I stumbled onto this TED Talk by Maegan Stephens & Nicole Lowenbraun on listening and loved it. I highly recommend that you take the 11 odd minutes to watch the entire talk. It is interesting, entertaining and highly insightful.
The key insight they share is that there is more than one way to listen at work. The speakers share that every conversation at work has an underlying goal that requires us to show up and listen differently.
Developing the ability to listen well is key if we want to build a high performing team and if we want to become leaders worth following. Everyone says that. However, not many people share how one can become good at this skill.
This talk does.
They share a simple framework to identify different forms of listening – SAID (listen to Support, Advance, Immerse or Discern) and share that each one of us is naturally good at atleast one of these four ways to listen.
What we need to do is to identify where we are weak and practice that to get better overall.
Let’s look at each one of these one by one and dig a bit deeper.
Listen to Support:
This is the most basic way to listen. This is foundational. We need to always listen to support in addition to all the other kinds of listening we do based on the situational need. This is how we make the people we are listening to, feel seen and heard, fully.
This is the foundation on which we create psychological safety. Once we have done that, we can adopt the different kinds of listening the situation demands.
Listen to Advance the agenda:
This is the kind of listening we need to bring on to ensure that we are moving ahead and making progress. This is when we are summarizing and facilitating decision making (if we are not the decision maker), so that we can make progress on the project that we are working on.
If this means that we need to step in and cut someone short, so be it as long as we keep the best interest of the team at heart and be open about it (in the interest of making a decision to move forward, can we …).
This is how we build momentum and infuse energy into the projects that we lead.
Listen to immerse:
We use this kind of listening to understand the context that is being shared and it is important to absorb and internalize the context in order to become effective.
Usually this kind of listening is needed at the start of the group coming together or in the beginning of any project that we want to work together on.
This is more about learning and no response is needed other than to absorb and immerse ourselves in the context being shared. This is how we learn and build contextual understanding.
Listen to discern:
You do this when you have to critique, evaluate and give feedback on the work that is being shared. This could be negative (usually) or reinforcing.
One can use this kind of listening if and only when we have spent the time to understand what is being shared, have the right context, have a trusted relationship and when the reason for the critique is in the best interest of the person to whom it is being delivered. The listening part is what comes before the critiquing.
This is how we help the team minimize the risk of failure and serve as the quality control.
Putting it all together:
Now, lets think about what is the kind of listening you are most comfortable with. Then think about what kind of listening does the person sitting in front of you needs right now.
We would build trust and become a leader worth following, if we are able to adapt our listening to the need of the person in front (do they need support – all of us need it, do we need to absorb what they are sharing, do we need to help them move forward and build momentum or do they need to be shared honest feedback that can help them succeed).
In conclusion – Practice Adaptive Listening
This adaptive nature is why they call this kind of listening – Adaptive Listening. Adaptive listeners possess the ability to consciously shift their style to meet the demands of each situation, improving relationships and outcomes.
The more we are able to learn and practice the different kinds of listening in low stakes situation, the better we get at it and become ready for the high stakes situation where we can have a significant impact on the outcome of the conversation and therefore the outcome of the work.
