| “Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.”
–Dr Karl Menninger, Psychiatrist and Author |
One of my clients asked me for
some quick tools to improve his coaching. What was my response? I advised him
to just listen.
Listening is the first step and
sometimes the only step you need to take. Engaged listening builds trust and
understanding. When you listen well, you'll more easily find questions to guide
the conversation productively. And the people you listen to will understand
themselves better.
How to Listen
Effectively
When you listen to your
staff, what are you really doing?
Listening
effectively is a neat mental trick where you open your thinking to someone
else's viewpoint. As you listen you have a chance to delve into their world and
see it as they do. It is the only way to learn about another person. Listening
is our interface with the thoughts of others.
As
you listen to their viewpoint, you must be careful to really hear it and not
judge it. If your mind is clouded with thoughts about 'what they should do' or
'how they are wrong', you will miss the reality of their current
thinking.
Of course if your mind is occupied by
any other thoughts at all you will miss a portion of what they say. Part of the
trick is to keep your mind still and open, focusing on the present.
Once you've heard their point of view as they explain it, you can
compare it to your own viewpoint or another viewpoint. By listening in this
way, you'll immediately notice what doesn't make sense, what's missing from the
story or what you are curious about. As long as you maintain an open,
non-judgmental attitude, a next step for the conversation will become clear to
you, either in the form of a question, or in a statement you make in order to
clarify their thinking.
For example, you may not
really understand what they mean. So you can ask them to explain
further.
Being Aware of Assumptions as
You Listen
The key to success in this
process is to be aware of your own and your coachee's assumptions and mental
frameworks.
Lets look at an example. Say you have
a team member Nancy who is very blunt in her communications and who often
upsets you with her direct pronouncements. If your other team member George
says “I don't like working with Nancy”,
you could easily assume that he is bothered by her bluntness. But by making
this assumption you could be missing a big opportunity.
For one thing you could be wrong. Maybe George isn't bothered very
much by her bluntness. If that's the case, you will misunderstand George and
completely miss the chance to coach him. You might give him some advice on how
to handle her bluntness. If he's eager to please you, or if he hasn't analyzed
his own reactions, he may assume her bluntness really is the problem. Or he may
go along with what you say but feel dissatisfied. The chance to raise his
awareness and empower him to think of his own solutions would be
lost.
On the other hand, even if you are correct
about what bothers George about Nancy, you will have missed the chance to allow
George to clarify TO HIMSELF what he means.
Our
feelings about other people are complex. It is often very useful to articulate
those feelings so that we can understand ourselves better. There could be other
aspects to his feelings that are the source of other solutions. But without
having the conversation, neither of you will ever know. And George will not
learn to think through these situations for himself. George will feel less
committed to any solutions he decides to implement.
Listening Well Leads to Good Questions
Another advantage of listening with an awareness of mental frameworks
and assumptions is that you will become aware of a host of alternative ways of
thinking about the problem, each one leading to different questions and
different potential resolutions. There are probably dozens of assumptions
implicit in George's simple statement about Nancy. For example, we are assuming that it
is a problem that he doesn't like working with Nancy. What else are we assuming?
Do you believe that listening well leads to good questions? Maybe
that's not true for you. Would you be willing to test the assumption?
If yes, then try your best to focus on listening openly, without judgment,
while keeping your awareness on mental frameworks and assumptions. You can
practice your listening with anyone around you. Rather than trying to coach,
just listen and see what questions come to mind and how well they move the
conversation forward productively.
Next month's
article will describe some of the barriers to effective listening and suggest
some specific solutions. So please send me an email with a list of what
stops you from listening well or any questions or challenges you have about
listening. I'll write next month with specific recommendations for you.
