Managers and leaders have complained that the listening skills I train them to use will take too much time. I reply that every time you learn something new including advance listening skills, you will be slow with it. Over time you get faster until it is quick and easy to use the skill. That said, what are some situations that warrant taking the time to listen carefully? Here are 4:

1. If a situation is very important. If you are asking someone to take on a difficult task, you will need to listen carefully to their views about it. Much rework and waste comes from managers delegating a task and then walking away. The manager needs to feel the person out about how they view the task and will implement it. Misunderstandings frequently come to light. Listening will help you spot them before much damage occurs.

2. If creativity is needed. Two heads are better than one. If you can listen well, you can encourage a collaborative effort that will lead to more creativity. If you just want to delegate the task, you can still spark some creativity at the beginning by listening and brainstorming possible solutions.

3. If you view your job of leadership as providing a service. Robert Greenleaf, a manager at AT&T, coined the term of servant leadership and spent years promoting it. He came to the conclusion that listening is the number one skill needed to implement servant leadership. You put yourself at the bottom of an inverted pyramid as your informal organization chart. Then you seek to serve all those “above” you. You will ask them what they need. How can you help? Then listen.

4. If your goal is to develop leaders and others. Your listening encourages the other person to grow. Advice has its place, especially with new people, but listening goes further in stimulating people to take the initiative and grow professionally. I have known several managers to say, “I think my way is better than what Joe wants to do, but Joe is very determined to make his way work. So I listened carefully to Joe and decided his commitment to his way is what counts here. He will probably pull it off better than if I force him to do it my way.”

Good listening pays off. If you want to be effective in the above 4 situations, listen actively.

Listening skills is a full Module of my
Self-Study Program, and my Virtual Workshop Series,
Emotional Intelligence for Resilient Leaders and Professionals. My individual and group executive coaching enhance listening skills for better performance. Please see my home page, EagleAlliance.

Most of the time, however, advice is off putting if you give it too soon. The best course to problem solving is to start off with the facts that the other person can agree to. Then ask them how they view those facts. They may see the problem much differently than you suppose. And they may have facts you don’t know about.

An example of this occurred when I played football as the quarterback. The factual “problem” was that we were just 3 yards from a touchdown but only had one play left to get it with. The coach thought he would give me advice. He sent in a player who told me the coach wanted us to run our off-tackle play. That meant sending our full back right up the middle. But my end told me in the huddle that he could definitely block his defensive end inward if I wanted to call an end run play. I did call an end run. It worked for our touchdown.

Take heed and ask people what they know and what they propose to do about a problem. Listen well. Then ask if they want your advice. If they sincerely say, “Yes,” then you are in a good place to offer advice.

Avoid the temptation to look smart by giving advice. Instead, try to facilitate the other person looking smart. Let them come up with their own solutions. They will be more committed to implementing them at any rate. And they will enjoy working with you and be more likely to tell you about problems sooner.

Good listening pays off. Advice rarely does. Or do you have a better track record than most of us? Ask yourself, “How often have people run right out to follow your advice?” I have asked many leaders that question, and to a person, they have admitted, “Not often.” More often, leaders say that people tell you “Yes, yes,” but drag their feet in actually doing it.

Listening skills is a full Module of my Self-Study Program, http://www.eaglealliance.com/services/gec/ssinfo/, and my Virtual Workshop Series, Emotional Intelligence for Resilient Leaders and Professionals. My individual and group executive coaching enhance listening skills for better performance. Please see my home page, EagleAlliance.

What gets in the way of this crucial interpersonal skill of staying open and curious?

You have preconceived notions about the other person. If you rate their intelligence as lower than needed for a task, you are less likely to hear them out. Or you think they lack pertinent experience, you may have a negative knee jerk reaction. But often the person with experience outside the box will come up with the novel viewpoint that solves the problem.

To overcome this preconceived notion problem, try to cultivate a “beginners mind.” That means you humbly approach a new venture or conversation with a sense of adventure. Who knows what lies ahead? Pretend you are in the Lewis and Clark exploration. Someone is giving you a report of what they think lies ahead. Be humble and listen well. It might save you a lot of time or effort. Drop your arrogance of thinking you always know best. Humility is necessary if you want to cultivate your listening skills.

Another thing that sometimes gets in the way is boredom. You listen a bit and then decide you know what is coming next so you get bored. You daydream. It is better to guide the conversation into a new topic and stay listening.

Another common problem for listening is your desire to be right. If you disagree about something, you may get into making the other person wrong so that you get to be right. You lose the opportunity to possibly learn something because you have lost openness and replaced it with the need to be right.

Another problem is your desire to fix people. You know someone is wrong and causing problems for other people. You enter the conversation to fix them. Even if you definitely do need to have a performance management conversation with them to correct something, you do not want to abandon your listening skills. First find out how they view the problem and what they might be willing to do to fix it. You may not have to fix them at all with any advice of yours. And they will be more motivated because you listened to them.

My individual and group executive coaching enhance listening skills. Listening skills is a full Module of 4 sessions in my Virtual Workshop Series, Emotional Intelligence for Resilient Leaders and Professionals.

I propose that we first just listen with an open mind. Later, we can turn to judge the worthiness of their views. One way to do this is to remind ourselves to stay curious. If you concentrate on staying curious, you will delay your angry, argumentative response. Give the other person time to fully express themselves.

If you are sure that you will disagree, you may want to say something like, “I disagree with you but I do want to hear you out fully.” This alerts them that your good listening is not the same thing as agreeing. People jump to that conclusion. And we fear them doing that so we often avoid listening intently when we know we disagree. It is better to alert them that you disagree as above and continue to listen intently.

If you are preparing for a difficult conversation and you expect to become angry, coach yourself by saying to yourself, “Stay curious,” many times. As you approach the person, calm yourself with some method such as taking 3 deep breaths and with each exhale, say to yourself, “Stay curious.” Then during the conversation, keep saying this silently to yourself to diminish your anger.

For example, I once coached an executive director to talk with individuals on his Board of Directors who he knew wanted him to resign. He expected animosity to arise during the conversations. He needed to find out exactly what he had done to make these Board Members want him to resign. He needed to ask them for specifics so that he could correct his behaviors. I coached him as above to stay curious. He said this to himself as he felt his own anger arising. He was able to stay focused on asking for feedback and stay in the listening mode so that the interviews were productive.

My individual and group executive coaching enhance listening skills. Listening skills is a full Module of 4 sessions in my Virtual Workshop Series, Emotional Intelligence for Resilient Leaders and Professionals.

Initially, it is worth the effort to stay open and concentrate on listening without trying to judge who is right or wrong. Stephen Covey in his book, The 7 Habits of Effective People, asserts Habit 5: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” First in terms of timing and first in terms of importance, seek to understand. How can you seek to understand if you are already into judging? Seek to have people say of you, “He or she is an understanding person.” That means they feel you are a good listener too.

It also means that people will be glad to cooperate with you. When you are listening well, people feel affirmed. That makes them want to work with you enthusiastically. Your good listening can also help to unlock their creativity.

As Carl Rogers wrote, “When someone really hears you without passing judgment on you, without trying to take responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it feels darn good… When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and go on. It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens. How confusions that seem hopeless turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard.” From Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, p.113.

This is the impact of good listening. We can make this our gift to others. And what goes around comes around. Others will be glad to make gifts to us.

Listening skills is a full Module of 4 sessions in my Virtual Workshop Series, Emotional Intelligence for Resilient Leaders and Professionals.

Why do you think he asserted that? Pause for a moment and come up with your own answers. We do this in my Virtual Workshop Series, Emotional Intelligence for Resilient Leaders and Professionals. Reflecting on such questions builds your ability to be emotionally intelligent. We reflect together to surface the wisdom of the group. What answers have you thought of?

When we truly listen to others, they feel affirmed. This enhances their self-esteem and ability to be resourceful. They can be more creative when they see that their leader values their opinions and emotions. We all know this is true from our own experience. And we see the opposite happening all the time too. Leaders giving directions without taking the time to listen. We know this tends to build passivity. Followers do what they are told, but their enthusiasm and commitment tend to wane.

At its worst, controlling leaders use the TALK method of communicating:

T = Tell them
A = Argue about it
L = Let nothing go
K = Kick fanny.

As long as the leader knows exactly what needs to be done this method gets some results. But today as complexity grows, we need people who are inspired to be creative, not passive. We need their resourcefulness to help solve increasingly complex problems.

Listening will help build their resourcefulness. So to encourage your direct reports and others to be enthusiastic and committed, listen.

Listening skills is one full Module of 4 sessions of my Virtual Workshop Series, Emotional Intelligence for Resilient Leaders and Professionals.

1. Content - What is the other person saying about actions, beliefs, etc.? How do they describe them? How do they evaluate them?

What others say may trigger an adverse reaction from you if you strongly disagree. Unfortunately, what you may do then is to stop listening. You may start to calculate where the other person is wrong and how to formulate your rebuttal. Or you may decide to go passive and mentally just drop out of the conversation. This lack of good listening can do you harm. It is better to pause in the midst of your negative reaction and decide to go back to listening. Remind yourself to stay tuned in so that you can at least know clearly what they are saying. Ask follow up questions to get the facts straight.

2. What are their emotions?

To be an emotionally intelligent listener, you need to listen between the lines of content to hear the emotions that may lie beneath the spoken word. If you want to be able to read people better, this is a crucial step. Give it some mental energy and time. Guess what they may be feeling such as anger or frustration.

You may ask them what they are feeling, but usually they will reply with a thought. “I feel that John should do X.” It is better to guess at their feeling and put that guess into a question. “I sounds like you are angry at John. Is that right?” When you verbalize their emotion, you can help them get clear about it and talk about it.

3. What are their needs/values?

Ask, “What is important to you about this…?” Or ask, “What really matters to you…?” Few people understand how valuable this step is. If you can listen deeply to their needs and values, you can often see what you need to do about this problem. And you can learn how urgent it is to them to get a solution.

4. What requests do they make?

What would they like to see happen? Ask them to make this specific. You can help them to boil down their general dislike of something into a specific request for action. Then follow up with a question such as, “What would that look like?” to sharpen the focus.

In summary, Have an agenda of what to listen for, the above 4 items. Then your listening goal is to ask good questions to get at these items.

Listening skills is one full Module of 4 sessions of my Virtual Workshop Series, Emotional Intelligence for Resilient Leaders and Professionals.

Step 1. Observe what is happening and describe it to your neighbor. “Your dog is out barking at night sometimes as late as midnight. This barking keeps me up because I need to go to sleep at 10:30 PM. Would you be willing to discuss this?”

Open the conversation with facts about a situation. Avoid starting with any judgments or evaluations which might cause the other person to go on the defensive. Ask if this is a good time to discuss the matter.

Step 2. Look inside to notice your feelings. Let’s say you are frustrated and irritated. If you had already talked with your neighbor to no avail, you might be up the scale of anger. If you had talked several times, you might be furious. Consider whether to express your feelings or not. Ponder how to manage your feelings. Most social blunders occur because a person is not aware of their feelings or those of others. Becoming aware makes you more sensitive and emotionally competent.

Step 3. Look inside to notice what you need and value. You need peace and quiet late at night. You value a good night’s sleep because you have to concentrate hard on your job. So you also value being competent on the job. Consider whether to express these things or not.

If you postpone expressing yourself, ask the other person their point of view. “Are you aware that your dog is barking so late?” If yes, “How do you view that?” Probably they don’t notice it or fail to realize that it is loud enough to bother neighbors.

If you opt to express yourself, you might say, “I feel frustrated and irritated by the dog’s barking because I need to get a good night’s sleep to function well on my job the next day.”

Step 4. Make a request of yourself or the other person. A request of yourself might be, “Buy ear plugs.” A request of another might be, “Having heard me say this, what comes up for you?” This request will get you feedback on where the other person stands. It is better to learn this before suggesting solutions.

Finally, you could make a request for the neighbor to bring in his dog at 10:30.

This exact scenario happened to me once. At the end, my neighbor explained that her dog had never been house broken and she could not bring it in. I just kept on emphasizing my need for good sleep. I never criticized her. If I had called her a bad neighbor, she might not have stayed receptive to my needs. Finally, she gave the dog away to a farmer.

Do you want to get better at this conflict management process? Eagle Alliance Executive Coaching offers you 3 ways at our web site, http://www.EagleAlliance.com:

1. Free articles
2. Free book chapter
3. Virtual Workshop Series, Emotional Intelligence for Resilient Leaders and Professionals has a full Module on this topic.

Call me, Bill Murray, for more information at 919-419-9460.

This article will concentrate on step no. 4 below. Other articles have already covered steps 1-3.

You can manage conflicts and maximize connection with this 4-step process. Ask yourself the following 4 questions. Then ask the other person(s) some or all of these same questions.

1. What are your factual observations?

2. How do you feel?

3. What do you really need or value?

4. What requests do you make?

Once you have observed factually what happened, how you feel about it, and what you really need now in this situation, you are ready to create a strategy to get what you need. Having gone through the first three steps, you become more resourceful at creating a strategy that builds on your core values.

Now you express this strategy in terms of a request for yourself or someone else. You might request of yourself to be more assertive and take a specific assertive action. Or you might request of the other person(s) to dialogue with you about this situation. For example, “I wish to talk with you about X situation, would you be willing to discuss it now?”

For the dialogue option, you will start the conversation with step 1, stating your factual observations. Then you may choose how much you want to express with steps 2-4. Quickly you will want to ask the above questions in steps 2-4 of the other person too. Do not talk too long yourself. Do more listening. Remember, we have two ears and one mouth. So listen twice as much as talking.

When you both understand what the other needs and values in this situation, you may request that you both brainstorm solutions that would meet both your needs. You become allies seeking common ground and a win/win solution. For example, you might request, “Would you be willing to join with me now in seeking together a win/win solution?” Then dialogue. We offer a full Module on Dialogue skills in our Virtual Workshop Series, Emotional Intelligence for Resilient Leaders and Professionals.

Using the above 4-step conflict management process will help you to reach an understanding of what is important to each of you before you launch into trying to fix something. Understand and get rapport first, then you will be more resourceful and accurate when you move to finding solutions.

Do you want to get better at this conflict management process? Eagle Alliance Executive Coaching offers you 3 ways at our web site, http://www.EagleAlliance.com:

1. Free articles
2. Free book chapter
3. Virtual Workshop Series, Emotional Intelligence for Resilient Leaders and Professionals has a full Module on this topic.

Call me, Bill Murray, for more information at 919-419-9460.

This article will concentrate on step no. 3 below. Other articles have covered step 1 and 2 and the next will cover 4.

You can manage conflicts and maximize connection with this 4-step process. Ask yourself the following 4 questions. Then ask the other person(s) some or all of these same questions.

1. What are your factual observations?

2. How do you feel?

3. What do you really need or value?

4. What requests do you make?

In the midst of conflict, we are often fuzzy about what we really want and we often lose sight of what we started out to get. Therefore, it is crucial to know clearly what you need or value.

Businesses stress the importance of strategic thinking. Part of that skill is seeing the big picture, what we and the organization really need. In any given situation, we need to know what is important. Much of the time, we do not. We rush around and fail to take the time to clarify what is truly important in a particular situation.

We practice this strategic thinking skill in the first Module of my Virtual Workshop Series, Emotional Intelligence for Resilient Leaders and Professionals, which devotes the entire Module to strategic thinking. How you practice is to keep on asking yourself the questions, “What is important here?” Do not settle for your first answer. Instead, keep on asking the question to dig deeper. We call this peeling the onion.

For example, if someone named Bob is making noise in the office next to yours, what do you want? Your first answer is quiet so you can be fully productive. If you act immediately, you may demand with an edge in your voice that Bob stop the noise. Instead, you pause to reflect, “What do I really want here?” You decide it is important to you to keep a good relationship with Bob. So you politely point out that his noise level exceeds your tolerance that you need to concentrate. In complex conflict situations, it is much more difficult to sort out what is most important to you, but worth the effort.

When we pause to get clear on what is important to us, we shall also get more resourceful. A Pepsi advertisement used to say, “The pause the refreshes.” For our purposes, it is “the pause the resources.” With more resourcefulness, you will create better strategies for getting what you most want.

Do you want to get better at this conflict management process? Eagle Alliance Executive Coaching offers you 3 ways at our web site, http://www.EagleAlliance.com:

1. Free articles
2. Free book chapter
3. Virtual Workshop Series, Emotional Intelligence for Resilient Leaders and Professionals has a full Module on this topic.

Call me, Bill Murray, for more information at 919-419-9460.