Want a way to engage other people and resolve conflicts, all while increasing your own allure? Try active listening. Here's how:
- Ask an open-ended question. Let's say you want a key person to overcome his reluctance to approve a final document. You could ask, "What are your objections to approving this document?"
- Listen carefully to the response. Give the person your full attention and hear with an open mind what he or she is saying. Allow the person to finish without interrupting.
- Repeat the response back to the person, expressing your understanding of what you just heard. For example, you could say, "I understand you don’t want to approve this document because it is missing an important appendix."
- Pay attention to the other person as you speak. Look for signals to determine whether your interpretation is correct. Allow the person to correct you, if needed. Keep rephrasing until your understanding is correct.
- Ask another open-ended, follow-up question. For example, you could ask, "What do you see as the risk of approving this document if it is missing that key appendix?"
- Continue the cycle of ask-listen-repeat until you achieve resolution, or until you obtain enough information to plan the next step.
In the example case, by using these techniques, the listener was able to determine that the speaker did not, in fact, object to approving the document. The speaker was actually objecting to submission of the document to FDA. Resolution was achieved by agreeing to approve the document in the company's document management system, but to refrain from submission to FDA until the delinquent appendix was received.
What a relief it was to finally get this document out of the endless rounds of review and have it be approved.
The active listening technique helped the listener identify the real issues, find the common ground, and achieve resolution.
Try this exercise. Find a partner, and choose one of you to be the speaker and the other the listener. Have the listener ask an open-ended question, listen to the speaker for the response, and then repeat the response. Then have the listener ask a follow-up question and repeat the ask-listen-repeat cycle for a total of three iterations. You'll be amazed. Consider asking the speaker and listener what each of you experienced while conducting this exercise.
We once had an attendee at one of our training courses who objected to this exercise. "Wouldn't it be annoying that the listener is just repeating what I said?" he asked. The irony was that we were using these active listening techniques to respond to his objections...a phenomenon he hadn't noticed.
Active listening works!