When Listening Gets Hard

By Heather Cunningham, National Training Director, Think Tank, Inc.

Over the years, I’ve worked with many organizations that genuinely want to rethink how they address poverty. They care about the people they serve and want those most affected by programs, policies, and systems to help shape the decisions being made.

“Lived experience” has almost become a buzzword. We hear it in conversations about programs, funding, and community engagement, but we don’t always stop to think about what it really means or what it asks of us.

Maybe we can simplify it. We’re talking about folks who have “been there and done that”.

People who have navigated the systems we are trying to improve. They know where the barriers are because they have faced them. They understand the impact of our decisions in ways that those who haven’t had the same experiences simply cannot. That is more than lived experience. It is lived wisdom.

These folks aren’t just people with stories to share. They are leaders with insight, ideas, and a desire to use what they have learned to create change for their communities and for those coming behind them. At Think Tank, we call them Change Leaders.

Most organizations understand this in principle. They want to listen and create space at the table. 

But then the questions start…

What happens when we don’t agree? What if we’ve already made a decision? How do we balance lived wisdom with professional expertise? What if the conversation becomes difficult?

Underneath those questions, there is often another one that folks don’t always say out loud: What if doing this well makes our work harder?

I understand why organizations wrestle with that. Developing programs, gathering data, securing funding, and responding to a community’s needs takes a lot. The people doing this work often care deeply. They bring education, professional knowledge, and years of hard work. 

Then we ask them to make room for another kind of expertise. It is the kind that comes from actually living through the systems they are working to improve. That sounds simple until everyone is sitting around the same table.

Change Leaders may question decisions that took months to make. They may notice barriers the professionals in the room didn’t see. They may have a completely different idea about what needs to change. Sometimes, they may ask for something an organization simply cannot do.

I’ve heard organizations say, “We invited people to the table, but it didn’t go the way we expected.”

My response is usually, “Tell me more.”

Disagreement doesn’t always mean something has gone wrong. Sometimes it means people are finally being honest with one another. Sometimes it means we have built enough trust for someone to be vulnerable and honest.

That doesn’t mean every perspective automatically becomes policy. It also doesn’t mean lived wisdom replaces professional expertise. Research, data, education, and professional knowledge all matter. So does knowing what it feels like to navigate a system, receive a service, live in poverty, or experience the consequences of someone else's decisions.

We need both.

The goal is not to decide which type of expertise matters more. The goal is to understand what each person brings and recognize the limits of our own knowledge. Professional expertise can help us understand patterns, policies, resources, and what may be possible. Lived wisdom can help us understand how those decisions are experienced and where our plans may not work as intended.

We sometimes get stuck when we believe involving Change Leaders simply means asking for feedback. Listening matters, but it is only the beginning.

What happened after we listened? Did what we heard change how we understood the problem? Did it help us see something we had missed? Are we willing to reconsider something we thought we already knew? Did the plan change? If it didn’t, did we explain why?

People know when they are being asked to share simply so an organization can say it listened. No one wants to tell their story over and over again if nothing ever comes from it. Their wisdom should inform the work, not become another box to check.

We also have to be clear about what we are inviting people into. Are we asking them to share a story, offer feedback, help make a decision, or lead part of the work? Those are different roles. When we aren’t clear, people may believe they have more influence than they actually do. That can create frustration and damage trust, even when that was never our intention.

This is where trust becomes so important.

Trust doesn’t mean agreeing every time. It means knowing we can be honest with one another and that the relationship won’t fall apart when we disagree. For organizations, that takes humility. We have to be willing to hear that something isn’t working, even when we’ve poured time and energy into it. We have to admit that we don’t have all the answers. 

Trust takes time. It is difficult to build a real relationship through one listening session, focus group, or invitation to join a committee. If we want people to stay connected to the work, we have to follow up, communicate what happened, and continue the relationship after the meeting is over.

I’ve also learned that there is no single lived wisdom perspective. People who have experienced poverty, homelessness, incarceration, addiction, or other challenges are not all going to think alike. No one person can speak for an entire community.

That is why this work has to be about relationships, not representation.

This isn’t about finding one person who checks the right box or expecting that person to carry the responsibility of speaking for everyone. Instead, it is about building relationships with different people, listening to different perspectives, and creating meaningful ways for Change Leaders to contribute.

At Think Tank, we talk a lot about moving from doing things TO or FOR people to doing things WITH people. That shift sounds easier than it actually is.

Doing something for people can feel efficient. We identify a problem, create next steps, and present a solution. Doing something with people takes more time. It requires relationships and connection. We are asked to share some of the influence we hold. Sometimes, this means sitting in a room where we don’t all agree about what should happen next.

It also requires us to think differently about leadership. Leadership isn’t only connected to a title, degree, or professional role. Sometimes leadership comes from surviving something difficult, learning from it, and choosing to use that wisdom to make things better for someone else.

I don’t think organizations need to have all of this figured out before inviting Change Leaders into the conversation. Honestly, I’m not sure any of us ever completely figure it out.

However, we can be honest about what we are asking of one another. We can listen without promising that every idea will become action. We can bring professional expertise without assuming it is the only expertise that matters. We can disagree without dismissing each other. We can be transparent about how decisions are made and whose voices helped shape them.

Yes, that may make the work harder.

Maybe the better question is: Does making the work a little harder also make it more honest, more responsive, and more likely to create meaningful change?

That is a question worth continuing to wrestle with.