Listening Archives - Connected Conversations

Whose Good Ideas Aren’t You Hearing?

As a leader, it serves you to consider where your own persona might be what’s preventing you from hearing the potentially valuable ideas of particular employees. Don’t miss the gems that aren’t expressed with the fanfare of a brass band.

Friends of my wife have a 2,000 acre farm up in New Lisgard, Ontario, about an 8-hour drive from either Toronto or Ottawa, where they raise beef cattle. Last summer, Jen and I decided it was about time we went for a visit, so we packed our rubber boots and told the kids they were going to see where hamburger really comes from.

Being a born-and-bred city boy, I learned a lot of things about life on a farm while I was there. For example, 2,000 acres covers a LOT of land and cows are really quite BIG — and how well Brad keeps track of the whereabouts, health and pregnancy status of all 300+ of them is nothing short of astounding. If Brad’s not there when a cow is giving birth, there’s a very real chance that the calf won’t survive. From a business perspective, the economic benefit that calf represented would be completely lost. The cow could die from the inattention, too.

If the farm you run is indoors, measured in square footage and has a human population versus bovine, then it’s the good ideas your herd is capable of producing that you can’t afford to miss. Beyond having to create an environment where new ideas can gestate (a great topic on its own), you have to be sure you can hear the moo of every employee who is trying to contribute.

As a leader, it serves you to consider where your own persona might be what’s preventing you from hearing the potentially valuable ideas of particular employees.

For example, last week I was working with a client — we’ll call him Jeff — who felt unheard by his boss. Jeff is keenly aware that he’s very shy and soft-spoken; he also holds the belief that decisions should be guided by facts. By great contrast, Jeff describes his boss as one who is always outgoing, loud, extremely confident and makes decisions based on his gut-feelings, without input from others.

When Jeff tries to give what he believes to be valuable input to his boss, his boss’s now-predictable response quickly leaves Jeff feeling overwhelmed, unheard and unvalued: he ends up retreating and shutting down.

Although I was working with Jeff to help him learn what he can do on his part to increase the likelihood of being fully heard by his boss, let’s consider the coaching tips for Jeff’s boss that could increase his capacity to hear Jeff fully.

Shift Your Mindset:

1. Become a servant leader.

“When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out

the best in ourselves.” — William Arthur Ward

2. The level of confidence and certainty with which one presents

an idea is not necessarily indicative of the merits of the idea.

Set the Stage:

Express to Jeff your desire to hear and consider his ideas and, acknowledging your tendency to dominate a discussion, give him permission to tell you if he’s starting to feel shut down.

Adapt your Communication Style:

Jeff needs to feel invited and safe to fully express himself:

⇒ Reduce the intensity of your vocal and physical expression to more closely mirror Jeff’s.

⇒ Leave enough silence so Jeff doesn’t feel rushed.

⇒ Encourage Jeff to say more by using verbal nods and showing curiosity with statements like, “Hmmm, tell me more.”

⇒ Ensure Jeff’s said his piece: “Is there anything else in this that you think is important for me to consider?”

⇒ Thank Jeff for sharing his thoughts and that you’ll give them further consideration.

⇒ Follow up with Jeff as to whether or not you implemented his suggestions and why. This doesn’t detract from your authority or send the message that you have to justify your decisions to Jeff, rather, it just demonstrates that you value his ideas. Even if one idea doesn’t prove to have merit, it doesn’t mean the next one won’t — and you want to be sure he feels invited to share it with you.

This is but one example showing what a leader can do to move past their own persona’s restrictions in order to receive the potentially valuable ideas a particular employee has to offer.

How’s your persona getting in the way and with whom?

As a leader, what can you change in your own behaviours to remove your barriers?

Lacking opposable thumbs, how likely is it that even a really smart cow could send a text message?

Have a productive and enjoyable day.

— Brie

Stacked Questions and The 3 Typical, Problematic Responses

by Brie Barker | Leadership Development

If you lead a team of people, be they senior executives, managers or support staff, you might be unknowingly asking stacked questions. The end result is that you’re not likely to get the information that led you to ask the questions in the first place … and you might not even realize it.

There have been a lot of courtroom drama series on TV over the past few years that I’ve enjoyed, such as The Good Wife, Boston Legal and Suits. One scenario I’m sure everyone’s seen is the lawyer who’s pummelling a witness on the courtroom stand with a relentless, continual barrage of questions. It’s a technique that usually ends up with the witness getting rattled and confused and either being discredited or, in fine TV tradition, cracking under the pressure and confessing to the crime.

Well, listen closely to people at work when they’re asking questions and, chances are, you’ll hear many of them asking stacked questions, i.e. ones that come one right after another with no space in between that gives the other person a chance to answer.

Unlike the TV lawyer, it’s highly likely that your co-worker has no idea they’re doing this. The questions may not have any hard edge to them either, rather, the person is just trying to get some helpful information from the other party.

Here’s the problem … when you ask stacked questions, the person on the receiving end is likely to either:

1. Only answer the last question that is asked,

2. Only answer the question they feel most comfortable answering,

3. Provide an answer that tries to address all the questions but doesn’t really answer any of them.

Why does this happen? Let’s consider the person on the receiving end of the questions first:

It’s going to be rare that the person on the receiving end is 100% present, in a perfect Zen-like state of mind where they are listening to you without distraction, ego or filters. Like most of us, they’re probably going to have a lot of other things going on in their mind, be consciously or non-consciously thinking about their own interests (hello, Ego), and be hearing the questions through a set of filters built on the historical, emotional landscape of the relationship.

Expecting the person to fully track, process and respond to all of the stacked questions is unrealistic. So, the person just tries their best.

Now let’s consider the person who’s hearing the response to their stacked questions: their ability to be 100% present to the other person is likely just as compromised as their’s is.

So, here’s what the average person’s brain will do in this situation: if the brain registers an answer that corresponds to one of the questions that was asked, it closes the loop, i.e. a question was asked and a relevant answer was received. Done! Perhaps the person will probe deeper to get more information on that particular question, but their brain is not likely to take them back to address the other questions. In other words, because the brain is just trying to keep up with all of its thoughts — or “mind noise” — the brain just lumps all of the questions they asked as “the question” and that the questioned answered meant “all questions answered.”

At best, the person will later realize that they didn’t get all the information they were looking for and then go back to the other person to try again. It’s like going to put on a clean shirt and only then realizing that one of the stains you meant to get out was still there. It’s not the laundry machine’s fault that you forgot to take your time to ensure you individually pre-treated all of the stains you wanted taken care of, right? (Sigh) Rinse; repeat.

At worst, the person will never realize they didn’t get an answer to the other questions and forget about them, perhaps until it’s too late and it causes a problem — having the CEO point out in the senior staff meeting that you’ve got a mustard stain the size of Wisconsin on your shirt will do nothing to help your career.

So … what should you do?

Become as deliberate and practiced in asking one question at a time and giving space for as full a response as the hotshot TV lawyer is in using stacked questions as a cross-examination technique … unless, of course, you’re trying to get someone to confess to stealing your sushi from the lunchroom fridge.