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Thank you for being here.
The Listening Space is a social listening project centred on women's experiences of workplace harm. Listening Conversations become short, anonymised audio Stories, each offering an intimate glimpse into what workplace harm can look and feel like from the inside.
Why is this still happening?
You may have left the workplace.
The people involved may have moved on.
Your life may look completely different now.
And yet the experience doesn't always leave with them.
You tell yourself it's over. Move on. Don't let them get to you. You're stronger than this.
An opportunity comes along that you really want, but you question whether you're good enough for it.
You sit in a meeting with something important to say but don't say it.
Someone offers some everyday feedback, but you find yourself bracing for what might come next.
It can be confusing when the person you know yourself to be, capable, experienced, competent, doesn't quite match what you're feeling inside.
Why The Listening Space Exists
Adult bullying, bias and harm in the workplace are challenging to talk about yet they continue to impact women's careers, earning potential and long-term health.
The Listening Space does not claim to solve workplace harm. It creates a conversation in which it becomes harder for harm to pass unnoticed or become normalised.
The team meeting that became a hunt for a scapegoat,
the colleague who undermined through exclusion from vital conversations and information,
the boss who demanded commitment that went above and beyond and then stole all the credit.
If there is no safe space to lay down difficult and painful experiences, they stay. The past overshadows the present and people lose sight of who they are.
Through listening, these stories can deepen understanding and contribute to wider conversations about psychologically safe workplaces, leadership and organisational culture.
How I Listen
Women need to talk without having to prove, justify or defend themselves.
When I listen, I am not attempting to investigate or determine what happened. I listen with kindness and the belief that these women deserve validation of their experience and recognition that what happened was wrong.
Women will not speak what sits heavy in their hearts unless they feel safe too.
About Me
Long before The Listening Space project, I knew something about carrying difficult workplace experiences.
I was comfortable working in high-pressure environments, from national media to war zones and prisons yet struggled when I found myself the target of sustained intentional harm.
Deep down I knew that these experiences need not define me and I fiercely committed to finding a way to repair the ruptures and get myself back.
What I learned was that if I wanted to be free of the self-doubt, shame and fear, I needed to change the way I was seeing things. I needed to change what I was telling myself and I needed to find a way to feel more comfortable not knowing.
Working with other women has shown me the power of shifting perspective from 'life happens to me' to 'I choose how I meet what happens in life'. To witness them moving from fear and self-doubt to self-agency and confidence is the reason I do what I do.
When I began talking to women about the idea of The Listening Space, the response I heard again and again was, ‘I have experienced workplace harm too.’ It told me there was a need to talk about this more.
Acknowledgement
This project has been made possible with a grant from Drop Dead Generous, a growing community exploring the human behaviour of giving. Their fund supports people around the world to pay generosity forward through acts of kindness.
dropdeadgenerous.org →Sometimes in life it can feel like you alone are holding up the sky.
The Listening Space is here to affirm that you aren't.
Welcome to the conversation.
