When I worked in industry I was particularly interested in the Lean Manufacturing approach associated particularly with the Toyota Production System. One of the things that a new engineer or manager would do when they started work in a factory would be to find a place to stand on the “Gemba” or shop floor, a vantage point to watch from, They would not move, they would not interact with people, they would not take notes, they would simply watch to see everything that was happening.
A UK course on Lean Manufacturing took up this idea and was titled “Learning to see”. Whilst the nature of our culture meant the full on Gemba approach was a none starter, I spent a lot of time encouraging our apprentices, production engineers and manufacturing engineers to learn to see and observe. I’d get them to take a walk onto the shop floor and observe what was happening. I’d ask them to describe what was happening in our open plan office. Crucially, I did not ask them to interpret what they saw or suggest improvements at that stage. That would come later.
Within their first few weeks, I would get the graduates to walk the process and map it out. Of course, we already had plenty of detailed process maps. I’d prepared them years earlier myself and kept them up to date as we made changes. The exercise was not for our records it was to do three things. First of all, it helped the graduates get to know the process, secondly, it helped the operators in the process to step back with them and see what was happening around them and thirdly, yes, with a fresh pair of eyes we expected them to spot things, opportunities for improvement that we had missed.
Then the next thing we would do, would be that we would involve these engineers whenever there were visits. We would get them to lead tours, they were learning to describe what they had seen.
There was another part of the process. We were gathering tons of data from the system. We knew how long each job spent at each stage, how much work was going through at any time and how often the same units came back again for repair, especially where a fault had not been found the first-time round (I worked in the after-manufacture support/repairs part of an Avionics business). We were gradually building a picture or story like putting together jigsaw pieces.
One of the tensions that people can struggle with in pastoral care and leadership is “how do we get people to open up.” There can be a fear that people are naturally closed off, private, reluctant to share. How do we get a church where people take off their masks and show their real selves? What do we do when people respond to the “how are you doing?” question with “okay” or “fine.” (Actually, one thing we can do there is take them at their word but I’ll return to that later).
Well, if the manufacturing engineers needed to “learn to see”, then there is something similar needed in terms of learning to hear or maybe learning to see and hear. You see, I think that people are not generally as closed off as we often assume. They may not respond to direct questions and they may not, especially if they are English be great at expressing how they are feeling but they are better at telling us than we think. The thing is, they tend to tell us their stories and we need to get better at hearing them.
You see, whilst a person may not open up immediately to you about their feelings, although they might to someone and some people might to you, this does not mean that they are shutting you out. Indeed, what they might be doing is seeking to invite you in. They will do that in different ways, they might tell you anecdotes about their week, they might tell you some of their own biography or they might give their opinion on something but without you realising it, the story is more important.
Let me give you an example. There was an older lady at Bearwood. She would often come and tell me that she didn’t like all the new, repetitive “choruses” we sung. One day she came up to me after the service. She was clutching a list in her hand, I may still have it somewhere. It was a list of the hymns she thought we could include more. As it happened I liked all of them. Was she just having a grumble about modern worship? Was she just giving me a list of “better quality” hymns? Perhaps! But I believe she was doing more. She was telling me some of her story and over time we got to hear much of her story and her husbands. Those hymns weren’t just “old favourites” they were woven into the fabric of her life testimony. Each had significance.
Or, here is another, more frivolous example. If I start to talk about Bradford City to you, on one level I’m telling you about my interests, maybe finding a shared pastime with you. You might assume that I’m just sharing a surface level thing with you. Actually, I’m taking you deep into my story. If someone tells you that they support Bradford City, they are inviting you to connect into a collective story that include moments of great communal pride and joy. If England have their 60 years of hurt, Bantams have their 115 years of hurt since being the first team to life the current FA Cup. They are disclosing that they have been through and survived a moment of great tragedy and grief through the Bradford fire disaster. In my case that meant losing a school friend in the fire. It means that each year on this blog I invite you in to share in remembering that dark day. They are inviting you into a world of heroes and villains, rivals and underdogs, especially if you get them started on their views about Leeds United.
And, by the way, they might invite you in without telling you any details but they are still telling the story and asking you to hear it. When they send you that text saying “pray for ….” And on the occasions when they don’t send the text because they can’t start to type without the tears flowing, they are inviting you in. When they ask you to come round in the middle of the pain, they are inviting you in. Moreover, as they live their lives, coming to church each Sunday and sometimes being somewhere else, they are living their story and inviting you to see or hear it.
So, how can we get better at hearing? Well, here are a few thoughts. The first thing to say is that the introduction about process improvement wasn’t just a segue in, the learning to see approach offers something of a model for how we can learn to hear. First of all, we learn by slowing down, taking time to observe, not rushing to make notes, interpret, diagnose, or prescribe/apply.
Secondly, part of this slowing down and giving people space and permission to tell their stories in their own time and in their own way is about stepping back to see the big picture/hear the bigger story. Let’s come back to that dreaded English response “I’m okay” or “I’m fine.” Over time, you might get to observe that the person always responds in such a way, it’s their natural response, that doesn’t mean it’s casual or meaningless, they might still be telling you something but don’t interpret yet, wait. However, it may be that they use it at different times and that might mean some people use it in different ways. One person might use “not bad” to mean “I’m doing really well”, they prefer the understated. Another might use the word “fine” with an edge to it when actually they are unhappy. Indeed, we may have conflated a whole load of words and phrases such as: fair, okay, not too bad, not too shabby, fine, alright” to mean the same thing when in fact the terms themselves mean something different in that person’s vocabulary. So we need to learn to understand their vocabulary, not impose our own.
This takes us to the next point. We have learnt to create a dichotomy between seeing wood and trees but actually if you have good vision you can pick out the detail not despite or instead of getting the big picture but because you are seeing the big picture. In the case of the person who actually uses a variety of similar sounding words or the same word in a variety of ways, the big picture is helping you get into the detail. Over time, you will learn not just the words they use but the tone they use and the non -verbal clues. With a look up or down or sideways they might tell you that they really are fine, or they might subtly show you exactly who or what is making them feel anything but fine.
Or consider another example of how the big picture might help us to spot the detail if we are attentive. Supposing you have a church member who every five or six weeks goes away for the weekend. You ask:
Where were you last weekend? Anywhere nice?”
They normally respond:
Oh just popping up to see mum and dad.”
Then over time, “popping to see” or “visiting” becomes “we wanted to spend some time with mum and dad” or “just checking in on my parents.” Did you hear the shift there? Do you see what might be happening?
The reason that big picture and detail go hand in hand is because big picture is all about patterns, themes and interruptions and patterns, themes and interruptions are what make up detail.
Another way in which we learn to hear stories is the same way that those graduates learnt to see by conducting tours. Sometimes what we do as pastors is take people on tours of their own lives. We help them hear their own story, we paly it back and we help them to tell their own story. Sometimes, one to one that means playing things back. Sometimes it involves finding ways to tell “every person stories”. The best way to do that is through telling Bible stories.
And yes, there’s a time to move to interpretation. There are two aspects to this. First of all, despite wanting to hold back on the analytical interpretation, the reality is that we all started interpreting as soon as the story was being told. So, part of interpretation is about highlighting the interpretation already given. Secondly, we don’t impose our own interpretation, but we can help then to discover possible and plausible interpretations. How might others interpret the story.
This is where both learning to tell the story back and learning to ask questions helps. For example, if someone says “I’m not bad”, why not find ways to ask them what “not bad” means this week? Or ask a little more about what has been happening. Maybe ask them what their favourite hymns are. The answer might tell you why they only ever seem to be doing fine at church! By the way, one thing I’ve always tried to ask people is “What do you think God might be doing in this?”
And so, thirdly, as Christian pastors and leaders, our job is neither to impose our interpretation, nor to leave them with a number of equally valid options. Rather, we want to take them to Jesus, in his word. We want to encourage them to be listening to the Holy Spirit. Together we will find that God is both the best hearer and the best interpreter of our stories. It is he whom we wish to meet, we want to let him disagree with us and to answer our questions and our needs.
The thing about this approach is that you may find that there are lots of people in the life of the church who never come to you for a deep and meaningful conversation where they open up and pour their heart out to you. However, you may actually know then and have pastored them in a deeper and more powerful manner than you realise.
