How to have conversations that drive innovation and growth
The conversations that are happening at the moment are covering important issues like never before. Conversations about mental health, diversity and inclusion, sustainability, identity, who we really are. These are brilliant conversations to have but are we talking in the right way?
Have a conversation, not a broadcast
In her excellent book, The listening Shift, Janie Van Hool discusses how much of what we say is not so much of a conversation as it is a broadcast. We spend a total of 2.5 hours on social media a day and there we narrate a curated, constructed version of ourselves, asking others to pay attention to us. We’re putting our views in the public domain and people must be hearing us. Social media encourages us to focus on broadcast rather than conversation.
Which leads us to ask: how much learning is going on in the space between us? Are people listening or simply hearing us?
The importance of listening
Listening in groups happens within a particular format - like an operating system for behaviours. In the workplace, the style of listening can be very similar to what we know of political listening - where listening is selective and narrow. It has elements of a defined echo chamber; it’s already tacitly known who and what is in the conversation, and who and what is excluded.
Plus, the conversation becomes trapped in a hierarchical system. Often at work what we hear is defined by the invisible existing, predetermined cultural norms. This means we could almost write the conversations in workplaces before they happen - they have a script-like quality to them.
Watch the video below to understand more about team listening.
To find solutions to today’s ‘wicked’ problems (a ‘wicked’ problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements which are often difficult to recognise) - we need to establish and nurture two-way listening.
We know that two-way listening is rare in workplaces so we need cultures of real, active listening that allow us to:
Be able to hear properly and respond to ideas different from our own, if we are to find solutions to massive challenges like climate change, diversity in the workplace and automation.
Help people have thoughtful conversations that differ from traditional work conversations about mental health.
Talk to each other about what may seem difficult topics. Then be able to handle opposing views constructively. In this way, we can find solutions that take us forward from our past standpoints rather than keeping us trapped in opposing positions.
Styles of workplace listening
Often what we know about workplace listening comes from a course about how to be a good listener. We’ll have a set of instructions that include: not talking when others are speaking, using supportive body language like removing crossed arms, and how to repeat what was said almost verbatim.
While this is all good advice, listening in the workplace is a skill that you need to flex and adapt to each situation. We’ll go into this in more detail in a moment. First, let’s look at what leaders need to identify when it comes to listening.
Listening and Leadership
Leaders need to learn how to listen more constructively, but also how to adjust their listening style to each situation. Sometimes they may need to listen quietly without intervening, but on other occasions, they may have to adopt a more active role, to encourage others’ voices to be heard clearly. It may be crucial to use the leader’s own power to empower others.
Let’s look at how listening can show up in workplaces in different ways:
Style 1: Silent recipient
With this style, employees are not properly engaged in the conversation but instead are ‘listening’ for instructions as passive recipients.
Behaviours you can expect to see are:
Listening for instructions
Low engagementEmployees do not speak up or challenge
Style 2: Broadcasting
This style is like political listening, where people pretend to listen but really they just want to get their point across. It’s selective, and all the time listeners concentrate on what they can say next, how to get their point across, how it can help their agenda.
Behaviours you can expect to see are:
A small number of leaders talk for the majority of the time or meetings are dominated by a few speakers
Often accompanied by a rhetoric of listening that isn’t followed through with action
Challenge is explained away, dismissed or diminished
Style 3: Empathising
Leaders are approachable and available to listen to both work and non-work concerns. It allows another person to be seen in full, so they don’t leave half of themselves at the door when they get to work.
Behaviours you can expect to see are:
Seeing the whole person.
Talking about wellbeing, inclusivity and mental health at work
Greater use of silence and coaching models
Managers being trained in mental health skills
Note: Since the biggest predictor of workplace happiness is the line manager, teaching managers skills to support their team’s mental health is crucial. Empathetic listening is a fundamental part of that.
Style 4: Empowering
This is about compassionate listening to empower the other person to do their best thinking out loud. This is the style of listening you need to drive innovation and change. It’s the listening that finds solutions to problems that as yet have none. It gets full power from diverse voices. You use all the listening tools to understand individuals and empower them to find solutions.
Behaviours you can expect to see are:
Psychological Safety is in place to give space for shared conversations
A compassionate desire to help each other find solutions
Listening is enabled by curiosity, questioning, challenge, respect and empathy
A learning mindset
Each situation we face will be different and at times we might need to broadcast messages. This is especially true in a crisis, where people look to a strong leader for comfort. But as a whole, being a leader that listens more will allow you to:
Hear and include more diverse voices
Engage more minds to find creative solutions to ‘wicked’ problems
Empower and motivate teams to take more decisions themselves
Create shared accountability, to avoid burnout for one person
Help people know it is OK to say when they are struggling and to ask for help
How to create a listening culture
Good listening is something that gets better with practice - like a muscle you make stronger as you use it. Yet, listening is built on a system where the format is set by the culture and context that it sits within. To improve listening in your organisation there is work for individuals but also work to recognise the wider system within which listening operates. Below we’ve listed some of the strategies you can employ to lead teams towards a more group communication environment, where everyone feels psychologically safe to speak up. This will let your teams think for themselves and ask for help when they need it.
1: Create an environment that encourages listening
SAFETY: Have I created the safety needed to speak up?
Listening is a two-way process. Be aware of how you present and behave as a leader. Understand whether this creates the psychological safety for others to speak up. Truly meaningful listening won’t happen unless the other person feels safe to speak. In order to listen to genuine, unedited messages, you need to remove the social fear that comes with speaking up. This is a necessary challenge to the status quo. It means working collectively with your teams at the start to agree on the operating rules for discussions and conversations.
These rules include:
Being clear about goals: that you want to listen
Being clear about accountabilities: that you want teams to speak up
Framing the work as learning
Saying when you don’t know the answer, creating a humble, not hierarchical approach to listening
SPACE: Have I created space to listen?
Time is a resource in business and you need to carve out dedicated time to allow people to listen. People don’t want to interrupt the flow of others and that is especially true when talking to the boss. Therefore, creating the space in the team rhythm allows you and others to listen. Whether it’s listening to you, to customers or to colleagues, there is no way around this. It needs to be a dedicated and intentional space. Remove distractions - perhaps take people out of the office, or if your team is working remotely make it the reason to come back into the office.
With hybrid and remote working structures, teams often need a reason to all gather in the office - and what better reason than to listen? Rather than awaydays, you can create a dedicated space in the office to have conversations and listen.
Why not schedule monthly team listening days in order to learn from each other?
2: Be a good listener yourself
LISTEN: With your body language as well
Your body language shows to what extent you are concentrating on the other person, so it’s important you pay attention to it. Make and maintain eye contact, create open body language by stepping out from behind the desk, unfolding your arms, and sitting still. The person wanting your attention needs to see you are intent on listening and they take signals from your body language. If you are not sure how good you are at this, ask others how you did and listen to what they say.
BE CURIOUS: Hold your judgement
As soon as we decide what’s going on in a conversation - we stop listening. Therefore, to listen with sincerity, it’s important to stop your own thoughts from intruding. Spot when you stop listening and become waylaid by your own thoughts.
Some signs you have stopped listening are:
Comparing the person’s story with your own story
Slipping into mind-reading and guessing what’s coming next, rather than asking the person speaking
Problem-solving and wanting to tell the other person what you would do
If you are distracted by your own thoughts, then you need to quieten your own mind to focus wholly on the person speaking to you. When you go into a listening session you should try to adopt a more open and mindful mindset. Such a mindset leads to a slowing down of the process; you will notice that you interrupt less and that you create a bigger space for learning. Work towards a mindset where you seek to be curious, instead of certain.
NOTICE: Read the non-verbal cues
When you gain listening skills you will hear more than the words. You will become aware of the non-verbal cues including the tones of voice, breathing, and facial expressions. Take time to notice if there is a mismatch between what the person says and what they do with their body, and (where appropriate) ask them what they are feeling.
There is a balance here because listening is NOT about thinking you can mind read, but being curious when something doesn’t make sense. Perhaps ask why the person doesn’t appear happy when they say they are?
How far you can pursue this is directly proportionate to the amount of trust you build. If the trust isn’t in place, don’t make observations. But if trust is there, you have permission to help them explore what is beneath automatic sentences such as, “I’m good” when you ask, “How are you?”. If your instinct tells you there is more, respectfully ask them one more time - ‘Really, how are you?’
FLEXIBILITY: Dance with the moment
Although we can advise you on good listening skills, listening is always going to be a dance that you should engage with the moment. Sometimes you will need to be silent, but at other times you will need to help the conversation - by showing support and empathy. There is no set formula for how to listen that can apply to every encounter. Reactions and responses occurs in the moment. In time you’ll build a set of flexible skills to draw upon.
For example, we can examine the common expectation that being silent means you are a good listener.
A HBR research article asked 3500 participants what made someone a good listener. They found that:
“… we perceive the best listeners to be those who periodically ask questions that promote discovery and insight. These questions gently challenge old assumptions, but do so in a constructive way. Sitting there silently nodding does not provide sure evidence that a person is listening, but asking a good question tells the speaker the listener has not only heard what was said but that they comprehended it well enough to want additional information. Good listening was consistently seen as a two-way dialogue, rather than a one-way “speaker versus hearer” interaction. The best conversations were active.”
Although you may have been taught ways to listen, learn to do what coaches do when they ‘read the room’ and adapt. If you think a suggestion is helpful and not falling into any of the traps we talked about earlier then put it forward. Learn to dance with the moment.
3. Steps for empowered listening
Listening is shown to increase wellbeing, motivation and employee engagement. Yet, hierarchy doesn’t encourage people to speak up or to problem-solve (see the work of Megan Reitz for more on that). If you can stop and think about your role and how it might affect people’s ability to speak up, then you are likely to be more successful in creating a listening environment.
Leaders have the opportunity to use their power in creating an environment to get the best out of others. This builds levels of psychological safety so that all team members have the confidence to solve their own problems and suggest ideas.
Here’s how you can use your role to empower others.
Step 1. (the obvious one) LISTEN WELL
Here are some tips to help you improve that actual moment of listening.
Make it clear that your intent is to listen - that you are seeking to understand the substance of what the other person is saying. This changes and relaxes the behaviours straight away, from you being the hero problem solver (fanfare please) - to you being more curious and open. Your behaviours switch to a learning mindset, asking questions to help the person focus and clarify understanding.
Remove distractions. Put your phone away, close your laptop, don’t let your eyes wander to movement in the room. Or if you’re in a virtual session put notifications on ‘Do not disturb’. It’s amazing how many people start checking their emails on Zoom or Teams once they have said their own piece. Focus completely on the person speaking.
Keep the conversation going at the right pace for curiosity and learning. Listen silently when needed, giving them space to explore but also helping them if they get stuck by asking curious questions at the right moment.
Then see what more you can get from a train of thought and don’t be tempted to stop too early. Get the speaker to circle back with statements like:
Can you tell me more about that
Are there other aspects you’d like to talk about?
What didn’t we talk about?
What else should I have asked you?
Step 2. SUMMARISE TO SHOW YOU WERE LISTENING
Empowered listening happens within a conversation. You can add to this process by summarising to the person what you heard in their words. This is especially true for leaders, as when you summarise using their words, you show that you are listening.
Hearing someone else summarise your thinking can also help make links, but be careful not to fall into the trap of mind-reading or of telling them what you think they should do. Join up THEIR dots - not yours. You must put aside your need to be all-knowing and correct. If you haven’t already, ask questions to help them gain greater focus on key points. Don’t wait until the end to summarise, the best way to do it is briefly and often asking questions like:
Is this what you meant?
Can I check I understood this right?
It sounds like you are looking for …. ? Is that right?
Step 3. ACTION-PLANNING TO EMPOWER OTHERS
Humans have an action bias which means we are wired to problem solve. Often at this stage, the most senior person can’t resist the social norm of stepping in and summarising what the junior person has agreed to do. But with an empowered listening culture, you can change this. Instead of jumping in with what you believe the solution is - ask the speaker to summarise their action plan. Empower them to act and tell them that they can do this. This will help create confidence in the other person’s own ability.
A psychologically safe space is one that removes the need for the leader to have all the answers; this continues into the problem-solving part of the conversation. Not all listening spaces are about problem-solving, but for conversations that are, you now want to listen to the ideas of others about how THEY would solve this problem. The questions you can ask to help people self-solve are:
What options have you thought of so far?
What plans have you developed so far?
What support would you like from me?
Continue to use all your listening tools and techniques to encourage them to problem-solve.
Listening is only one part of a bigger picture
Listening skills need to work alongside other elements to help create a psychological safe workspace. We teach leaders 12 elements that help them reset the story about what makes a great leader. You can read more about this here.
It’s about moving away from the vertical leadership style where the boss has all the answers and into a horizontal model where leaders empower others.
This happens when you have all the elements in place and working together. Listening is a key part of this but not the whole story. For more information on how we can help, get in touch.
