Archive for March, 2013
Listening Skills Strategies—Case #2 Tips for Interacting with Extra-Personal Listeners
In your dealings with Manuel you find him to be verbal, people-oriented, quick, and enthusiastic. He’s a good example of an Extra-Personal Listener. He’s fast paced and will expect Iain to respond in his time frame.
So, here we are, coaches, to help Iain interact effectively with Manuel, and the sooner the better before any negative patterns develop between them. That is more apt to happen when people work virtually. Following is some advice for Iain as he prepares to talk face-to-face with Manuel about how they will work together effectively.
- Manuel is concerned about people, so that’s the place to start. Listen to what he asks about the impact of information or decisions on others. Openly share what and whom you know and offer to make connections.
- It will be a challenge for Manuel to work virtually because he likes to be in the midst of a team. Get clear about how often he wants to communicate, how, for how long, with whom, and for what purpose. Extra-Personal Listeners need people to listen to, so don’t isolate him.
- Slow Manuel down by using questions. Extra-Personal Listeners have a tendency to think on their feet and can be very talkative. By asking questions of Manuel when you’re listening, he has to slow and think. That will give you both time to pause, something that you desperately need, for you to translate what Manuel is saying into your own interests or ideas, and for Manuel to reflect. It’s crucial that you take sufficient time to come to mutual understanding of issues, concerns, ideas before ending an interaction.
- Use “we/us” to show you’re thinking of others while at the same time establishing a relationship between you two.
- Adapt your body language to mirror his. Extra-Personal Listeners are the ones who are most likely to look you in the eye to show they’re connecting. Their voice patterns and body language are animated, and they can even seem loud to you. Match your energy to make yourself seem familiar to Manuel.
Listening Skills Strategies—Case #2 The Extra-Personal Listener
Before we delve into the case study of The Extra-Personal Listener, I want to share something I just learned. It’s a psychological concept known as homophily: the notion that people like similar kinds of people and things. The concept certainly isn’t new, but I wasn’t aware that it’s a recognized term. The idea, which adds to the challenge of listening to people who are dissimilar from us, surely parallels what we talk about in this blog.
The Case:
Manuel is an Extra-Personal Listener and serves on the global marketing team. He wants to know how information, experience, ideas, and decisions apply to others. He asks about relevance, impact, values, relationships, culture, and he wants to talk about those issues—immediately.
People often have mixed reactions about Manuel. Some find his exuberance to be inviting while others are overwhelmed by it. Everyone does agree that he’s not afraid to show his feelings and cares more about people than numbers. Manuel is known throughout the organization as a connector. He pays attention to the needs of customers, peers, direct reports, vendors, and definitely, management, and tries hard to see that their needs are met.
Manuel has been temporarily assigned to a new project headed by a team leader, Iain, a Scot and a stranger to Manuel. Iain thinks you know Manuel well enough to give Iain some tips about how best to interact with Manuel, especially because about half of their interactions will be virtual.
What 2-3 pieces of advice do you have for Iain as he prepares for his time with Manuel? That is, how do you develop homophily between the two?
I’ll chime in with my advice on the next post.
Listening Skills Strategies—Case #1 Tips for Interacting with an Inner-Personal Listener
Rick has only been on the job for a week and most of his time has been spent with his manager to clarify roles and responsibilities. He hasn’t had any individual interactions with staff members, and he’s been in only one department meeting with Marge in which Rick did the talking about his background, work style, expectations, and refinements to departmental goals.
Rick and Marge don’t know one another, and they both want to start off their relationship on the right footing. Following is some advice for Rick as he prepares to talk with Marge about how they will work together effectively.
- Marge will not initiate conversation nor engage in small talk. She is not shy or off-putting, although it might seem that way at first. Mostly, she’ll listen carefully to what you say, will allow your words/thoughts to sink in, and won’t respond unless directly asked.
- To engage Marge, be prepared with a series of questions. You might even send her the questions beforehand so she’ll have time to think them through before you meet.
- When Marge does answer a question, ask a follow-up question that queries her thought process, experience, knowledge, opinion, rather than expect that she might say more beyond her initial answer. Marge will most likely continue her thoughts inside her head, so you’ll have to ask for them to be verbalized.
- Smile and show you’re interested. Marge’s body language is apt to seem removed, but her way of showing attention is to sit upright so there’s no clutter to get in the way of your communication. Don’t be concerned if she doesn’t look you in the eye. Watch for her to look as though she’s bringing your words into her head or even seemingly having an internal conversation—she is.
- Marge will appreciate your making connections to her work: my goals to your goals, departmental challenges and our combined ability to resolve them, our complimentary experience and work styles…
- End with a request to provide you with her thoughts about the meeting along with some suggestions about how to continue on a positive working relationship path.
Listening Skills Strategies—Case #1 The Inner-Personal Listener
It’s so refreshing to get emails and Linked In comments from people who agree that we all have individual listening styles. I still haven’t completely cracked the nut on acceptance that the term Active Listening is both a misnomer and misleading, but one mental model shift at a time.
Individualized listening styles lead us to conclude that each person must develop strategies to be able to adapt to others with different listening preferences.
Remember the Golden Rule of Listening: Listen to others as they want to be heard.
While our goal at Listening Impact is to help people do just that, it takes learning, time and practice to be an agile listener. One way to understand different listening styles and to develop strategies to listen to anyone is to use the case study method.
I’ve written four cases, one for each of the four different listening styles surfaced in Hear! Hear? Your Listening Portfolio®. Please read the case and weigh in with your thoughts about how to help others adapt to the case-study person with the particular listening style.
The Case:
Marge is a very well defined and practiced Inner-Personal Listener. She’s manager of Cyber Security, an increasingly important job. She pays close attention to people who relate their message to what she’s interested in and knows, and who don’t dwell on feelings.
Marge is considered in the office to be quiet and introspective. Colleagues who make presentations to her don’t expect a lot of questions during an interaction, but they are usually pleased to hear from Marge afterwards when she shares very good feedback, especially about how their information relates to what Marge is working on or responsible for. She’s also generous with her knowledge and willingly shares it with colleagues, most often one-to-one.
Alas, Marge recently got a new boss, Rick. She will be one of Rick’s five direct reports. He came from the outside, so they’re all strangers. Therefore, Rick is meeting with the staff to get to know them personally, figure out their work styles, hear issues and ideas, and determine how to create a cohesive team.
What 2-3 pieces of advice do you have for Rick as he prepares for his hour with Marge? Rick and Marge want to start off their relationship on the right footing
I’ll chime in with my advice on the next post.
Listening in Tanzania—Notes from the field
The Maasai Chief (seated) listens to our safari tour members.
I just had the amazing privilege of going on safari to Tanzania. It was a trip of a lifetime for me, and filled with one eye-opener after another.
I’m always on the lookout for lessons in listening and many were gifted to me.
- The first night we were in the field, in a lovely comfortable tent at Lake Burundi, I fell into a deep sleep and never heard a thing. I was so disappointed in the morning when my fellow travelers asked who heard the hyenas, and I had not. Subsequently, I had to train myself to pay attention to night sounds that were unfamiliar to me. It didn’t take long for my brain to become perfectly capable of getting a good night’s sleep while remaining alert for animals.
- Our guides with encyclopedic knowledge of flora and fauna, and fluent in several languages including English, spoke with a lilting Tanzanian accent. At first I, with my compromised hearing, could barely understand what they were saying, and I desperately wanted to take in every word. I got better as I accustomed to their accents and tone, but continued to struggle when we were in the field on bumpy, bumpy roads. I ended up establishing a system of translators. My kind fellow travelers would listen to the guides and synthesize their messages. When I was a passenger in a particular vehicle, the guides knew to shorten their comments and also wait for the translator to share his message. I never so appreciated the role of the translator in creating clarity and understanding for both the speaker and the listener.
- Ah the Maasai. We visited a boma, village, and our tourist-women were paired with a Maasai sister. My partner Anna, not her Maasai name, and I communicated without a common language, other than both being women. I learned that Anna is a second wife, mother of two, pregnant, and beaded jewelry maker. She wrapped me in Maasai cloth, and without words showed me how to dance with her, carry wood on my head, add thatching to the roof of a hut, and patch walls with a mixture of dung and water. By the end of our morning together, we hugged, laughed, and felt a bond. (I’ll gladly send a link to a flickr video of some of our time together—just ask). The current chief is 89, so on June 1 he’s turning the title over to his son, one of his children from his six wives. This soon-to-be chief is a master of focus. He’s probably about 6’5”, stately and soft-spoken. He stood erect wrapped in slightly different cloth than the rest of the men in the boma, wore the ubiquitous sandals made from tires, and carried a pole like other Maasai men. He spoke to us through our lead guide, smiled, made warm eye-contact and used his growing English language skills to tell us about their lives and that things are changing for Maasai. The children are going to school through seventh grade, he’s against female circumcision, and they are beginning to grow crops to supplement their dependence upon cattle, their primary source of wealth.
He listened so carefully and thoughtfully that we, his audience, were transfixed. But so did his ancient father and mother, so did Anna and the other women, and so did the children in school. Their society seems to be built on collaboration, respect, and paying attention.
Overall, I learned that being open, focused, curious and without an agenda is the ideal way to listen and learn. I’m grateful for the opportunity to experience such wonderful teachers.
I hope the photo allows you to get a glimpse of how a Maasai leader comports himself.