To get the “Stories” section of this site going, allow me to merge the two seemingly contrary topics – speaking and listening – in the following tale, which I present as a first-hand tribute to the legendary scholar known to many (mainly scholars in the “klistening” dub-field of communication) as the Father of Listening, Ralph G. Nichols (1907-2005). As a whim and “out of the blue,” I wrote a personal letter to him, thanking him for pioneering the field I was then making the focus of my grauate study — and that turned out a very wise and fruitful decision.
A letter written at midnight — on a “break from writing”!
Merging the topics of speech and listening might seem fairly natural, today, but it was “unheard” of (ha ha) back in the early 1950s. Around then, Ralph Nichols, an upstart professor at the University of Minnesota, introduced to the venerable, centuries-old tradition of rhetoric something new to think about: “listening.”(Later, as his many books and artivcles drew national acclaim, he became chair of Minnesota’s Department of Rhetoric and, after that, served as the founding president of the International Communication Association – that’s huge!)
As I will explain, I owe a great debt to Dr. Nichols, as I told him in that personal letter I wrote and sent to him, in 1988, right to his home address in Florida, where he and his oft-mentioned wife and partner, Lucile (aka, and famously, “the Colonel”) lived, in their retirement.
In my unsolicited letter — written, as I recall, right around midnight, during a brief break from working on a major paper, due soon — I sincerely thanked him for instigating the field I was now studying with all my heart. I let him know that, as I dug fervently into this new (to me) literature exploring the definitions, functions, and processes of listening, his name was cited in almost every source.
Everywhere I looked, I saw his revered name, and, yes, frequently referred to as “The Father of Listening.” And I also teased him a tiny bit to include that “thanks to you” I was looking at any number of all-nighters, ion the coming days, if this present paper were to turn out the way I imagined it. I’d hoped he would feel honored to know that I was giving my all to my work, in the field of listening, which he brought into our discipline, though now muchly broadened, compared to his early days, and now called communication, more so than its traditional name over the centuries, rhetoric).
Surprise — he wrote back!
I never dreamed that I would ever find in my mailbox a letter back from him. And it came quite soon after I’d sent out mine. Of course, I still have it – and a couple more from him, too. His letters came in months apart during my two years of master’s study at the University of Maryland, where I was honered to be studying on a full graduate “fellowship.”
Anyway, I saw my name and address, written in noticeably shaky handwriting, and I could not believe my eyes at the return address: Ralph G. Nichols! He was 81 at that time, as I now know, from biographical info now readily available on the internet. We didn’t have that, in 1988. It never occurred to me that my letter’s recipient had made it to octogenarian status.
But, reading his letter, I realized that he was getting up there, not just from the shaky handwriting, but also because he started right off with a reference to himself and Lucile as “a couple oldsters” whose mundane day had become unexpectedly brightened by my earnest letter, yes, seemingly out of nowhere.
Bless his heart, and may he rest in peace, but his sweet, complimentary, and uplifting letter converted the fuel that propelled my work, in this new research area for me, from high-test gasoline to rocket fuel.
As I penned that epistle, little did I know that I was about to be named the winner of a national award for graduate-research in listening, honored by none other than the International Listening Association (ILA). I would be soon (not long after these letters went and came) be flying to Phoenix to pick up my award and present my prize-winning paper at the annual convention of the ILA, a group of about 300 (at that time) professors of communication, mostly speech, and other researchers and authors centrally interested in listening.
And not only would I soon be meeting many of the very scholars I had been citing centrally throughout my graduate study, upcoming master’s thesis included – not to mention meeting them as their “graduate student of the year,” so to speak – but I would certainly get to meet Ralph Nichols, my new and unanticipated pen pal!
A speech given to an empty room?
The news of my award came very shortly after our exchange of letters, so I excitedly wrote him back to let him know that I had been named the winner of the ILA contest and would be attending the convention and even presenting my paper at a special session, where I and the other finalists would be presenting our papers.
If you know about these acaemic conventions, you know that, at any given time slot (maybe 90 minutes apart), several sessions are going on, so attendees have to make choices, all day long, as to which sessions they will attend. Probably last on anyone’s list would be the “graduate student papers.” Except for maybe the profs who had coached the presenting finalists, just about everyone attending the convention had somewhere better to be on Saturday morning at 9:30.
Writing this second letter, I mustered up my nerve and came right out and asked him if maybe he would be so kind as to attend my presentation. I had no idea whatsoever at the implications of his attendance at my presentation. I just wanted him to hear it and maybe enjoy and approve of my speech.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Nichols had helped to found the academic journal The Speech Teacher, which later morphed into the most prestigious journal (by far) in communication, the Quarterly Journal of Speech. I craved to make a fabulous speech on listening, right in front of “the Father of Listening,” himself a renowned proponent of speech education.
I may have been known for a little moxy, but I brought, to this endeavor, zero knowledge or experience, there in my first semester of graduate work, as to how to “present a scholarly paper” (as I’ve done many times since). But I loved my research and the resulting, winning paper — which, in some ways had saved my life (long story for later) and believed I could do it justice with a fun and lively speech. I wanted so much for Dr. Nichols to hear it, especially after these letters.
He wrote back to promise that he would most certainly be in attendance for my presentation. I had no idea that, at his advanced age, he was known to attend just one, maybe two, events per day at the busy, four-day, annual affair.
And I likewise did not know that, if and when he did show up for a certain panel of speeches, most of the biggest names in conference attendance would follow him right into the room, hoping for a chance to see him and say hi. It might be their only chance to do so, and who knows if this might be his last apperance, with his health declining.
I also came to find out that “the Colonel,” his wife and admirable lifeliong partner, Lucile, would help him through these public appearances (truly!). But these assisted appearances were certainly infrequent and therefore very special to all attendees, important people in particular. I had very little idea of the favor I was asking of him. Yet he said yes!
Indeed, not knowing about our exchange of letters, I had been warned by faculty in my department, happily learning of my upcoming honor and presentation (after all, they were paying me to study there), to expect a pretty empty room but to bring at least five copies of my paper, on the outside chance someone might want to see it after hearing my speech — maybe at least the other student-finalists, who might like to see the paper that had won out (over theirs!).
You never know
Since I was allowed to use my department’s copier for this “scholarly” purpose (for free! –unheard of for us students – “that’s what Kinko’s is for”), I went ahead, with nobody looking, and made 15 copies of my paper. No one has ever accused me of suffering from low self-esteem. You never know! Maybe my speech will be a hit, and people will want to see the paper. I knew that Dr. Nichols will want one, if he actually shows up at my session. I really couldn’t be sure of that, either.
Well, he showed up at my session, and following him right into the room came nearly every A-lister at the convention, many of whom I had already met by this late point, the next-to-last day of the whole affair. Many of these important listening scholars had been treating me generously with their time, kindness, and encouragement.
That, I discovered, is what you get, when you attend an academic convention as winner of their contest for graduate research. They are recruiting — maybe for upcoming PhD study or even a junior faculty position. I took a deep breath. Now, Ralph Nichols, himself, would hear my speech, and so would all these listening-oriented, rock stars in my field! Oh my God. This is really happening.
I had already attended, at the convention, lots of the paper presentations from many of these stalwarts (and had sat and talked with them in the convention hall cafeteria!), especially of those I had cited in my own research. What a thrill!
I simply wanted to meet these authors, whose work had informed my own. And I did so, utterly clueless about the networking value, to me, a grad student who may soon be looking for a PhD program – or maybe a job! I had read their work. I had used their work in mine. I wasn’t trying to score points. As a grad-school rookie, I didn’t yet understand any of that. I just wanted to meet them in the flesh.
Speaking at the listening convention
But I will admit that many of the papers I’d heard presented at this, my first academic conference, did not exactly “come to life” in the sessions I attended. Worst of all, the majority of the presenters (more than half, I noticed) just stood up, when it was their turn, on whatever panel they’d been scheduled to join, and read their paper, front to back, to the audience. Some read better than others (after all, these are mostly speech teachers, some with backgrounds in theatre), but hearing lengthy academic papers read aloud can get tedious, even with some energy put into the oral delivery. That is not a “speech.”
There, in my very first year (of what would total nine!) of graduate study, I hadn’t yet taught a single class, let alone a speech class. Except for my high-visibility undergraduate education as a communication major (which included a number of truly public speaking events, I lacked significant training in public speaking. But I knew enough to frame up (not write it out) a real speech – not just a tiresome reading of my paper. I filled my speech with personal anecdotes stories, including what had led me to my research.
And I included some spicy events from gathering my data truly underground, on the subways of Washington DC (aka “the Metro”). My research methods professor had okayed this “site” as offering a truly “random” population, as my interviewing methodology called for.
I shared with my large and unexpectedly star-studded audience of listening experts that I’d had no idea what parts of town I was passing through, as I got off at one Metro platform after another, starting at the station closest to my basement apartment near the university and riding the 15 or so miles into DC, jumping off at nearly every stop, to conduct my tape recorded interviews on each platform, necessarily with “random” strangers. Then I’d hop on the next train that came along and get off at the following stop, for more recorded interviews. Smiles and head nodding from the audience, including Dr. Nichols, encouraged me: “keep it coming!”
The end of my Walkman — and me?
In my speech, I saved my best story for last. At one late stop, well past 9 p.m. (I was still riding the subway, wanting a few more interviews, for a more statistically robust corpus of data), I stepped off the train and onto the platform, only to find myself found myself in close company with a group that could best be described as a bunch of scary hoodlums looking for somebody to roll. For reasons that were becoming hastily obvious (safety-wise, at that place and hour), I saw no one else around on the platform. I needed to think of something, fast.
This was the dangerous scene I’d naively stumbled upon, as I diligently gathered my data along the various unknown (to me) stops of the DC Metro, a “site” approved of by my research methods professor as offering a truly “random” population, as my methods called for. At least that. It was a different time. Methods meant everything. Safety? It didn’t really come up, as my project won approval to move forward.
I told my audience that I was consoling myself, surveying possible doom, that if they find me dead on the tracks tomorrow, at least the abundant data on my tape recorder would be “statistically significant.” That got a laugh. I got a few laughs, actually, including an unintended one early on, when I uttered, “So today, I’m gonna — I mean I’m going to . . .” That did get a laugh from this speech-teaching audience, and I think I blushed a little. Blame it on my grandma — always correcting me: “Going to, going to — not gonna!”
Back to my story, to help you picture the scene, let’s just say that a nerdy white guy with a tape recorder and clipboard did not exactly fit in at this particular subway platform in a rough part of DC, which was experiencing a homicide epidemic, with crack cocaine very-newly a part of life (and death) in the city.
I had no idea where I was, but I knew that, every night, the local TV news reported on one, two, or maybe three murders that day or evening. Something told me I was in that part of town. As audience eyes widened, I started getting on a serious roll with my speech. And I just rolled with it!
Another train wasn’t coming for a while, so my instincts told me to boldly stride right up to them, like anyone else I might interview, and ask my sole interview question, as if nothing were wrong with this picture. I told myself, show no fear. Not to brag, but my esteemed audience was sitting, wide-eyed themselves — as I regaled them with the suspenseful events.
It’s all about respect
In terms of my specific research methodology, their actual answers to my research question mattered little, except for how long they spoke (the exact minutes and seconds), as a function of whether or not I was displaying the “six nonverbal indicators of listening,” as identified in my “review of the literature.” Would my behavior as “active listener” alter their timed duration of responding, as speaker? I was aiming to find out.
About age 30 at the time, I just strode right up to these scary, young bucks and said, “Excuse me, I’m doing research for the University of Maryland. I have just one question to ask you. Then I asked each one my special question, which had been carefully groomed, with the guidance of my professor, to serve as a question that did not require, to answer it, any “special knowledge” (which could skew my timed results).
I swear, I asked each one, in that setting, with a straight face, “Do you believe that children are less respectful to their elders nowadays?”
Looking as dutiful and unafraid as I could feign, I asked my question of the first one I came to, actually fearing that my tape recorder, a special “recording” model of the then-popular Sony Walkman line, might get snatched from me. There would go my prized and much-needed Walkman, and with it, all my data (the recorded interviews) I had gathered!
Instead, these surprised “people all wearing hoods” seemed to take my mission seriously, each wanting to give “a good answer” and having fun pontificating, in barely understandable (to me) English. Lucky for me, I didn’t neccessarily have to understand them, just log the duration of their responses. One at a time, until I’d interviewed them all, I asked each one my question and recorded their reponses.
The effect of listener upon speaker — as “proven“
As you might expect, the eventual analysis of my corpus of data verified my hypothesis: showing listening did matter, a lot, to the duration of speaker response — as I detailed in some pretty nifty statistical analysis. Comparatively, the control group (the interviewees to whom I did not make an overt effert to show the signs of close listening) gave far briefer answers than did my experimental group, who received, while speaking, plenty of the “six nonverbal signs” of listening. I’d keep on nodding (etc.), and they’d keep on talking — just what I was hoping for.
Those stories got a few gasps from my audience and also some laughs, and my whole speech went great, judging by the demonstrably supportive crowd and also the many lively questions that followed my prepared material. As the contest winner, I spoke last among the other finalists on the panel, The speakers before me had not drawn many, if any, questions from the audience – just the usual smattering of polite claps. I was swamped with questions and comments.
The Father of Listening weighs in
As the session had about reached its time limit and the panel moderator was thanking the speakers, Ralph Nichols – the Father of Listening, himself and the reason the room was full — rose to his feet. With Lucile smiling at his side, he proclaimed, “Now *that* was a speech!” He added, to my shock, “I wish more of you would present like that, and not just stand up and read your papers. Michael, I’m glad top tell you that you have a briiight future in this discipline, young man.” He said that in front of every important person in my scholarly world, at that time. Wow.
In two or three minutes, a few hundred secods that meant far more to me than any other month, across the entirety of my master’s program, Dr. Nichols paid me and my research methods a few more nice compliments. Then the moderator declared the session concluded.
After a mild rush to the lectern, my fifteen copies of the paper disappeared in seconds, with people asking me why I had brought so few! Could I please mail them a copy? I did do that, once back home in Maryland – this was Scottsdale, AZ.
My first-ever scholarly presentation, of quite a few to come, had gone pretty dang well! By snail mail (this all happened before e-mail), I was asked if I would initiate and lead, for the International Listening Association, a new “graduate student committee” for their organization, of which a year’s paid membership had come as part of my prize.
That, I did, to the happy approval of my faculty at Maryland. They had not “bet wrong” in offering to pay me, for two-plus years, to study for my master’s degree there (not at Cornell university, my other suitor, as they knew well) .
Best of all, that really cemented my mentor-mentee relationship with Ralph Nichols. And it also put me in great stead among many of the most prominent authors in my new specialization. That’s what you call a good start to grad school.
It’s all about your thesis!
And those relationsips greatly bolstered the research I conducted for my master’s thesis, where I proposed and outlined (complete with hand-sketched graphic model — computers not yet available for graphic design!) a theory of “listening in organizations.”
One such kind scholar, Dr. Judi Brownell of Cornell University, even met me for an hour’s interview (as part of my research) at a truck stop near my dad’s home in Apalachin, NY, as she passed by the tiny town of Apalachin, on her way from Ithaca to a conference in NYC. All arrangements transpired by snail mail. And it all timed out to perfection, with lots of special and priceless information shared with me. Amazing.
If you’re curious, here’s the main “news” of my 80-page thesis, which wrapped up my studies at Maryland. Unlike settings of “intepersonal” communication, in the organizational setting (basically, “at work”), the “six nonverbal indicators of listening” mean very little. At work, it’s not head-nodding that makes one feel “listened to,” it’s the follow-up action that does or doesn’t happen.
That, I argued, is what our listening literature is missing. When our corporate trainers (in-house or consultants) come in to provide communication training, their “listening” segments still focus on traditional material from the “interpersonal” arena. We are teaching “how to demonstrate the six indicators of listening” but missing the one that matters most at work: follow-up.
Speaking of follow-up
At the following year’s (1989) ILA convention, I did serve (as I’d done all year, soliciting membership) as the chair of the newly-formed “Graduate Student Committee.” Dr. Nichols (aided, as always, by Lucile, ever so helpful to him and gracious to me) and I even collaborated to put on a special session that I moderated, where fellow graduate students could personally meet and ask questios of The Father of Listening, himself. I believe (hard to verify) that this was his final appearance at the ILA conventions. Public speaking was becoming very difficult, by the time of that last appearance.
Talk about being at the right place at the right time. Thanks to a letter written, in some exhastion, at midnight, I had caught him just in time. Maybe it was mostly luck, so I do thank my lucky stars (and Heaven) for all of the above, including not getting my walkman stolen and my butt thrown onto the subway tracks — end of story.
And, speaking of our correspondence, in one letter I received after that second convention, he shared that, in some ways, he fondly thought of me as the son he had always wished for, one who would follow in his footsteps. Out of respect, I will hold off on any further details, but those sentiments meant (and still do mean) the world to me. But. clearly and obviously, there was no way I could ever follow in those trail-blazing footsteps.
Another story
But I’ve done my best, including now, for the first time, writing up this story for you. As I look back on all this, which I have loved putting into words for as the first post on this “Tales of Communication” slice of my new Up-Wordz.com website, I somehow wonder that, since he is considered “the father of listening,” I must belong somewhere on the family tree. Distant grandson of listening? I’ll take it.
After graduating from Maryland with my MA in speech communication, I moved back out to my adopted home state of Colorado, and became a “speech teacher,” myself (at least, for career starters), at the Jesuit college, in Denver, Regis University. Across thirty years there, I never stopped pushing, including special assignments and papers, the importance of listening.
Beyond that, I do try (if sometimes in vain) to practice what I preach. As Dr. Nichols knew and promoted, all his life, that’s the hard part. Writing about listening is one thing; doing it, well, that’s another story.