
[Outro 35:49 – end]