Do You Always "GET" What the Other Person is Saying to You?

If people don’t understand what we are saying, then we are just broadcasting instead of really communicating. We want to feel understood. We want to know that the person we are talking to “gets” what we are saying. This is why learning to express our understanding in a conversation is so important, especially in customer and employee interactions. It helps us to feel like we are listened to; and, it makes our communications more effective as well as efficient.

How does it affect the way you feel about a person or company when you sense that they understand you?

What other techniques do you use to provide feedback that you “get” what the other person is saying?

The definition of successful communication is message received and understood. While we may understand with crystal clarity everything that is communicated to us, the communicator needs to know that they are being understood. A feedback loop must be created to communicate back to the person engaged with us that the message they are sending is not only being received but understanding is being achieved. When we are the ones communicating, it confirms for us that we have expressed what we intended when our audience gives us feedback that lets us know they “get” it. When it’s “gotten”, we feel connected because we are really communicating.

Beyond simple head nods and affirming grunts, what can we do to show others that we have both received and understood their messages?

Here are 4 tips for confirming understanding:

1) Use confirming statements. This calls for the other person to listen to you to ensure that they have communicated what they intended. This is especially beneficial when looking for a resolution to a customer issue where they are emotionally charged about the situation and/or there are a number of complicating variables.

“Let me make sure I understand… ”

“Let me repeat this back to you… ”

2) Summarize key facts. Review your understanding of the critical issues. This builds agreement about the situation and shared values. It also provides an opportunity for the customer to relate any needs they may have overlooked as well as variables and barriers that may influence their decisions. 

“What I hear you saying is… ”

“So it sounds like… ”

3) Ask if your understanding is correct. Check in with them to make sure that you understand what they want you to understand. This gives them an opportunity to clarify any points or offer more information.

“Do I have it right?”

“Have I missed anything?”

4) Clarify misunderstandings if necessary and reflect your new understanding. When new information is brought to light or a point is clarified, reflect what you understand them to say and how it relates to the other information already provided. Instead of feeling like they are talking to someone who doesn’t understand, this reduces tension and builds feelings that they will be understood.

“Oh, it’s not… it’s actually…”

“I understand now that…”

Too often, sales agents may take action without thoroughly understanding the customer’s situation or real needs. Confirming your understanding helps you uncover more needs and recommend the best solutions with the highest value to your customers. If you are faced with a customer issue, don’t forget to use the techniques of assurance and regret to recognize the customer’s emotional needs and build a constructive rapport with upset customers.  

Lots More to Leadership, Listening and Gaining Commitment

PART VI

I hope that these series of articles have aided your understanding of these elements of managing people. There is much more to them such as the actions to put these concepts into practice, the specific “How To's" of listening. I encourage you to think about values and projecting high standards of them to your workforce. I did and was able to create significant per person productivity gains and achieved true excellence through happy, industrious, turned-on people.

Servant Leaders persistently engage in active listening and servant leadership practices reflect an enduring philosophy of leadership rather than isolated or even connected actions. It is a different way of thinking about the purpose of leadership, the true role of the leader, and the potential of those being led. It is not something that you do, but rather something you are.

Therefore, the listening construct associated with servant leadership implies a persistent communicative posture derived from the leader's core character and marked by 

1) personal self-reflection, 

2) an attentive attitude towards others, and 

3) consequent attentive practices.

Such a leader is one who ventures and takes the risks of going out ahead to show the way and whom others follow voluntarily, because they are persuaded that the leader's path is the right one – for them, probably better than they could devise for themselves. Thus, in addition to listening, persuasion appears to be a critical element in the formulation of a servant leader relative to the leader's communicative patterns.

I'd like to hear your comments, remarks etc on any concepts that I tried to portray in these series of articles on 'Active listening as part of the effective communication strategies.' 

Namaste!

Gaining Commitment - Understanding the Process

PART V

To be committed, one must have ownership. To have ownership, one must be able to influence. And to influence, one must be heard and be reasonably answered. So when management does the "WHAT IFs", subordinates are in reasonable control or ownership of their workplace. When nothing is done without their knowledge and all useful knowledge is shared with them, applying their brainpower to every aspect of the workplace becomes a worthwhile effort. They are suddenly released to their own motivations, otherwise known as being turned-on! In this mode, control is rationally affected through the worker’s self-control and through commonly held value standards since they and only they are used as criteria to decide what is “right”.

The above is also a part of the answer to the question of trust. With protected rights to knowledge, reasons and planned outcomes before execution, subordinates own the outcomes and can freely trust all because they themselves did it. The question of trust becomes less important and peace of mind prevails. There may be threats of external competition, but with knowledge and rights of ownership everyone will get behind slaughtering the opposition.

Note that in this mode, the boss provides information and assistance in moving toward being highly motivated/committed so each subordinate can take charge and come to their own conclusions rather than sit around and follow. In this mode, the boss has faith that people will effectively resolve issues on their merits and believes that authoritative declarations are self-defeating.

But too often direction gets in the way of ownership and this preempts commitment. This is a "cart before the horse" error common to many management techniques and styles. The most basic reason may be that bosses have no faith or trust. They don’t trust juniors to arrive at reasonable conclusions and thus deny them information, rationales, value standards and listening. These bosses are greatly limiting their own success. Leadership is trusting your subordinates to provide valuable input and it is rewarded by their trust in you and their commitment to the job. It has significant positive bottom line implications to your company!

Please come back tomorrow for the final part of this mini-series.

So, How is Listening the Doorway to Gaining Subordinate Commitment?

PART IV

First off, problems and difficulties occur in any work group with a predetermined regularity dictated by the extent to which employees are motivated/committed and the difficulty of the work. The lower the extent and the higher the difficulty, the greater the number of problems and the longer each remains before resolution. Highly motivated and committed workers continually strive for excellence. The more committed they are, the more they act to find solutions to problems. The less committed the less energy and thought they devote to correction and the more time they spend causing problems.

Secondly, I have heard many, many employees in the midst of a bad workplace say all they want is for someone to listen to them once in awhile. They state how great that would be even if little is ever done. That's real hunger! The obvious question is why should they turn on their brainpower in the morning if no one will listen? Why try to be creative to make improvements for the sake of productivity or quality, or make suggestions to reduce cost if NO ONE LISTENS? The answer is, it would be dumb to try if NO ONE WILL LISTEN. "To hell with them! Why make an effort if they don't care what I think?" Leave your brain at the door!

The sad thing is many bosses, high and low, are so busy giving orders and direction that subordinates do in fact decide to leave their brainpower at the door. This is very common. People with suggestions are viewed as troublemakers or whiners. "Shut up and get back to work." In this mode, no one can participate or be involved. They can only be a number or a pawn, and they know that no one Cares.

     WHAT IF people could put in their Two Cents any time they chose and management would always listen and get back to them with possible actions and/or answers?

      WHAT IF they were allowed to add their Two Cents again on this response and the process would continue until management had decided on a course which seemed reasonable to everyone?

      WHAT IF management only changed things after conducting this dialogue?

      WHAT IF in response to questions, our bosses were FORTHRIGHT and provided the real answers and their Whys?

      WHAT IF management took this one step further and went out of its way to provide information relevant to job, company and anything which might affect or be of interest to each employee?

      WHAT IF the working level could get in on the ground level with work plans and policies before they turned to cement, get in on what works and how it was to be done before starting? 

Would you like to be the boss of such a workplace?

Think what you could accomplish if suddenly your own brainpower was multiplied by the number of employees you have.

Please stay tuned in to tomorrow's article on 'Understanding the Process of Gaining Commitment.'

So, How is Listening the Gateway to Superior Leadership?

PART III

From the previous article, you may now realize that your leadership is sending some messages that need fixing. So, how can you improve your leadership? The solution is to go out and LISTEN, listen to complaints about your support, messages of low standards. Then correct that condition and do it to the receiver’s satisfaction. This corrects the problem thereby making the worker’s job easier, corrects your poor leadership from misleading others and provides living proof that you really care about your people. In addition, this process of detection and correction teaches workers how to solve problems, how to treat customers and how to use value standards in the workplace. One stone can kill more than one bird.

Luckily for you, these workers don’t use the value standards they got from you to judge what goes on around them. What they use are their own value standards and all of their values are good, for instance everyone believes in honesty. Since each worker has different standards compared to the next worker, each will be bothered more by one thing, and less by another. Taken collectively, they disclose most of the problems, if not all problems. And by the way, if most of them line up against one particular thing, rest assured that thing requires major fixing.

So, get out with your people, listen to their complaints and suggestions, and take corrective action. Corrective action may be just an explanation of certain details unknown by the worker. Whatever it is, corrective action must be timely, of unquestionably high quality and must include getting back to the originator to find out if your intended fix is acceptable (don’t put the fix into action before getting feedback). As I mentioned in the previous article on Leadership through Support, this is your leadership and you want it to reflect only the highest standards for every value. The values of significance are: honesty, industriousness, confidence, positive attitude, compassion, humility, admission of error, perseverance, fairness, forgiveness, forthrightness, trust, courtesy, grit, heroism, knowledge, integrity, quality, loyalty and selflessness.

Listening itself must be conducted in such a way as to reflect high standards of the above values. Your tone of voice and attitude are crucial. You must make clear that you know you are making the worker’s job more difficult than it should be, albeit without intending to do so, but that you are willing to make needed corrections. Let them know you are the supplier of support and they are your customers. Act like it, body language, facial expressions, smiles, etc! The customer is always right so, act that way and say it several times. In addition, you may have to ask questions to flesh out the problem or to get the worker to talk. Suffice it to say that bosses are scary people in general and you need to gain the worker’s trust before they can really open up. Making clear that you are their servant as concerns support issues is a big step in the right direction.

After you start hacking away at the forest of your bad or low quality leadership, workforce performance will improve almost in lockstep. Don’t be surprised, just keep at it. It makes no difference if you are a lower or higher level boss, the effect on the people for whom you are responsible is the same.

Listening has a large number of associated positive effects as well as opportunities for superior leadership not mentioned herein. The only additional effect I will discuss is commitment.

Please stay tuned to tomorrow's article on Gaining Subordinate Commitment.

Leadership through Support

PART II

We all know that every boss is responsible for providing support to the workforce. Support generally includes such elements as training, discipline, rewards, tools, parts and materials, technical advice, guidance and direction, planning information, documentation, procedures, rules and, last but not least, peace of mind.

Each element of support projects certain value standards. For example, tools can be of high, medium or low quality. They can be clean or dirty, easily available or hard to get, of the latest technology or the oldest, always or rarely there when needed, easy or too difficult to replace, complete with or lacking in adequate documentation, always or rarely operable, or somewhere in between these extremes. The same is true for every other element of support. Taken collectively, they constitute the boss’ leadership, actually the leadership of all bosses in the chain above the worker. This leadership stares in the face of every worker every day.

So, now that it’s out there for all to see, what does a worker do with all this leadership, these hundreds if not thousands of leadership messages? The vast majority of workers use these messages to determine how; industriously or lazily, safely or unsafely, courteously or discourteously, knowledgeably or ignorantly, expertly or sloppily, cleanly or uncleanly, openly or close to the vest (admit to errors?), caringly or uncaringly, honestly or dishonestly and so forth to do their work. 

Did I say caringly? Yes, the worker figures out from the quality of all this support whether or not the boss cares about the worker. In addition, whatever that standard for caring is, the worker turns around and uses it to treat the company’s customers and other people in the workplace. 

Did I say honestly? Yes, if the boss states that a particular tool or piece of equipment is adequate while the worker knows this is not true, the worker assumes that the boss knows better and thus concludes that the boss is being dishonest. The message is that a low standard for honesty is OK. "If you can do it so can I" takes over from there.

Please stay tuned to tomorrow's article on the Gateway to Superior Leadership.

Don't Leave Your Brain at the Door

PART I

Listening is not only the gateway to superior leadership but also the doorway to gaining the commitment of subordinates. Listening is the most important of all leadership skills. Leadership at its best is a coherent strategy to cause employees to utilize their full brainpower in performing their work; to be highly creative, productive, motivated and committed rather than turned off and poorly motivated as in "leaving their brain at the door." Although the full strategy is well beyond the scope of this blog, I'll attempt to present how leadership itself really works in a series of articles over the next few days.  [BTW, please note that these daily articles are NOT pushed out via email. You must visit this site (or subscribe to the RSS feed so that you will automatically be notified when new articles are posted) to access the remaining articles of this series that will be posted daily. ]

Deep in the set of normal human temperament is the tendency to broadcast rather than to receive. We would rather talk than listen; rather put out than to take in. Servant Leaders possess a temperament that values listening above talking. When one is leading with a purpose, this disposition causes one to be seen as a servant first. Thus, a leader's listening disposition encompasses getting in touch with one's own inner voice and seeking to understand what one's body, mind, and spirit are communicating. This type of active listening that undergirds the other qualities of servant leadership such as, awareness and empathy, requires listening not just to what others are saying, but also to our own internal voice.

To commit to being a servant leader, you must create time to reflect in order to understand who you are, and how you relate to staff, customers, and the larger community. The self-reflective listening is rooted in a genuine interest in the viewpoints and perspectives of those served. Attentive listening is basically an attitude – really wanting to understand. It is also a technique. But, the technique without the attitude is phony.  Servant leadership is all about taking the time to serve. In essence, a servant leader makes time for people to serve and support – even when there is not any time available.

Tomorrow's article will describe how that is done. Please stay tuned in.

Communicate Outside of Your Box

Have you ever been in one or more of the situations shown in these pictures below... folks sitting right beside each other... but interacting only with their smart phones... or similar other electronic gadgets.

We are a society focused on easy, "comfort-zone" communication modes... to the detriment of our physical, and personal interactions.

Rather than get outside the comfort zone and actually talk to someone beside us, we will often take the easy route of pulling out our technology.

We all know people bend rules for people they know and like. We also know that people want to WORK with people they know and like.

Your ability to truly get known and liked can not come through a "smart" phone, an email, a post or a tweet as much as it can through personal, face-to-face interactions with the folks you want to get known and liked by the players in your industry, the thought leaders in your fields of interest, and even the person behind you in line at the grocery store... because you don't know who they are or who they know!

Bringing "high touch" to "high tech" maximizes your relationship equity... so as to get known and stay top-of-mind with those who matter.

I have folks go out at lunch during my seminars and workshops and create conversations with folks they don't know... and they have had miracles come out of it.

Whether you are employed or unemployed, an employee or entrepreneur, the connections you make and nurture will always be the avenue for expanding who you are and what you do.

Please share this with those it could help.

Is Listening an Art?

When listening to another person, don't just listen with your mind, listen with your whole body. Feel the energy field of your inner body as you listen. That takes attention away from thinking and creates a still space that enables you to truly listen without the mind interfering. You are giving the other person space - space to be. It is the most precious gift you can give. 

Most people don't know how to listen because the major part of their attention is taken up by thinking. They pay more attention to that than to what the other person is saying, and none at all to what really matters: the Being of the other person underneath the words and the mind. 

Of course, you cannot feel someone else's Being except through your own. This is the beginning of the realization of oneness, which is love. At the deepest level of Being, you are one with all that is.

Most human relationships consist mainly of minds interacting with each other, not of human beings communicating, being in communion. No relationship can thrive in that way, and that is why there is so much conflict in relationships. 

When the mind is running your life, conflict, strife and problems are inevitable. Being in touch with your inner body creates a clear space of no-mind within which the relationship can flower.