 good listening improves even poor speaking. That's the thought I want to talk to you about that because most of us are listeners rather than speakers, it's important that we realize that listening is not a spectator sport. Listening is not a passive part of what the communicators up there doing by him or herself. That listening isn't just a sounding board for a monologue. That listening is part of the dialogue, part of the dance, part of the dynamic, part of the creativity of the moment of when someone is doing public speaking. Sometimes I've wished over the years that I, when I was speaking, had a massive wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling mirror behind me, the length of the platform and the height and depth of the platform so that they all could see what I'm looking at. I think people think that they look more interested than they really do when they are listening to a speaker. I think people will be surprised if they could see themselves and look how disengaged and how bored and how disinterested they look and how distracted they often look while someone's pouring their heart out to them. It can be so discouraging to speakers, you that are listening to this that our speakers know what I'm talking about, but we are also listeners. I sit and listen to other speakers and I'm so aware that when I'm listening to a speaker that my part is no less dynamic, is no less essential in the mix than it is when I am up there speaking. I used to insist that our worship team at their worship rehearsal every week would watch playback of themselves from the previous Sunday because I would sit there watching them look miserable during the worship and they thought they looked animated and engaged and they looked excited and devotion and worshipful but actually some of them were just an autopilot playing an instrument or the backing vocalists kind of, because they weren't the front vocalists would kind of switch off and go off into La La Land somewhere and would look absent from the room or the person on the keyboard or the instrument at the back would just be an autopilot and I wanted them to see themselves on playback because we never think that we looked like we actually do when we are listening or when we are even generating something but we're not the front person. So I want to say to all you that listen to us that speak, your part is massive in what we do that even your listening can improve poor speaking. Good listening can improve average speaking. I have been in gatherings, I have been in meetings where someone's been speaking and the speaking honestly was pretty average but the level of listening was so intent and so drawing on the speaker that I think the intensity of the listening, the intentionality of the listening actually made the whole thing feel better than it actually was. So never think that your listening is neutral, that your listening doesn't matter, that your listening isn't as if not more important than what the speaker is saying and I taught my church here in the north of England because the English are not a very responsive people when they're listening. We're kind of going to our Britishness, into our educational classroom mode where the person speaking has become the teacher and where the people's and we're supposed to sit and listen but not be heard and this passive listening thing would be our default mode here in the UK. Culturally it's not the same around the world some places people culturally are very animated and responsive and that's great and I knew I couldn't you know try to bring back home from say speaking to a black congregation in America that are so responsive. I couldn't transplant that back into the English culture because it would feel an artificial forced fit. I didn't want that but I didn't either feel I should settle for this passivity I had when I was pouring my heart out and I didn't know how to speak to the church about it. This is the difficult thing that when you feel your church are not responsive enough and could do better it's hard to mention that in case you just come across like an insecure communicator that wants them to shout amen or that's great or clap or do something it's hard to talk about that because then they feel that you just want in them to feed your ego and your need for feedback and then if they do that it feels like that it feels forced and artificial so we don't often know what to say to the people but we do know that we are defaulting to a cultural silence in listening and a cultural passivity style of listening that we don't really want to put up with. I was thinking about this many years ago and I was pastoring not knowing how to talk to the church about it and I was speaking one Sunday morning I'm about five minutes into speaking and someone started applauding loudly over to my right hand side I recall in that room that's imprinted on my mind that we had back then. It completely threw everybody there was this awkward silence and this embarrassment that someone had just culturally made a massive mistake in clapping during a sermon. It even threw me I stopped I paused I collected myself and carried on and then about 10 minutes later same thing again from the same part of the room someone started clapping at another point I'd made and I thought hang on a minute this is me talking to me now in front of the people I said to myself I wonder if this is what I have been asking God to help me with or I'm wondering how do I address this with the people because the very thing I want to talk to them about I think just happened but I don't know who it was or why happened so as I'm doing that in split seconds in my mind I stopped and I said who clapped I looked around I felt terrible and later realized that when I said who clapped the person that did must have thought they were in huge trouble I only thought that later it was on the spot in the moment I said who clapped who clapped someone clapped a couple of times from over here and a guy put his hand up and the first thing I noticed was that he wasn't white he was black and I said sir please would you just stand then at this point looking back I thought he must have still thought he was in terrible trouble and the church maybe thought I was going to you know put him straight with we don't do that around here but of course the opposite is what I was going to do I said sir I'm so glad you clapped today because I've been wondering church how to talk to you about being more responsive and I don't know how to say it to you without your misunderstanding my motivation and then someone just clapped in the way that I imagined that you'd all want to do regularly anyway I said so where are you from and he said I am from Africa and I said then are you visiting today I said I'm here in university for a few years and I've been coming to this church a little bit last few weeks I said well you probably noticed that we do not clap in this cult in this country in our culture we don't clap during the sermon he said I realized that but I said where I come from we do that all the time and I said well I'm so glad you did it here today because I said I think what you did today is what often many of us feel like doing but we know it's so culturally unacceptable that we don't and the fear of being culturally um misfit and culturally um out of sync we don't do it it's nothing worse than starting to clap and nobody joins you you just feel embarrassed and even don't go back to that church and that might of what you might have felt like tunday his name was but I said I want you to know what you did today I think is what should become moral norm in this church and so people are laughing and and stuff as I'm interacting with tunday and I said I'm serious you guys I said I really think we need to break out of our English stiff upper lip passiveness because I think that you're listening is as important in this relationship of communication as is any speaker up here I said so here's the new rule I said from now on if I'm speaking and anybody claps I will not say anything else until you all clap well they all laughed and started clapping and didn't realize how serious I was so the next week I put a little poster on my notes clapping to remind myself knowing they would have forgotten last week's lesson and so I started speaking the second week I didn't say anything about the week before and about 10 minutes in someone started clapping and I stopped and I waited and I waited and it felt like forever and everybody thought what's going on has he forgotten his place was I having a moment and I forgot what I was going to say next was I distracted no one remembered last week's clapping and I decided not to remind them I have my little post-it note so when someone clapped I looked at my note and I thought someone either remembered or it's another first time visitor I don't know but I waited felt like forever and then suddenly it's like the penny dropped and the people went ah and started started I would say lamely half-heartedly clapping like oh it's that clapping thing we're doing again as if it was funny and the game and it wasn't serious and I said yes exactly I told you I won't speak anymore after someone claps to you all clap so they laughed and then on that Sunday we had about four or five similar instances during that message where we played around and it was funny and people did it deliberately and and I tolerated that put it with that long story short I did what I'm telling you now for three months for about three months we played around with this clapping I would go silent then they'd all clap then I'd carry on someone would clap I would go silent then they'd all clap for three months and I realized that this was a new habit we were building and what it was doing was it was freeing people in all other kinds of responses not just clapping the whole response level lifted through the clapping exercise as it were what I also realized is that every Sunday when there was new people who were new to our church they had no idea that clapping wasn't normal so monkey see monkey do new people came English people came to this English church north of England I want to say too you'll understand that if you're from England of how more of how different pockets of England are more conservative and reserved than others and so new people would come and just clap along with the church not knowing it was ever not a thing to do so I began to build a whole new generation of clappers and responders because it was the new norm in our church and this visitor helped me make that happen and so what happens now in our church that if you come and speak in our church and when speakers came from around the world and they get multiple applause and sometimes standing ovations mid-sermon they'd say this church is not like an English church at all and I'd say yeah what you don't know is upstream of you coming years ago I manufactured this and I'd tell them the story I just told you and it taught me that something's culturally can be engineered into our churches our teams our companies and so on and so on some things can be engineered and the first part of that feels artificial so often we don't survive the artificial sense season but if you can see it through to a place where it becomes organic and the new norm no one knows it wasn't always the norm the second thing I learned to say to you guys and this is so much more an option now than it was years ago because of the international multicultural nature of our world in our communities the gift of that African guy in the church to me was that he brought his culture of clapping into our non-responsive culture and I had a decision to make as do you do I shut him down and make him feel bad so he complies now and becomes overcome by our culture or do I allow his culture to lift our culture to another level and see the gift of visiting cultures as an enabling for us to see a new idea modeled that we'll never find if we just default to our own culture the gift of visitors in our churches in our businesses our organizations the gift of other cultures is that they bring to us something better that enhances and has value to our culture and if we can allow our flavors to therefore become the best of all cultures then we finish it with with this fantastic mixture of all cultures in a very best spoke created master chef way where we add the ingredients that the world bring to us and everybody kind of feels a little bit at home when they come to us because we have taken bits of all their cultures and added it to our culture in an authentic way as to be authentic but in an authentic way that doesn't take from I suppose the primary culture that we are doing life and church and business in if there is one so I want you to understand that your listening is a huge part of the dynamic of a successful moment of communication that if you want your communication level to go to the next level some of you communicators it's not your job to speak better you're doing great it's your job now to include the people in your speaking and let them know the important part they play in the relational speaking room dynamics of the speaking and your greatest gift to future speakers that speak in your situation is that you have trained your people how to be more organically responsive by manufacturing engineering into the listening culture what you really think is the optimal level of response you can authentically get in the culture where you are so listen good listening really makes a massive difference commit to leaning in commit to being great listeners and realize the massive gift of that to us communicators is that you are brilliant listeners and that will so enhance the experience of the speaking or the preaching or the talk that you have in your situation good listening can even improve poor speaking we don't want it to have to do that but that's how powerful it can be