Are You Listening to Me? How Can I Tell?

Are you listening to me? This thought comes to mind for many of us during conversations. How can we tell that someone is listening? Conventional wisdom is that body language and non-verbal cues indicate attentiveness. Is the counterparty nodding in agreement, making good eye contact, and leaning forward into the conversation? If so, they must care about what I'm saying. If not, then they are clearly disengaged.

New research suggests that this conventional wisdom may not be right though. In an article from UCLA's Anderson Review, Carla Fried reviews a stream of research by Hanne Collins and several co-authors. This research finds that people systematically overestimate the extent to which others are listening closely to them. They overestimate because they misread utterances or nonverbal cues... they think that the quiet "mm-hmm" or the nod of agreement signal close listening, when they may not represent that at all. Listeners may be using these conversational devices to "fake" close listening.

Collins and her co-authors instead suggest "conversational listening" as the remedy. Much like a stream of other work, including a great book by Charles Duhigg, they suggest that listeners paraphrase what they have heard and ask for confirmation, ask clarifying questions, and refer back to points made earlier in the conversation as ways to engage more effectively in a conversation.  In short, you must speak, not remain silent, to listen effectively.   Of course, you can not speak too much.  Interrupting without the intention of understanding more effectively can be highly counterproductive. Collins and her co-authors write, "“Conversational listening is a key building block of human social functioning. Information transmission, interpersonal connection, conflict management, happiness — the key foundations of human flourishing — hinge critically on our ability to hear, understand and respond to others.”

Three Voices Every Leader Needs

Fortune's Michal Lev-Ram and Alan Murray recently interviewed Otis Elevator CEO Judy Marks at Deloitte University. Marks offered some great insights to the assembled group of leaders from a variety of companies.  In the interview, Marks offered a great comment about the types of voices that a leader needs to hear now and again.  She specifically mentioned three voices:

You need a group of very trusted people who are going to tell you truth because things get filtered and they really do. So you need to call one of them a loyal irritant as long as it doesn’t really bother them. You need someone who’s going to kick you under the table every now and then and say, “Okay, enough, Jude.” Right? They got your point. Okay, it’s enough. Let go. You need someone who’s going to say, I think be really good if this got on your calendar because you can’t be everywhere.

We often hear about the need for that first voice - the devil's advocate, the trusted confidante and truth-teller.  However, the other two voices are interesting and important too.  First, you have to have someone willing to tell you when you've made your point, and perhaps you need to back off.  Sometimes leaders need to give people time and space to digest tough feedback and to determine how they want to adjust their actions moving forward.  In the moment, people can be defensive when the leader is pushing back, and just pushing some more won't cause them to listen more effectively.  They might just put up a bigger shield.  Second, you do need people who can help you determine where your intervention is needed, and when you need to make time to attend to an issue(s) that might not otherwise be on your radar.   Marks offers some good advice here.  Having these three voices and listening to them attentively can be very helpful for leaders at all levels. 

Build Relationships & Trust by Tapping Into Others' Expertise

Source: Noam Galai
Copyright: 2015 Getty Images

Jennifer Hyman co-founded Rent The Runway and currently serves as the CEO. Recently, she spoke to Stanford University students about her experiences as an entrepreneur and leader. Hyman described a critical meeting when she was first beginning to conceive her idea for the business. She landed a meeting with fashion-giant Diane Von Furstenberg.   During that meeting, Hyman asked for feedback about her idea, and she tried to learn as much as possible about the fashion business.   She asked many questions and listened actively.   Hyman explains the lesson she takes away from that remarkable encounter: 

Now also in that meeting, I asked her, “Hey, could you introduce me to a few of your friends, and I’d love to meet with them and talk about this idea,” because every meeting has to get you to like three other meetings. And so never leave a meeting with someone without asking them for that introduction. Now those other meetings led us to other people in the fashion industry, some of which were designers, some of which were publicists, but people that actually could give us real feedback on this idea and people that could see that like we were interested in listening. It was helping to build trust in an industry where we had no experience, where you go in and you actually allow someone else to give you feedback, like “How does that work?”

What ends up happening in a situation where I sit with you and I ask you questions and I ask you for your advice, you end up walking out of that conversation feeling awesome. You end up liking me in that conversation. Like whenever you make someone else into the expert, like that builds a relationship right away. And we needed desperately at the beginning of the business to build trust so that anyone would actually trust us to like take their currencies and inventory and not cannibalize their business.

Hyman highlights two key lessons here. First, don't leave a meeting such as this one without soliciting an introduction to others who may be helpful to you.   Second, people love being put in the position of expert sharing wisdom with others.  They want to help, provided you demonstrate respect for their expertise, come extremely prepared, ask great questions, and listen actively.   Treating someone else as the expert sets the tone for a productive conversation.   You don't have to grovel or patronize others; you simply have to acknowledge what you do not know and point out how they can help.   Very often, others will find the time to share their wisdom with you, even if they have a very busy schedule.  I've certainly found that to be the case in my career as well.  

Don't Eliminate the Small Talk

https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/small-talk

Like so many people, you might be tired of endless meetings.  Your calendar seems filled with a vast array of meetings, leaving you little time to do your own work.   You might be tempted to make meetings more efficient by just "getting down to business" and eliminating the "small talk" at the start.  I might suggest that you rethink that strategy. Small talk serves a useful function.  It helps us build relationships, create empathy and trust, and encourages us to seek to understand one another.  Dan Bullock and Raul Sanchez recently summarized a key finding regarding the science of small talk in an article for Fast Company.

Still, small talk has the power to make or break a job prospect, a networking encounter, and an intercultural relationship. Going beyond utility conventions and intentionally noticing the semantics of a conversation can land a new business deal or networking opportunity. In the business world, expertly crafted small talk can be used as the icebreaker that leads to the next business pitch, a fail-safe to get relationships back on track, or even simply as agency for building rapport with partners before a negotiation.

You may wonder why you sometimes feel like you’ve known a person after only exchanging a few words. The familiarity has its roots in interpersonal synchronization, where speech rhythms, walking patterns, and even breathing match with those of others simply from our shared perceptions that we notice as we acquaint ourselves with each other.

Findings from Princeton University in the act of human communication and storytelling revealed a powerful phenomenon called “neural coupling,” where our brains essentially get in sync during the act of storytelling. Researchers monitored audience members and storytellers via MRI machines and found that their brain waves synchronize during a powerful story, revealing that stories are one of our most powerful transcultural ingredients for communication. Just think of a networking situation where you jump-start a conversation with phrases like “Have you ever . . .,”; “What if . . .”; and “Did you know that . . .”

Stories can be lightning rods that supercharge our conversations, actively “syncing up” our minds so that we’re not just sharing meaning with each other, but human experience itself.

Facilitating Complex Problem Solving in a Crisis

Source: Sioux Land News

Recently, I moderated a lively discussion in which a group of executives compared and contrasted the problem solving and communication of two flight crews:  Air France 447, which crashed in 2009 and killed everyone on board, and United 232, which crash landed in 1989.   The latter flight tragically led to many deaths as well.  However, the crew did a remarkable job of bringing the plane to the ground, saving 184 lives.   Many experts credit Captain Al Haynes for his steady hand leading the crew as it landed the plane after a catastrophic engine failure.   

What did Captain Haynes and his crew do so effectively as compared to the Air France team?  Most experts point to the way that the crew members communicated with one another.   Haynes notes that they utilized their crew resource management training highly successfully.  What were the hallmarks of Haynes' leadership during this crisis?

1. He made it psychologically safe for everyone to contribute to the discussion.  No one, including Haynes himself, was afraid to say, "I don't know" and to seek help from others.
2. Haynes and his crew members "thought out loud" as they engaged in problem solving.  In so doing, they all developed a strong shared situational awareness.  They got on the same page quickly. 
3. Haynes and his crew repeatedly sought to confirm their understanding of each other's statements and conclusions.  They played back what they heard and asked if that was accurately understood.  They asked questions to clarify.  
4. Haynes insured that people understood their roles and responsibilities clearly.  In flight emergencies in the past, confusion can occur when everyone is focused on the crisis and no one is "flying the plane."  To some extent, that occurred on the Air France flight.   On the United flight, Haynes insured that someone was focused on continuing to fly the plane, while others tried to diagnose the problem and find a way to land the plane.  
5. Haynes didn't assume he had all the answers.  He was modest, and he recognized and acknowledged his own limits.  In so doing, he marshalled the collective intellect of the team.  

Searching for Leaders with Social Skills: Does Supply Meet Demand?

Source: NPR

Raffaella Sadun, Joseph Fuller, Stephen Hansen, and Tejas Ramdas have conducted a comprehensive study regarding executive searches and the skills sought after by companies when hiring to the C-suite. The scholars examined more than 4,600 searches for top executives between 2000 and 2017.  The study stretched across many industries and countries.   HBS Working Knowledge published a summary of the researchers' findings:

“The demand for social skills is increasing in every category of the economy,” says Sadun, the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. "But] it’s not about schmoozing.”

Instead, headhunters and corporate recruiters want candidates with soft skills who can:

• actively listen to others;
• empathize genuinely with others’ experiences;
• persuade people to work toward a common goal;
• and communicate clearly—or, as Sadun puts it, “touch the chords of listeners.”

Top executives who demonstrate this kind of interpersonal prowess are more likely to be in high demand, particularly at large, multinational, and information-intensive organizations, the research suggests. Those companies see social skills in the C-suite as more important than more traditional operational and administrative abilities, such as monitoring the allocation of financial resources.

The scholars pose a fascinating question after summarizing their conclusions.  They ask whether the supply of executives with these social skills is meeting the demand.  I would ask a related and very important question: Are companies investing sufficiently and effectively enough in the types of leadership development activities that can help foster and enhance these skills in their top leaders?  In far too many companies, I see top executives funding and supporting programs to develop these skills in young high-potential employees or in middle managers, yet they are not taking the time to invest in further development at the top levels of the organization.  Perhaps, more attention should be paid to building the social skills of the C-Suite on an ongoing basis.  

Becoming a Better Listener

Judah Pollack and Olivia Fox Cabane have written an interesting article for Fast Company about how to become a better listener.   Pollack and Cabane explain how our mind works while we are listening to others.   They argue that we "mentalize" while we listen.   Here's their description of this important, but perhaps highly flawed, sense-making process. 

When we listen, we don’t just hear a person’s words, we try and put those words into context. Neuroscientists call this "mentalizing," the ability to understand another person’s internal motivations and desires. When we hear a person’s words, we also try to imagine why they're saying them. And some of us do this more successfully than others.

What's the problem?  Well, when we mentalize, we often make assumptions about others.  A variety of factors may shape those assumptions (our own beliefs about a subject, the appearance of others, the other party's background or prior statements, etc.).   Unfortunately, those assumptions may not always be correct.   The other party may be motivated by something quite different than we have presumed.   If we are incorrect about their motivations, then we may miss vital information that the other party is trying to convey, or we might misinterpret something that they have said.  

How do we become better listeners?  First, we have to question our assumptions about others.  Ask yourself:  What am I presuming about the other party's motivations and desires?  How might I interpret their statements differently if my assumptions are incorrect?   Second,  we have to engage in thoughtful inquiry.  We have to ask non-threatening questions to try to unearth and understand the other party's goals, interests, and desires.