CHAPTER 20
Do you listen well? People often fight so hard to be heard that they don’t pause and listen, I mean really listen, to what someone else has to say. It is easy to focus on stating our opinion rather than get clear about the opinions of others. Yet effective listening is the key for teams in building the WE and generating creative and innovative ideas.
To listen effectively requires an openness to be influenced. When you pause and really listen, you let in the other person’s idea. Their perspective works on you, influences your feelings, and evolves your thinking. This sparks generative ideas, creativity, and innovation. Steven Covey put it well when he said, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” We say, listen to understand, then respond.
PROMOTING VERSUS INQUIRING
People focus so strongly on promoting and advocating for their idea that they talk, rather than listen and inquire to clearly understand the other person’s idea. On teams this often looks like the leader or the loudest member dominating the conversation. When this happens it limits the team’s IQ, which is their resources to make decisions.
If you think of each person as having their own IQ (e.g., meaning smarts, emotional intelligence, organizational experience), you want to access their IQs when solving problems and making decisions. If you think of the team’s IQ as a pool of those individual IQs, you want to make sure that pool is as large as possible when solving problems and making decisions.
When you have the loud extroverts or the leader dominating the discussion and not listening, it limits the size of that team IQ. It’s as if the water gets splashed out of the pool as they dominate, and the other members go silent and opt out.
We commonly see this behavior the first time we join a team discussing a key topic. Let’s look at one team meeting facilitated by a fictional character, Ethan.
Ethan leads a leadership team of a mid-sized manufacturing company. Five people sit around the conference table, yet it is only Ethan (the president), Alison (head of sales), and Dean (in charge of manufacturing) who speak. The purpose of the meeting is to determine how to meet the needs of their new product success. Listen to the tail end of their weekly tactical meeting:
Alison makes a passionate plea: “Our demand is high! My buyers want more of our product now, or else they’ll go to our competitor. We need more product faster.”
Ethan, the CEO, paces the room, staring at the ground. “I hear you, but that isn’t our biggest issue,” he replies, almost to himself. “We should be looking at our pricing and making adjustments.”
“More product and higher prices?” Dean pipes up. “Really, people? No way. I am having a hard enough time keeping up production demand. If we don’t slow things down and do some maintenance on our production line machines, quality is going to suffer.”
The other two people in the meeting remain quiet. One pulls out his iPhone and checks his email.
Alison speaks up again, staunchly fixed in her opinion. “I still say the main issue is that we need more product now.”
Ethan decides to call it. “Okay. I hear you. We need to make a decision and time’s running out, but we have to end this meeting now. Let’s table this. Just know we need to make a decision by next week.”
Does it sound to you like they’re hearing each other? Are they even focused on solving the same problem? They certainly have different ideas of what needs to be done, but who would know? There is no active inquiry. The ones who even speak are only stating their case, and the others remain mute.
The biggest listening cop-out in the history of business is, “I hear you.” Does this sound familiar?
When we suggest people pause to listen to each other, they say, “I hear you.” This is not listening. Instead, it’s usually code for, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it. Now let me tell you my idea.”
In the above example, this team could wait a week, but they won’t get any closer to a good decision unless they choose to listen to each other. Listening is the major missing ingredient in the meeting.
A NEW INTENTION FOR LISTENING
We know it is a challenge to listen, especially when the person talking says something you disagree with or circles back to the same points. At this point, you probably stop listening, and your mind spins to come up with a strong counter argument to reinforce your position. It feels like war.
Instead of building your next line of defense, imagine listening with your mind and heart open to being changed. We know, this feels threatening, right? You could lose. But what if it isn’t about winning or losing? What if it’s about getting to the best, most creative, innovative idea? Ah, a different purpose—a purpose that supersedes you or me.
Wow! If this were the starting point for listening, how conversations would go differently!
Now, we don’t mean you should abandon your own opinion, no! You already heard us say: ”Be judgmental!” Smart people are. Go ahead and have your opinion. Just know that the conversation can’t be creative if you’re fixed on only your opinion, fighting to be right, and unwilling to be influenced by others. As a matter of fact, it’s not much of an opinion if it’s not strong enough to be tested, suspended, bent or twisted by teammates who are as smart and passionate about the vision as you are.
So, yes, have your opinion. But, also be willing to fully consider and try on someone else’s opinion.
Actor and screenwriter Alan Alda’s observation perfectly connects to our position on curiosity. He says, “Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.” Don’t you love that?
Studies show that when an individual is able to share his story and be heard—meaning, when the listener can not only reflect back the speaker’s words, but can demonstrate curiosity or empathy for the message content—the speaker is more likely to shift his position.12,13 This is the true source of transformation and influence.
Likewise, we find that when leaders and teams listen to each other, they dramatically increase their team’s IQ—the resources or information on the table that’s then available to support better decisions. As a result, they are much more likely to come up with creative, innovative solutions. And those solutions are better implemented because they have the buy-in from team members around the table.
Teams who practice the art of effective listening generate innovative ideas not just once, but repeatedly. That’s because team members show up with their own unique opinions, which are a necessary raw ingredient for creativity and innovation. When each person listens fully—with the intention of being influenced—people feel heard. When people feel heard, they loosen their tight grip on their opinions and allow ideas to merge, twist, and transform into something new.
Let us be clear: we are not talking about getting to consensus. We are talking about taking the time to hear and consider the different viewpoints around the table. Adults don’t always need to get their way, but they do need to feel heard and genuinely considered. When people are heard and considered, they more easily support the decision of the team, even if it is not their initial idea.
BECOME A POWERFUL LISTENER
Do you want to become a powerful listener? We hope so, because it will go a long way toward increasing your influence as well as your team’s IQ. Listening enhances your team’s ability to make better decisions, innovate, and implement new ideas together.
Here are three critical steps to improve your listening:
- Check your intention
- Catch the ball
- Demonstrate empathy
1. Check Your Intention: Are You Willing to Be Influenced?
When you listen with the willingness to be influenced, you show up differently. Willingness is evidenced through the statements people make and the questions they ask. For instance, when you are curious and interested in another person’s idea and want to understand it clearly, you are more likely to slow them down with questions such as:
“Wait a minute. I’m not sure I understand what you’re proposing. Can you explain it again?”
“Can you tell me how you came to that conclusion?”
Improve your willingness to be influenced by asking:
- Am I defending my position right now?
- Am I worried about being right?
- What’s our mutual goal in this discussion?
- Am I willing to try on their point of view?
These questions support you to create a path to the place where you are willing to be influenced.
2. Catch the Ball, Pause, and Toss It Back
Catching the ball and tossing it back means taking the time to reflect back what you hear the other person say. This does not mean simply repeating the words or data, though that is part of it. It means paying attention to the possible emotions and intent underlying what’s actually being said. Catch the words, as well as the heart and soul of your teammates’ views, by taking two steps.
First, catch the ball (the person’s idea) and hold it for a moment. This helps ensure you really understand the other person’s idea or point of view before firing something back. The pause is important! We’ve sat in so many meetings where people think they are talking about the same thing, but from the outside it’s clear they’re misinterpreting each other and arguing completely different points. Pausing helps you digest the other person’s opinion.
Second, toss the ball back by reflecting what the person is saying so that he feels heard. When someone feels heard, they more easily relax in their position and are open to hear your opinion. This creates buy-in on a team.
Tossing the ball back could sound like:
“So, do you mean [reflecting back your understanding of their position]?”
“I get that you’re upset. It sounds like you’re annoyed because you don’t think I care about the project. Does that fit?”
“I want to make sure I’m following you. You think we’re trying to solve a problem before we understand it. Is that right?”
When you do this, you validate what the person said. You show that what they think and feel is important enough for you to slow down and anchor it. They feel heard and important.
3. Demonstrate Empathy: ‘No Wonder’
You’ve checked your intention, you’ve caught the ball and tossed it back. Now, finish strong. Take a walk in the other person’s shoes. Even if you don’t agree with her position, are you willing to understand how she put the pieces together? Can you appreciate if that’s her story even if she’s feeling how she is? It’s not agreeing, simply seeing it from her perspective.
In our Individual IQ example, Ethan might have said to Alison, “Wow, sounds like you are getting pressure from your buyers to give you more or else they’ll walk. No wonder you are so stressed. I don’t want you to lose the business either.”
That may feel like overkill—and maybe in a team meeting, it is. But, sometimes taking that extra step builds trust. And that shows up later as buy-in—even when someone doesn’t get his way in the end.
If nothing else, be curious. Ethan could have said to Dean, “I had no idea we were taking our production to the limit. I know with your quality background that has to be difficult. What do you need in terms of maintenance time to feel solid about quality?”
When people believe you understand how they feel and why it is so important to them, they no longer have to fight to be heard. The energy of the conversation shifts. Often that frees up the discussion to move forward into problem solving.
What if you’re the one who needs empathy? If you’re frustrated and believe other people are not listening to you, or people keep doing something different than you’re directing them to, you can always ask, “What are you hearing me say?” This gives the other person a chance to reflect their understanding of what you’ve said.
We are all busy, passionate, opinionated people. But remember, each of us wants others to consider our ideas worthwhile. Improve your listening by checking your intention, catching the ball and tossing it back. And, by all means, demonstrate empathy. We promise it will make a difference for the people you lead and work with.
Now, what do you do when you are dealing with someone who’s defensive? Read on to find out.