Understanding Listening Strategies

Listening is one of the most valuable skills a leader can have.

Many people assume that listening is a passive experience, but it actually requires active participation. There are a variety of methods for effective listening, including:

• using attentiveness, silence, and neutrality
• reflecting and summarizing
• sorting and patterning
• noting gaps and interruptions
• expressing feeling and testing for responsibility.

When people talk, they expect others to listen to them, but they generally give little thought to what this means. The following are some first steps to good listening:

• Focus your attention on the person who's talking. Maintain eye contact. If your body language says you're not interested, the person will sense it.
• Remain silent, except for recognition that you're following along, such as a semi-verbal "uh-huh" or a head nod. This says you're paying attention.
• Maintain a neutral frame of mind. This means not judging or attempting to control the conversation, not suggesting or correcting, and not praising or criticizing.

There are two other techniques for making people aware that you are paying attention. First, use reflective statements. These are words that echo important words or phrases that the patient uses. Second, summarize what you have just heard and repeat it back to the speaker.

You can also wait for a break in the narration, and then sort out and find patterns in their experiences. This can help to sort out the differences between symptoms and deeper problems.

Try to notice inconsistencies in narratives. What is left out of a conversation can be as helpful in analyzing a situation as what is included.

Toward the end of a conversation, you can encourage the speaker to step back from their story and summarize it for themselves.

Remember that effective listening requires active participation. You should use attentiveness, silence and neutrality when listening. It's important to use reflective statements and summarize the employee's message. You should also sort symptoms from deeper problems, note gaps and interruptions in your employee's story, encourage your employee to express feeling, and test for responsibility.

Understanding Good Questions

To accomplish your goals as a businessperson and leader, one of the best strategies is knowing how to ask key questions.

Key questioning strategies can help you:

• uncover the problem in front of you
• identify the purpose of your actions
• discover the premise you're following
• determine the resources you need
• determine customer interest
• gather the data you need.

One questioning strategy used by Japanese teachers of quality is the use of Why? They suggest asking this question five times to discover the underlying causes of a problem and then finding solutions.

Another key question is aimed at discovering the purpose of any action. For example, whenever someone suggests a new project or product, you could ask, "What is the purpose of this?"

You should also subject every suggestion or idea that is presented to a question concerning its premise. A premise is the belief or attitude that forms the basis of an assumption.

Every new project, idea, or suggestion that is presented to you requires effort and resources to be carried out. To help employees figure out how to convert these thoughts into actions, you should ask them questions about resources.

Occasionally, your employees will come to you with a suggestion that you know they have not researched. Instead of dismissing the idea, use questions designed to encourage employees to come up with the data they need.

You can maintain a thriving business by knowing how to ask good questions that engage your employees in the process of improvement.

Understanding Leadership through Questioning

One of the most important things that you can do to improve your company is to ask the right questions in the right way.

Questioning strategies that improve the way employees and production process work include:

• collaborating
• experimenting
• educating
• reviewing.

Collaborating
There are many different ways that leaders can approach working with their employees. In the old style of organizations, leaders would direct rather than collaborate.

Leaders who direct have a hard time learning to ask questions. They tell others what to do and pack unsolicited advice into their conversations with subordinates. On the other hand, leaders who collaborate with their team do so by asking questions and using what they discover to improve the way the team operates.

A good piece of advice is to learn the difference between opinions and facts. Employees and co-workers are much more likely to be drawn into dialog with someone who knows the difference.

Experimenting
Leaders who understand what they don't know take the experimenter approach, using questions to learn. Leaders who think they know everything use their opinions as facts and don't listen to those who actually know.

Educating
Another hallmark of leadership is educating. When teachers start giving advice, they have failed as teachers. When leaders spell out what they believe to be true, with no room for inquiry, they are telling others what to do. But when leaders use step-by-step questions designed to let others figure out answers for themselves, they are educating.

The trickiest questioning strategy has to be employed when there is something wrong with someone's work. In the old school of management, leaders often served as inspectors. When they found a mistake, they pointed it out. "This is a mistake," they'd say. This accusatory manner makes people defensive and works against positive solutions.

Reviewing
Leaders who use reviewing as a questioning strategy learn how to ask the questions that get others to see the flaws in their own work. "How can you stop this problem from occurring?" or "What can you do to track down the source of the problem?" are inquiries that encourage participation and involvement.

By using a variety of questioning strategies to involve others in the production process, you can significantly improve quality and efficiency at your organization.