Archive for February, 2010

“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force.
The people who listen to us are the ones we move toward.
When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.” 

Karl Menninger

Listening helps you and the people you listen to learn and develop. Listen; really listen to someone today.

• Ask them at the end, “What are you taking away from this conversation?” (Be prepared to be surprised).

Reflect on the experience of listening you had: 

• What did you learn about the person you listened to? About yourself? 
• How will you use what you learned?

When was the last time you felt as if you were listened to? What was that like?

Many people find it difficult to answer the first question; however, those that can have no problem remembering what it felt like: I often hear them say “I felt valued” or “I felt like someone cared”.

Simple in theory, yet hard to do, listening is a powerful tool for leaders that makes people feel as if they matter. When people feel like they matter, they will give their best to you and your organization. This is such a profound truth that I’ve wondered why we don’t get listening training in school and at work (“listening skills” should be part of every leadership development program!). 

What causes a leader to close his ears?

In addition to the external distractions that pull us away from listening, the hierarchical and political nature of our organizations has had a hand in a leader’s reluctance to listen as they should. We tend to perpetuate the myth that our leaders have all the answers, so they must be smarter. They begin to believe this themselves. The truth is, that if they are giving all of the answers, they aren’t listening, and they’ve stopped valuing what others have to say.

The danger is that when we close our ears, we may also have ceased learning. When we believe we know it all, we have stopped valuing what others have to add to the dialog. When we open ourselves up what others say, we learn from them and they feel valued.

It takes effort

Most of us are not be accustomed to opening ourselves up to this deep level of listening; it requires great patience and practice. We must be willing to take the time to listen. We must suspend our judgments and observe tone, inflection, facial expression and body language. We must listen beyond what is spoken or visible for that which is unspoken.

Asking yourself the following questions can provide a powerful framework for “leaning in” to listen at your best:

• What could I learn by listening?
• What beliefs do I have about myself – in relation to others – that prevent me from really listening?
• What judgments have I made about others? Are they valid?
• What is it about listening that is important to me? To others? To my organization?

Practice. Try setting aside some time to listen to people who are important to you in your organization. I’d love to have you come back here and let me know what you’ve learned.

Leaders tell me that there are things that get in the way of their ability to really listen. All of them can be remedied. We’ll start with the simplest – the physical distractions.

To be able to really listen, we must quiet our minds and focus. For many, this will mean that we need to control the distractions that will allow us to “lean in” to the conversation.

Years ago I had a manager who allowed our conversations to be pulled away by physical distractions. When we were in a conversation, and his phone rang, he picked it up. If someone came to his door with a less-than-urgent matter, he would talk it out with them while I sat idly by, feeling very small and very unnecessary. Unfortunately his habit of allowing those distractions colored my opinion of him in a very unfavorable way (and I wasn’t self aware or courageous enough in my youth to have a dialog with him about his rude behavior), prolonged our conversations, and made me feel unappreciated. For the record, his rude behavior was a significant reason for my leaving that position.

If I had been more confident, I would have respectfully asked him if he could have his administrative assistant take the incoming calls and ask people who came to his door to return later. In our world of  increasing distractions, it takes an intention to focus on the conversation and a willingness to eliminate distractions so we can do our best at truly listening. Your ability to be able to “lean in” to show you value the other person will be enhanced by doing the following:

1.      Forward the office phone to someone else or to voice mail to reduce the interruption it causes by hearing it ring. (P.S. if you are listening 1:1 on the phone, take it off “speaker” mode, for goodness’ sake. If you want to be hands free on your office phone, buy a headset).

2.      Turn off the cell phone and put it out of reach so you aren’t tempted to look at incoming messages 

3.      Turn off alerts on your office computer because, like your phones, even the sound they make can distract you from listening 

4.      Close your door (if you have one) or ask to meet later when people with non-urgent interruptions stop by when you are in a conversation 

5.      Come out from behind your desk and sit at a conference table, if you have one which eliminates a barrier to good listening 

6.      Face the person you are listening to and lean forward into the conversation 

7.      Shut up and be strategic about offering your opinion. Consider that the most important thing for you to do right now is to listen. 

Most of these solutions are all relatively easy and most are mechanical in nature – if we are intentional. The solution that seems to be the biggest hurdle is #7; the internal distraction which has to do with the value we place on what others have to say (or not). Stay tuned for the next post which will address that tougher issue.

Thought-full Thursday is a new feature on this site. It will be very brief, a quote or brief passage followed with some thoughtful questions. Feel free to respond to the questions here, or to simply to reflect and revel in the beauty of the questions that you don’t know the answers to. Why am I doing this on a site dedicated to leadership? Because all leaders can use a little more thought and silence in their lives.

“We know the experience of being listened to by painfully experiencing its opposite.”  ~ unknown

• Recall a time when you felt listened to. What did you feel? Where did you feel it?
• What is the personal value for you when you listen? How do others value from your listening?
• What distractions prevent you from listening?
• What beliefs keep you from listening?
• What will it take for you to turn away from the distractions and change your beliefs so that you really listen?

The previous post begins to explore the case for listening better. This post is meant to begin a conversation about what gets in the way of listening.

I imagine that our cave-person ancestors were good listeners. It was a matter of survival, after all, that they’d be able to hear the animals that were either their next meal or that might eat them. I imagine they would also gather together to have tribal dialog, where respect and listening went hand in hand; the tribe’s safety depended on it. Our ancestor’s ears were turned on and listening all the time.

But then, they didn’t have telephones, televisions, Blackberries, or Outlook alerts. They didn’t have our face-paced organizations that must move quicker than the competition.

Yet these technological gadgets, which certainly can distract us from truly listening to others, are the surface of the problem that causes poor listening skills. Distractions, technical or not, are simply an excuse to hide a belief that we try to hide from our fully conscious self.

The truth is that we think we know more than others. We believe that we have the right answers and that our peers and employees don’t have anything of value to add. Their knowledge, opinions, and humanity don’t count. This is what really keeps us from listening. The gadgets are only an excuse.

There. Kind person though I may be, I’ve wanted to say that for a very long time.

If we believed that others were important, that they even might have the possibility of being bright, capable, creative and able to add value, the distractions wouldn’t matter. We’d be able to dismiss the distractions and be fully present and able to listen deeply to others.

Do you value others and what they have to say? Ask yourself that, and if the answer is “yes”, you’re on your way to becoming a better listener and, quite possibly, a phenomenal leader.

Next week: How to listen better, in two parts.

As an executive coach, I am continually amazed at the havoc that poor listening ability has created for so many leaders. A recent review of goals and action plans created by my clients over the years reveals that “improving listening skills” is one of the most popular goals that come from the feedback provided by their managers, peers and employees. Poor listening effects almost every aspect of a leader’s ability to connect with people, not to mention the fact that when listening stops – so does learning, as Sarah experienced.

Sarah was on a path to leadership disaster. Looking at her track record, you wouldn’t know it. She was a driven mid-level executive in a large organization. Known by her senior management as someone who got results, the organization wanted to retain her for a larger role. Yet her 360 results in the areas of “team work” and “developing followership” were in the tank; she would need to improve her scores in those areas if she had any hope of future promotion.

I conducted interviews to dig deeper into the causes of her 360 problems.  Her peers and employees indicated that although Sarah was bright and driven, they didn’t feel listened to. Further questioning showed that she was distracted, rushed, and opinionated; she cut people off and displayed a tendency to have “the last word”.

Upon seeing the “poor listening” problem detailed in her interview report, Sarah was ready to make a change. We created an action plan to work on “developing better listening skills”.

It was a hard behavior to change. However, Sarah’s considerable drive to achieve kicked in to help her be successful. Later follow-up interviews showed Sarah was successful in improving her listening ability. Her staff and peers felt like they were being heard. Their interactions became more open with each other and with Sarah.

Through improved listening, Sarah was learning new things that were important to her future success as a leader. Her relationships inside and outside of work were improving.

The deceptively simple act of listening has become, for many of us, our roadblock to higher achievement. Listening well is something that we should be naturals at. After all, as the saying goes, we were born with two ears and one mouth, and started life listening long before we learned to talk.

However, a lifetime of striving to tell everyone we know about how smart we are, or about why our opinion counts have helped us to develop some exceptional non-listening habits. As a leader, it is essential that we exercise discernment of the mouth and allow our ears to hear what others have to say.

The act of listening is probably the most underrated leadership “skill”. I don’t recall seeing “listens well” on a list of leadership competencies, yet I’ve seen the inability to listen create real problems for leaders.

The leaders I know who have improved their ability to listen have enjoyed significant improvement in their capacity to inspire, impact, and influence their organizations and communities. Put “develop better listening skills” at the top of your list of personal development goals. It will make a big difference in your leadership and your life. 

Next, Listening Part II: What gets in the way?

I know this post is longer than is typical for this blog. Trust me, it will be worth the time you spend reading it. I came to know Erika Andersen through my friend, colleague and mentor, Wally Bock, who had an intuition that Erika and I would have a few things in common. We do. One of those is her wonderful book, Being Strategic, which Wally reviewed here.  Erika defines and explains “being strategic” in one of the most simple – but effective – ways I’ve ever seen.

Erika is the founding partner of Proteus International, a coaching, consulting, and training firm that helps organizations clarify and move toward their hoped-for future. Oh, and she’s a genuinely smart and wonderful person, too.

What does “being strategic” mean?

I love that you’re asking this.  One of the reasons I wrote Being Strategic was to attempt to resolve some of the confusion around that phrase.  People use it so much – and rarely explain what they mean by it.  People use it to mean everything from “considering the competition,” to “thinking long-term,” to “being manipulative and cold-hearted,” to “agreeing with me!”

The definition I offer in my book for “being strategic” is: consistently focusing on those core directional choices that will best move you toward your hoped-for future.  It’s a deceptively simple sentence – there’s a lot in there.  It assumes that you know where you’re starting from, where you’re trying to go, and how you’re going to get there – and that you keep your attention directed toward doing it.

I’ve observed over the years that the best leaders – those who are most consistently successful in creating organizations that thrive – have and exercise this capability.  They get very clear about the organization’s current state – both strengths and weaknesses – and then, based on that starting point, they envision and articulate a clear and compelling future. They select a handful of core directional efforts – strategies –that they believe will best move them toward that future, and decide tactics for implementing those strategies. And then they stay consistently focused (and keep their organization consistently focused) on using those strategies to move toward the future they’ve envisioned.

How can “being strategic” be applied to the workplace relationships leaders must create or sustain?

Excellent, authentic relationships are essential if leaders are to be truly strategic.  Even if a leader is skilled at both strategic thought and action, he or she needs to be operating within a web of strong relationships in order for that capability to have an impact organization-wide.

Here’s why: I’ve often seen truly brilliant leaders who have a clear strategic view of their organization and a well-defined strategic plan for getting the future they envision – but who lack strong relationships, especially with those who work directly for him or her.  Those organizations tend to do less well than you’d expect: the leaders’ vision and strategy don’t “translate” into the day-to-day, because the rest of the organization doesn’t understand or own it, and therefore isn’t committed to making it happen.

The process of being strategic, as we practice, facilitate and teach it in organizations, is essentially collaborative.  It works best when you work together as a team to define the challenge, clarify your current state, envision your hoped-for future, agree on the obstacles to achieving that vision – and then determine the strategies and tactics that will get you there.  No one person can see clearly enough to do all those things for a whole organization – or even a whole department.  And human beings are most committed to accomplishing those things they’ve helped to define.

Why do strategies fail? Why do they succeed?

Strategies fail for lots of reasons.  One of the most common is that strategies are, all too often, not created to move toward a defined future, but simply in response to a threat.  For example, in the early eighties, Pepsi had a strategy of “winning on cost.” It was how they thought they’d take market share from Coke, which at the time was beating them in most domestic markets.  Unfortunately, that strategy wasn’t linked to a clear vision (other than “kill Coke”), so they made some sales decisions that weren’t sustainable, in terms of impact on long-term profitability.

Here’s another one, which sounds weirdly obvious and avoidable, but I see it happening every day: strategies fail (even good strategies) when organizations stop focusing on implementing them.  And that very often happens in hard economic times.  One of our clients is in danger of this right now: they’re in the process of abandoning a strategy that’s key to their vision, and that has served them very well for a number of years, because they think it’s too expensive. (We’re trying to help, but they’re in panic mode, and that makes it hard to think clearly.)

Strategies succeed when (no surprise here, given what I’ve said so far!) key people in the organization work together to select strategies that will best move them toward their agree-upon future…and then consistently focus on implementing those strategies with tactics that are feasible, impactful and timely.

What are the most important elements of strategic thinking?

Let me answer that question in two ways.  First, there’s the process of thinking strategically, which I describe as a mental model that consists of a “pre-step” and then four steps. 

The pre-step we call “defining the challenge.”  It consists of getting clear about the problem that you’re currently trying to solve – which can be as broad as “How can we create a sustainably profitable organization that provides unique value to our customers?” or as finely focused as “How can I make sure my number two person is ready to step into my role when I get promoted?”

Once you’re clear on the challenge before you, whatever it may be, the steps of strategic thinking are simple (though not necessarily easy). They are:

-        “What is”: your current reality relative to your challenge;

-        “What’s the Hope?”: your hoped-for future, the one in which your challenge has been successfully addressed;

-        “What’s in the Way?”: the obstacle between where you are now and where you want to go;

-        “What’s the Path?”: the strategies and then tactics that will best take you from where you are to where you want to go,  while overcoming the obstacles.

Then there are the actual skills for being strategic:  becoming a fair witness, pulling back the camera, and sorting for impact.  You employ these mental skills throughout the steps outlined above.

Becoming a fair witness means getting as neutral and objective as possible about the situation.  This is especially important when you have a strong emotional investment in a particular outcome – it’s all too easy to lose your objectivity about your current reality, or what’s possible.  My favorite example of non-fair-witnessing are the contestants on American Idol who literally cannot sing…and yet have convinced themselves that they’re going to win the competition!

Pulling back the camera means mentally “stepping back from the action” so you can get more context and get clearer about why things are happening and how they’re connected.  Quite often, when someone is told they’re “not being strategic” or are “too tactical,” it means others see them as only looking at things from a very narrow, close-in frame: staying focused only on their own actions, needs and point of view.  Good strategic thinkers “pull back the camera” to look more broadly at the factors that might be impacting the current situation, or where it might be possible to take the organization, given the landscape surrounding it.

Sorting for impact means thinking about how much a particular fact, circumstance or event is going to affect your challenge.  So, as you stay in fair witness mode and pull back the camera, you “screen” the data that comes into your viewfinder against your challenge, asking, “How important is this to the problem I’m trying to solve?”  Sometimes the answer isn’t entirely clear – but far more often than not, it is…and doing this “sorting” process helps you stay focused on the things that are most essential to your success in the challenge you’re addressing.

Then you put it all together, using these three skills as you move through the model.  It may sound complex, but once you get the hang of it, it starts to feel pretty natural.

And that, for me, is the most exciting thing about being strategic – that it’s learnable. Most people talk about being strategic as though it’s something you’re born with, or not.  And too bad for you if you’re not!  But we’ve seen over the years, in teaching people to us these skills and this process, that almost everyone can improve their ability to be strategic – and thereby increase the likelihood of creating the business, the  career or the life they most want.

I love to watch Cesar Millan’s “The Dog Whisperer” program on TV. I am a dog lover and currently share an office and home with Edgar the Leadership Pug, who is wise beyond his pug-ness about how to lead his human pack. My husband and I have learned a thing or two from Edgar and Cesar’s show in order to take pack leadership back into our hands, where it belongs.

Cesar’s skill is not only the work he does with the dogs. His true gifts are in teaching the dog’s owners that well behaved canines are really about the owner’s willingness and ability to step up to being a (pack) leader. The lessons he teaches are insightful for any leader.

Note: I don’t intend this post to compare leaders and employees to dogs, but rather to emphasize that the lessons of leadership can be learned in a variety of ways. If you are a dog lover (and maybe even if you aren’t) you can learn a lot from Cesar.

Some of the leadership lessons Cesar teaches us humans:

In order to lead your dog well, you must understand how they want to be treated: Cesar shows that the best trained dogs are treated as – well, a dog would want to be treated if they were part of a pack. As an organizational leader, it is important that you get to know your people. What are their strengths? How do they want to use them? How can you best lead them?

Clearly communicate your rules, boundaries and limitations: Communicating with our canine friends is not easy, but it must be clear and in their “language”. Similarly, followers are looking for clarity in your expectations. Find a way to communicate them simply and well. Then repeat your expectations in as many ways possible.

Use calm, assertive energy: Cesar teaches humans that screaming, yelling and anger only serve to escalate the energy of the dog to that level; they are ineffective at best and can be destructive. Organizational leaders who use these techniques must also find a way to stop using these emotions that can be “caught” like viruses in the organizations they lead.

Imagine a successful scenario: Cesar works with humans to understand that their pets can, and do, change. Likewise, organizational leaders must believe that their employees have great potential and recognize when it is realized.

If you stay alert, you might find lessons in leadership where you least expect it. What are the unlikely places that you find leadership wisdom?

Most businesses are structured and controlled. There are processes to follow, strategies to set in motion, and bureaucracy to wade through. This structure can give us a false sense of control about the other stuff in our workplaces. Make no mistake. People cannot be controlled; in fact, they are downright unpredictable and messy, for a lot of very wonderful reasons. Leading people can be messy too.

When I work with my clients on new behaviors that will help them to impact and influence their workplaces, they can often get a false sense of the control that they are wielding over their employees. “Well, if I do this, then they will do that”, as in “If I become more inclusive and empowering, they will do what I want”.  It’s really not likely that you can predict precisely what others will do when you change how you manage and lead them..

Leadership is an art

Max DePree, in his classic leadership book,  had it right when he called leadership an art. People will not do what you want (exactly), they will do what they want (sort of) based on their strengths, gaps, skills, personality, the weather, the culture, their personal issues, their professional issues, what they think of you, what drives them, how they interpret the mission, what filters they turn on when you provide direction, how they feel, and what they had for lunch.

Whew. That is a lot to get in the way of having control over others. And it’s only the tip of the iceberg of the things that can effect a person’s ability to complete the work they way you want it completed.

Be willing to be surprised

So when you are making the changes in your behavior, you also have to be willing to be surprised and delighted. Let go of the belief that you have control over how others get things done. Rest assured that those who are inspired and motivated will do it their way – and their way may turn out to be amazing. Ask yourself instead:

• What new strengths do I see emerging in my team?
• Who is “flowering” under my new belief and willingness to let go of control?
• Who requires more guidance? How will I coach them?
• What is surprising me here? What is delighting me?

For all of their messiness, people sure can be amazing.