Radical Listening: The art of true connection is an interesting 2025 book

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an interesting 2025 book by Christian Van Nieuwerburgh and Robert Biswas-Diener titled Radical Listening: The art of true connection. There are six core skills in a framework: three each internal and external. As shown above, they are:

 

INTERNAL

Accepting

Noticing

Quieting

 

EXTERNAL

Acknowledging

Interjecting

Questioning

 

They also are discussed in an article by Christian Van Nieuwerburgh at The Conversation on June 30, 2025 titled Radical Listening: two big ideas and six core skills that could help you connect more deeply with others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And there also is a Memory Aid for the six core skills at the end of the book, as shown above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, Mitigating Obstacles to Listening is discussed in Table 2.2., as shown above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And six categories for Listening In order to… are discussed above in Table 2.4.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seven Levels of Acknowledgment are described in Figure 6.1. as shown above.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three categories of questions (closed, narrowing, and open-ended) are discussed in Table 7.1. as is shown above.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five types of interruptions are described above in a graph, Figure 8.1, on scales ranging from Polite to Rude and Small to Large.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helpful (cooperative) and Unhelpful (intrusive) Interruptions are discussed in Table 8.1

 

What is missing from this book? There is no discussion about history - where the phrase Radical Listening and concept came from. It goes back at least three decades to 1995. I found an article by Vicki Dickerson at Re-Authoring Teaching titled Radical Listening: An interview with Kaethe Weingarten [from 1999].

 

There also is a 2014 book by Katherine Morgaine and Moshoula Capous-Desyllas titled Anti-Oppressive Social Work Practice: Putting Theory into Action which has the following discussion on page 210:

 

“Radical Listening

 

Radical listening goes beyond reflexive listening. It requires inviting and attending to all aspects of a participant’s stories in order to understand the meanings they make of their life experiences (Weingarten, 1995). Radical listening recognizes the participants are experts in their own lives (Dewees, 2006).

 

According to Wood and Tully (G. Wood and C. Tully, The Structural Approach to Direct Practice in Social Work, A social constructivist approach, third edition, 2006), radical listening involves three skills:

 

Listening through social consciousness: being emotionally, mentally and physically responsive to the complexities of the participants’s life: taking a genuine interest in and seeking to understand their experiences through their intersecting identities.  

 

Attending: focusing entirely on what the other person is saying, as well as what they are not saying, from their subjective experiences in life.

 

Immersing: fully entering the space when you are with the participant. Immersion can also be described as entering a mental zone where you fully bring yourself to enter the participant’s world and deeply focus on their stories.”

 

There is another article at the University of Edinburgh Transitions and Mentoring Toolkit titled Active listening and radical listening that explains how:

 

“An extension of active listening is radical listening. Radical listening grew out of critical pedagogy and was first coined by [Joe L.] Kincheloe (2008).  It holds within it a deeply held desire to understand the speaker’s standpoints and axiological positions (Tobin, 2009).  That is, when listening, the speaker must try to not only hear intent, but hear the underlying assumptions, life experiences and values.

 

It repositions the listener as learner, as being a radical listener re-theorises teaching-learning spaces as multidimensional and heterogenous spaces with a possibility of transformation.  That is, even in cases where there is seemingly little to no shared experience or even a possible confrontation, the conversation is reframed as a field of listening and learning (Winchell et al, 2016), where both the speaker and listener try to learn about the other’s point of view and work together toward new understandings. 

 

While radical listening might sound complex, it is an approach that people can choose to take to conversations by listening for intent and remaining non-judgemental and humble.  This will create a space where both people are learning and developing together.” 

 

And there are more recent articles by Marlene Chism. There are two LinkedIn Pulse - one at February 14, 2018 at titled Radical Listening is an Act of Leadership Love and another on November 19, 2024 titled Radical Listening: A Leadership Superpower.

 

Also, there is another 2025 book by Patricia Plude and Kinari Webb titled The Art of Radical Listening: Revealing Collective Wisdom for Change, with an excerpt at Resilience.