By Judith E. Glaser | Leadership Excellence
Published August 2007
Ask questions to communicate better.
For a manager, listening is the basic tool for collecting information needed for timely and effective decision making. Whether your talents are in sales, systems engineering, administration, a support center or headquarters staff, gathering and effectively assessing relevant information is key to your success.
The listening mind is never blank or impartial. Our listening is influenced by events, relationships, and experiences—all adding to what we hear and changing the meaning. As objective as we would like to be in our listening, we are subject to the effects of our physical and emotional states. Being tired, angry, elated or stressful predisposes us to selectively attend to what we hear.
Recall a recent situation where you were a listener—perhaps a speech delivered by an executive or a discussion with a coworker. Did you listen to facts or to specific words? Did you paraphrase these words in your mind? Did this lead to new impressions? Were you affected by the speaker’s voice, dress, demeanor, mood, or attitude? Were you evaluating the speaker’s effectiveness? Were you judging his or her ideas? Or, were you so preoccupied that you didn’t listen at all?
Since we can’t attend to everything we hear, we listen selectively. But what guides our listening? Why do people who hear the same speech often walk away with different impressions? Obviously, they didn’t “hear” the same thing.
We hear one-sixth as fast as we think, and so the mind has the time to construct questions, inferences, and associations. Do we use this time wisely? Do we recognize that ineffective listening is a management problem?
Listening Behaviors
Consider these four types of listening behavior in business:
1. Noise-in-the-attic listening. We may think that being a good listener is merely sitting silently while others talk. Outwardly, we appear to be listening. Inwardly, however, we are listening to the “noise in the attic.” When we listen with this posture, we are disengaged from the speaker’s ideas and involved in our own mental processes.
Noise-in-the-attic listening tends to develop from childhood experiences. As youngsters, how many of us heard: “Don’t talk while I’m speaking!” “Don’t interrupt me!” “Don’t ask so many questions!” “Why? Because I said so!”
Conditioned by these warnings, many of us turn off our minds and habits of inquiry. Instead of clarifying the speaker’s intent, we are preoccupied with our own internalizations: “Who does she think she is?” “I can do his job better than he can.” Or, we may find ourselves planning a trip, remembering a pleasant experience, or even completing a thought— returning from time to time to listen to what is being said. Sound familiar?
2. Face-value listening. We think we are hearing facts, when the words we are hearing are interpretations. In face-value listening, the listener isn’t mentally “checking back” into the real world to see whether the words explain what they purport to explain. Words are heard more for their literal meanings, not as tools for understanding. This explains why executives, managers, and staff can differ dramatically in their perceptions. Children use face-value listening, since their experiences are so limited. Our experiences should add depth to our listening. Sadly, many of us hear, rather than listen. Good listening requires guided thought.
3. Position listening. Business has its own listening problems. Employees, alert for clues to their performance, are often victims of position listening, a highly partial form of listening. For example: A manager might listen to her president’s annual report to determine whether her division will be growing. What she hears in that talk could easily affect her performance during the year as well as her relationships with coworkers. She will listen to immediate superiors to determine her role. Obviously, position listening can lead to faulty assumptions and destroy the morale of a high-performing team.
4. Precision listening. Precision listening is the art of knowing how to listen and how listening affects performance. Listening is not an end in itself, but part of a chain of processes that end in a decision, strategy, or change in behavior or point of view.
Why we listen determines the type of information we listen for. Salespeople listen for customer concerns. Lawyers listen for the opposing speaker’s faulty logic. Psychiatrists listen for unconscious motivations. These bits of information are important for the listeners to do their jobs successfully.
Training has taught them not to listen at face value, and to use the time lag between their hearing and speaking to evaluate what is said. At the same time, they don’t dismiss their emotional response to the speaker, their “feel” for the situation, or their hunch of what might happen next. A framework telling them how to influence a person also guides these professionals.
In sales, the marketing rep wants to influence a customer from a point of no interest to a commitment to buy. The lawyer tries to influence the jury to his or her point of view. The psychiatrist works to influence the patient toward new insights about personal behavior, motivations or view of the world.
Executive as Precision Listener
Business executives need to focus on interpersonal influence. Who is being influenced and why? What ideas, beliefs, and behaviors need to be influenced for the person to be more effective?
What do I know about this person that will help me better understand her and what is being said? Are her problems or concerns such that we can effect real changes, or are they out of reach in the business context?
The executive examines the way she or he answers the employee. Will the person listen better if the answers are short and sweet or will listening improve if these statements contain more background information?
In practicing precision listening, the executive listens carefully to the employee’s answers—to phrasing, context, and words used to get clues to the real meanings behind the words. To reduce the ambiguity of meaning and intent, the executive will ask questions, rephrase and restate what was heard.
Precision listening helps us peer into the minds of others, enabling us to set more helpful, meaningful, and satisfying objectives for action.
When we adopt the framework of navigational questioning and use precision listening as a tool, we improve our ability to communicate and make more timely and better decisions.
Navigational questions include: What is the situation? How are you approaching it? What outcomes do you want to create? What are you focusing on? What resources do you need? What assumptions do you hold? What does success look like? How will you measure success? What is holding you back? What are your strategies for moving forward? How will the desired outcome impact you and others? How will you prepare everyone for the potential changes? How will you reduce fear? What new ideas and approaches are you considering? How will you introduce them to others? How will you engage people in creating the new outcomes? What would you like to see happen? How important are these changes to you? What would happen if these changes did not take place? What are the implications if they do take place? Who will benefit from the changes? How can you ensure the right people are engaged?
