A method and system for operating at least two noise cancelling headphones, each headphone being switchable between a noise cancelling mode of operation and a transparent mode of operation, and each headphone including a microphone, a speech recognition processor and a wireless transceiver. The method includes monitoring sound in the ambience of each headphone picked up by the corresponding microphone for speech using the corresponding speech recognition processor; and monitoring the ambience of each headphone with the corresponding transceiver for a wireless mode control signal. The method includes switching the one of the headphones into the transparent mode of operation and sending the wireless mode control signal from the one of the headphones to at least one other of the headphones using the transceivers if speech is recognized in the picked up sound of one of the headphones. The method further includes switching the at least one other of the headphones from the noise cancelling mode of operation into the transparent mode of operation if the wireless mode control signal is received by the at least one other of the headphones from one of the other headphones.