weLEAD Online Magazine

leadingtoday.org

Lessons in Linguistic Chivalry

How to Create a Listening Culture

By Jody Urquhart

Learn:

- Four Common Listening Challenges

- How to Listen Actively

- Exercises in the ABC’s of Effective Listening

- How to Manage for Consensus

Lousy Listeners Slaughter Enthusiasm

We approached our manager to share our ideas. Within minutes he cut off our thoughts, slaughtering our enthusiasm. Like a ransacking barbarian he robbed our ideas of their vitality. Worse, he couldn’t even forge enough dignity to pretend to listen. Instead he waited for his opportunity to talk and formulated his response while we spoke. We felt like ranting children begging against parents will.

Ideas carry with them enthusiasm. When employees’ ideas are disregarded, it endangers their existence as employees learn to guard their ideas and limit their input. This stifles creativity, risk taking, enthusiasm, passion and productivity. The well of ideas and enthusiasm see a drought. Employees at all levels need to be heard and listened to in order to feel that they belong and have significance and respect.

Ignorance Breeds Ignorance

The workplace is rife with opportunities for ignorance. When managers ignore their staff, employees ignore customers; customers ignore their contracts and sales plummet. It’s a chain reaction. Embroiled in the link is the need to be heard. Ignorance ignites ignorance. Ignore one person’s thoughts and they will ignore yours. Assumptions will fester, employees will misinterpret facts, agendas will become frustrated and people will lose their impetus to fuel their ideas. Enthusiasm is crushed and careers crash and crumble.

Managers who unveil the grand scheme of things without corralling others’ input should expect bland results. Employees are responsible for results. To get their buy-in you need to include their input.

Are people ignoring each other on purpose? Perhaps it has become acceptable within the work culture! Part of the puzzle is to develop simple listening skills. Everyone from managers to line employees should make listening a priority.

A TEST: Are you a lousy listener? Find out how others perceive your listening skills. Have 2 or 3 anonymous colleagues answer the following survey:

On a scale of 1 to 5, give the listener a score as follows: 1= Never, 2= Rarely, 3= Sometimes, 4= Often, 5= Very Often.

1) This colleague interrupts my conversation

2) This colleague talks more than listens

3) This colleague often is distracted while I speak, multitasking or doing something else

4) This colleague doesn’t indicate he has heard what I said

5) This colleague jumps to conclusions or tries to immediately solve my problems

6) I often don’t feel heard by this person

I suggest that if you score over 14, there is room for improvement in your listening skills. Practice the ABC’s of Listening exercises below and then have 2- 3 other anonymous colleagues do this quiz until your listening score is averaging under 12. Managers should have listening surveys completed on each staff member to check their listening skills. You may also want clients to fill out a similar listening survey to check how your staffs’ listening skills fair with clients.

Four Common Listening Challenges

Being Distracted: The Classic Type A personality. Often caught doing two or three things at once and they listen this way too. This listener’s attention is easily circumvented by other stimulus. This kills the life expectancy of a conversation and trains others to be short with their words. Listening requires a single -minded focus.

Jumping to conclusions: Some people are masters at frustrating a conversation by jumping to conclusions and bringing the conversation to an abrupt halt. Remember, most people think two to three times faster than others can speak. Don’t get caught in the trap of using that extra time to form your own conclusions.

Pretending to Listen: Lousy listeners train themselves to pretend to listen. Meanwhile their mind is really racing ahead with its own schedule of thoughts. These listeners cover up their deception with a false Uh Huh, Right, I see…or nodding their head as if they agree. The problem is some gullible employees may believe the false swooning and think they have their co-worker’s support and understanding, only to be misled. We listen faster than we speak, so you need to train yourself to pay attention and not let the mind wander.

Interrupting others: Some people habitually interrupt others, snatching the moment to stomp ahead with their point. Others have to clamor to get a word in edgewise and creativity stumbles. Priorities synchronize only when both parties are committed to pay attention. Conversation hoggers would be wise to learn some linguistic chivalry.

Lousy Listeners swoon over their own words while their co-workers feel handcuffed to the conversation, suffering in silence.

How to Listen Actively:

Four Steps:

A. Hearing. At this stage, you simply pay attention to make sure you hear the message.

B. Feedback & Interpretation. If you fail to interpret a speaker's word correctly, it leads to misunderstanding. Confirm you heard what was said by feeding back questions until what the person is saying is equal to what you understand. Questions confirm your understanding (or lack of); it also lets people know you heard them correctly

C. Evaluation. Decide what to do with the information you have received.

D. Respond. This is a verbal or visual response that lets the speaker know whether you have gotten the message and what your reaction is.

Avoid offering solutions too early. Many people just want to be heard; they need to vent and get things off their chest. Offering a solution too soon will frustrate them. By talking out loud people often solve their own problems anyways. Be careful not to jump in and provide a solution too early. Hear them out and only offer a solution if you think it will help.

Check your body language: Your body language gives away your intent to listen. For a poor listener, their body language will crack their façade. 80% of all communication shows up in body language. Active listening requires that you lean forward, even mimicking the speakers posture. Maintain eye contact and nod with agreement to encourage speakers to go on.

Listen for key ideas: Some folks ramble with little direction. Don’t be discouraged; active listening requires groping for key points and mentally pegging important ideas. Help keep the conversation moving with verbal encouragements (Ok, Yes, Go On) and open ended questions (What did he say? How come? Who was involved?).

Listen for the nonverbal. Many messages are communicated nonverbally by the tone of voice, facial expression, posture, energy level, and behavior patterns. Studies show that the nonverbal may be more important than the verbal.

Avoid Dead End Questions. If you want to get people talking, ask them questions that encourage interaction, not cut it off. Questions that require a yes or no answer lead a conversation to a dead end.

Focus on Content, Not Delivery.

A quick test- when you’re listening are you distracted by how often someone:

- says UM, AH, Yeah or other repeated phrases?

- paces up and down?

- puts their hands in their pocket?

- bites their fingernails or plays with their hair

If so, then you are focusing on delivery not content.

Speak the same language. A listening technique that strengthens a person’s confidence in their ideas is to feed back the person’s own phrasing or terms. And you reassure them that their ideas are being listened to and valued.

Present for Consensus. Instead of presenting ideas, ask for buy in. Instead of saying, “here is what is going to happen” present it as, “ here is what we are considering; what do you think?”

Suspend judgment: Imagine a coworker has capsized a conversation and is flaunting their authority while you are the innocent listener. Their bristling words are hard not to judge. Yes, some conversations are more exhausting than others. Regardless of the speaker’s wily ways, do your best to suspend judgment and keep the conversation moving along. When you find yourself judging someone’s perspective take a step back, judge the content of the message and not the speaker.

Paraphrase and ask questions: To paraphrase is to summarize a speaker’s message and show them that you fully understand their meaning. An example of paraphrasing is, “ Ok Bob I hear you saying that you’re not happy with the scheduling around here”.

Then ask questions like, “what do you propose we do about it?” or “ are you suggesting we…” These questions lead to clarification and buy in from Bob.

Empathize with the speaker. Often people just want to be heard. They may not even want any action or resolution. Before immediately spouting back solutions to their problems, just listen and show empathy. An example is, “ Bob I can relate, the scheduling is hard on us and I understand your frustrations”. Always respond to feeling first and then to facts.

Don’t believe everything people say. Active listening doesn’t mean you have to believe or buy into everything others say. Don’t lead people on to make them think you agree with them if you don’t. Show you have heard what’s been said and then state your point of view. A lot of conversation is often wrapped in ego, opinions and judgment, so try to separate the “fact from the fever” and don’t be persuaded by the approach. Instead listen for factual ideas and act on these.

Agreeing with someone’s point of view isn’t necessary, but understanding them is.

Exercising the ABC’s of Effective Listening: The following are listening exercises to practice with your staff

Exercise A: Practice paraphrasing. One person talks while the other actively listens and then paraphrases what is said. Remember to empathize and include the others point of view.

Exercise B: Discussion Partners.

In pairs, a facilitator talks about something for about 5 minutes

Partner A tells partner B what has been said

Partner B adds anything that has been “missed out”

Both partners practice good listening

Exercise C: Asking Questions to Clarify. Sometimes people neglect to ask questions because they are afraid the answer is too obvious. Practice role-playing where the facilitator explains something but doesn’t give all the details and then ask for questions to clarify the information. If people nod in agreement and nobody comes forth with questions, or ask only the obvious, then start questioning them… “So what do you think I meant by…?” If participants give you a blank look then you know your workplace needs to encourage people to ask questions when in doubt. Start by encouraging this to happen in the future and perhaps rewarding it when it does.

Don’t tell them, ask them- A Formula for Effective Management

For managers, listening should be more important than telling because people respond better when they feel included instead of commanded. This is a dramatic shift for some managers, so it requires practice. A good management training activity is to role- play, turning directives or commands (telling others what to do) into asking others to do things. Think of some things managers have to regularly get staff to take care of and brainstorm ways to “ask” them to do it instead of telling them.

For instance: Instead of saying “I need you to be more productive” ask, “How can I help you be more productive? Or “How can we be more productive?”

Sometimes it is just a simple matter of phrasing what you say as a question…

Telling- “ Brad, call the drug company and get those medications ordered.”

Asking- “ Brad, would you call the drug company and get the medications ordered?”

Using the asking approach you also get a yes/ no answer, so you’re getting commitment.

Managing for Consensus

A leader’s job is also to enhance organizational adaptability. You do this by managing for consensus. The surest way to get others to buy into organizational ideas and objectives is to make those ideas their own. Get employees to buy-in to ensure success, because people are much more responsive and responsible when it’s their ideas on the line. Implement tools that help regularly gauge and listen to employee’s input. You could try monthly focus groups, tie input to group performance and acknowledgement programs, have an implementation newsletter to keep employees informed, have an “ideas and efficiency session” once a month where employees are expected to show up with new ideas they have, and talk about how they implemented ideas last month. Even if employees can’t have a say in the creation of policies or objectives, they can have a say in the implementation. And they should. After all, front -line employees know the day-to-day business better than anyone else. It’s the consensus of the group that is important, not the policy itself.

Banishing Business as Usual

When good listening is a part of the day-to-day culture at work it squashes the ho hum “business as usual” attitude. Conversations will be fueled with passion for the work. People feel respected for their contribution and willing to give their best. The workplace doldrums will come forward and be addressed. Work can only be dull if the people doing the role aren’t committed and passionate. In a listening culture these dull candidates will not be able to hide their apathy. The spirited and impassioned employees will prevail.

Action Plan:

Practice the four keys to active listening

Look for common listening challenges in your employees

Practice Exercising the ABC’s of effective listening

Comments to: ido@idoinspire.com

BACK TO weLEAD HOME PAGE

About the author:

Jody Urquhart, a popular speaker and writer, is recognized in Canada, the United States and Europe, She has presented her signature topic, Joy of Work, to 65 organizations last year alone. Her monthly column on the same subject appears in over fifty trade journals. Jody is also an associate speaker for the Individual Development Organization in Vancouver where she works with Bill Clennan, the Dean of Canadian Speakers.

Jody holds diplomas in Professional Speaking and Writing from Mount Royal College and in Management and Marketing from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. She studied Management for three years at the University of Calgary. Her business experience includes management positions in both the banking and retail industries. Jody is a proud member of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers and holds the distinction of being one of its founding board members. Jody is the author of the book “ALL WORK & NO SAY TAKES THE PASSION AWAY”. To order your copy, or to discuss having Jody speak at your next meeting, feel free to email her at ido@idoinspire.com