Listening carefully
As our work becomes increasingly complex, so organisations have to hire people with more specific experience. Largely gone are the days when the folk at the top of companies were hired because they held superior IQ. And yet big organisations can often still symbolically indicate that your position in an organisation does carry with it a certain power, a certain swagger – it’s a difficult thing for us all to let go of.
These days if you’re a leader and feel like you’re the smartest person in the room, the likelihood is you’re not hiring in sufficiently diverse talent or you need to go find yourself another room. And yet some leaders can confuse the concept of catalytic energy with the traditional model of infusing people with their own knowledge.
And self-confession time I can find myself guilty of this. It doesn’t come with ill intent. I like acquiring knowledge and I like sharing knowledge and yes I also quite like people complimenting me on this so I have to work hard (and coaching as a discipline really helps here) to remember to use my knowledge in the service of others. No one really likes being around a know-it-all.
When this happens the net result is the total level of “smart” can never increase. Indeed, research shows that those in the room who have greater capability can quickly sense something is missing, there is no space for them to grow so if the leader is not willing to find themselves another room, then the smart folk move out anyway.
Catalytic leadership tip – focus on how you facilitate the growth of collective knowledge not just the diffusion of your own
Becoming the catalytic leaders requires mastery of a tempo – to create energy and direction and learn to then get out of the way. And a key technique to getting out of the way is to master the art of power listening.
Many people describe themselves as good listeners or awesome listeners. The more I coach the more I realise the complexity to what listening involves. Let’s break it down into an example of listening between Joel and his boss Alicia.
Joel: Alicia, I have been giving some thought to last month’s sales figures and there are a few things that worry me that I’d like to walk through with you
Alicia: Glad you came to me because I saw those figures too and it seems clear to me that we need to reposition the marketing for the product launch. This is going to take some creative effort if you’re up for the challenge Joel
Joel: You know me I’m always up for the challenge, I’ll get right on it
Listening at work right? Maybe not. Let’s catch up with Alicia to find out how she felt the encounter went.
“To be honest it was a relief that Joel came to me because I saw those sales figures and they weren’t the best. I was a little worried that the team weren’t spotting things were declining. It’s clear to me the marketing for our product is off-beam. As a leader I pride myself on motivating the team, sure the figures aren’t great but with a refocus on marketing I think this will work. Joel works really well when he’s bought in to an idea and this is a great challenge for him to get his teeth stuck into”
Meanwhile we caught up with Joel
“I’ve seen the sales figures and they’re not great but the original marketing concept was Alicia’s idea and it’s really not working. I wanted to find a way of breaking this news to her and opening up the possibility of doing something different to recover our sales. I had spent the last few days working on a repositioning strategy for the product and some pricing changes because the research we’re doing is showing customers aren’t buying into the value of the product, they don’t understand value from its features and one of our competitors has just dropped the price of their product so we look out of step with the market. I walked out feeling a bit hollow.
“I didn’t really get to show any of the work I’d done, any of the thoughts I had. Instead I walked out with the challenge I went in with, getting Alicia to understand her marketing strategy doesn’t work. When your boss says are you up for the challenge it’s a bit of a dumb question because there’s no option but to say yet right? But in reality I’m in the same if not worse position that when I went in because now I’m on the hook to implement something that isn’t that smart, that I don’t think is going to work and is going to take up time I could have spent solving the problem”
The art of power listening
Poor Joel. Alicia was listening to Joel but not using Power Listening. Power listening is more complex than just listening to the noise / words someone is saying. Power listening is about enabling the speaker to access their best thoughts and put this into words and it’s a key technique for a catalytic leader who is prone to feeling that need to display their own smartness to the world.
It’s also about hearing what’s being said and understanding it. Then facilitating deeper thinking on behalf of the speaker and finally shaping the dialogue towards action but never taking over the conversation. That’s what makes it so fragile.
Setting up the contract
Warren Redman describes the first step of Power Listening as setting up the contract. In our example Joel and Alicia were coming at the same issue from entirely different positions. In their heads they had different expectations and outcomes. The only way to bring this together was to form a verbal contract. And this starts with Joel. Imagine the scene replays but instead Joel, using a contracting technique tries this:
Joel: Alicia, I have been giving some thought to last month’s sales figures. I have some ideas to improve our marketing, pricing and launch strategy. I’m sure you have some thoughts. It feels like 30 minutes of our time would be worthwhile on this one
He may have got;
Alicia: Glad you raised this Joel, I saw those figures too and I do have some thoughts. 30 minutes sounds good. I know I have to dash in the next ten minutes so why don’t we get into this properly after lunch
Better, but still not great. Joel and Alicia are still potentially in different places as to what they are hoping to discuss after lunch. However Joel has set the expectation and the contract with Alicia. Both do know they have a topic in hand and they have thirty minutes to work things through and a date in the diary. And Joel avoided taking home with him the same problem he arrived with, possibly.
Focus on the issue
The second stage of power listening is to focus on the issue. Deep inside Joel has a sense that being responsible for sales but not marketing is part of the issue and because Alicia was recently promoted to CEO from a marketing background it is a natural position of strength for her that she finds hard to let go of when all other responsibilities are new to her.
Joel has a strong sense the organisational structure needs to change. Alicia has a strong bias to action and is hearing only the transactional words in Joel’s opening lines. But neither are mind-readers so what can be done? Alicia, to be a catalytic leaders needs to practice power listening by encouraging Joel to outline the issue he wants to focus on, to give him absolute permission to step past invisible boundaries, put down baggage that gets in the way and it can be as simple as creating the space for Joel to focus on the issue.
Alicia: Joel, I know you’ve been giving this a lot of thought, we have thirty minutes of quiet time between us, how would you like to approach this
Joel: well I’m glad you asked because I think the challenge runs deeper than just the sales figures. I’ve noticed some patterns in recent product launches that makes me wonder whether we have sales and marketing as in sync as they possibly can be
Alicia: Hmm, so ensuring when we get ready for product launches our sales and marketing working more in sync with each other
Joel: Exactly and I think there are some things that get in the way of being as successful as we can be
Alicia: That sounds important to explore, why don’t you outline some of that thinking?
In Power Listening, Alicia is showing Joel that she hears his words and by reflecting some of his language is providing reassurance the words have been heard if not yet wholly digested. Alicia’s invite for him to outline his thinking avoids her disturbing his researched thoughts before he has a chance to get them out but also creates the licence for him to go bolder with what he wants to say.
Again, Alicia’s gentle narrowing of the boundary lines of the conversation whilst checking if this is a correct understanding is helping the narrow the focus of the conversation so both are on the same page. And finally Alicia’s indication that she recognises the importance of this topic emotionally for Joel facilitates him to bring his best thinking to the table.
Alicia: Joel, could you talk me through an example of where this hasn’t worked as well as you think it could ?
Clarify the meaning
Alicia moves on to the next step of Powerful Listening which is to clarify the meaning. This is really important s that Alicia truly understands. In the first conversation both left with a different understanding of the problem yet Alicia thinking they were completely in sync with each other. It is a recipe for disappointment. Instead, through inviting Joel to illustrate an example she has an opportunity to be 100% sure she understands AND that Joel knows he has been understood.
Alicia: so if I understand this correctly Joel, you’ve a sense that though marketing and sales work together on developing the product as a project team, when it comes to launch time they revert to being two separate teams and that means we’re not as fast and responsive as we need to be in the market
Joel: right and it seems strange that people work really well together in building the product but as soon as it’s launched they drift into being almost separate tribes that don’t see they have anything in common any longer when they really should
Alicia: so if we found a way to get sales and marketing to stay together during the product launch we’d be able to get the best thinking from people and work faster when we need to change things by keeping everyone focussed on a common interest instead of working in competing silos
Joel: exactly that
Now Alicia faces her final and greatest challenge of being the Catalytic Leader, how to wrap up and turn this conversation into action. Her temptation is to use her considerable marketing experience and she takes a deep breath and gets ready to say to Joel:
“Ok Joel here’s what we’re going to do” except she doesn’t. Because the final step of power listening is to absolutely ensure there is a clear pathway to action but it is also to ensure Joel moves towards the action, resisting the temptation to take control which would just disempower Joel once more.
Steer towards action
“OK Joel, what would you suggest we do here”
“I’ve sketched out a few ideas, it’ll need a few changes to structures and responsibilities which you’d need to sign off on but I’d like to outline those to you but there are also a number that I can just be getting on with myself in the meantime whilst we work through the big stuff”
“Great let’s hear them”
As a catalytic leader Alicia has maintained the mission of ensuring she knows what is happening within the company but facilitating the best thinking from Joel. As their conversation goes on, Joel shows some gaps in his thinking around restructuring sales and marketing and how Marcus who leads the marketing team right now might respond. But Alicia, in maintaining a coaching style is still able to use her deeper and wider experience to help Joel refine his solution and learn valuable leadership skills in the process.
Did Power Listening take longer? It might have felt so initially. But consider this. Had Alicia and Joel’s conversation gone the way it was likely to, the only thing that would have happened for certain is Alicia would have created a dependency on herself.
Our question as catalytic leaders is it is nice and gratifying to have people come to us and we dispense words of wisdom and show off our experience, we’re only human, it’s a warm fuzzy feeling to take on that adulation but it is short lives.
Quick recap on power listening – set up the contract, focus on the issue, clarify the meaning, steer towards action
By using Power Listening as a technique we enable people to do their best thinking. We model behaviours they can readily replicate in their own teams. We create impact beyond impact. And that’s the role of the catalytic leader.
