Mike Lehr's Blog

We often don’t learn the value of listening techniques in building relationships. Consequently, people might not realize we are listening; this needs to occur to build relationships.

Closed questions encourage specific or limited responses. For answers, they usually require one word, short phrases or a response from a menu of possibilities. Often, they begin with the words, “Who,” “How,” “What,” “Where” and “When.” “Yes” and “No” are often typical responses.

Even though many discount their value, when combined with other listening techniques, closed questions become extremely valuable in building relationships. They clarify specifics for us, pinpoint the facts, verify what we heard, nail down agreements and commitments, and test whether we can move.

Some examples include:

• Are you going out to the plant? (Yes/No)
• Which color do you want? (Facts)
• You want me to call the vendor . . . right? (Verification)
• Is seems you’re saying [X], correct? (Verification)
• Would today, tomorrow or the next day be better? (Menu)
• Do you agree? (Agreement)
• Will you help me? (Commitment)
• Do you need to tell me anything before we move on? (Testing)
• Is there anything else I need to cover? (Testing)

From a relational perspective, closed questions convey the feeling that you:

• Have a purpose for your conversation
• Grasp the details
• Understand them
• Respect their time by getting to specifics

The effect of closed questions is to encourage people to:

• Conclude that you’re listening and digesting
• Focus and sort through fuzziness
• Shorten their answers
• Clarify agreements and commitments

Closed questions have downsides. They can make discussions feel every interrogative and restrictive if used alone. Nevertheless, when integrated with other listening techniques they can reduce misunderstandings, demonstrate that you’re listening and build relationships.

In a previous post, I discussed the rebirth of Freud and the idea that most (if not all) of our decisions are driven unconsciously. Personification is a way we can influence others’ decision-making on this level.

Revisiting The Economist article “Retail Therapy” in its December 17, 2011 edition, it says about Ernest Dichter, who revolutionized marketing in the 1960’s:

Dichter understood that every product has an image, even a “soul”, and is bought not merely for the purpose it serves but for the values it seems to embody . . . Dichter’s message to advertisers was: figure out the personality of a product, and you will understand how to market it.

Personification is giving something a personality. For instance, my wife has a name for her car. People do the same with boats. Advertising often links products to celebrities; they become the “face of the product”, and thus its personality.

Translating to business, we encourage change if we can give change a personality. Sometimes it’s as simple as putting the face of the Owner, President or CEO on the change by saying, “It’s George’s initiative.” We can do this formally or informally; we can do this with projects, ideas and plans: “This is Mary’s project, Matt’s idea, Kathy’s plan.”

We can also reference other types of people to the change such as “The Herculean Effort,” “The Superman Plan,” and “The Rocky Project.” Any person will help as long as the connection to the person is a positive one. For example, if people don’t like Mary, her name will likely hurt the change.

When it comes to change management, we often neglect to tap into the techniques that work in advertising, merchandising and marketing. Personification is just one of those techniques.

When learning listening techniques, we often don’t learn their value in building relationships. As a result, we might be listening, but the other person doesn’t know it. The latter must occur to build relationships effectively.

Open-ended questions encourage a wide range of responses. Pragmatically, they retrieve an accurate assessment of the person’s thoughts and feelings. Relationally, they invite longer, deeper responses. This encourages feelings of freedom thought and expression.

Often, they begin with the words, “How,” “What,” and “Why,” or can include phrases such as “Tell me about . . .” and “Fill me in on . . .” Wording and tone should encourage the expression of thoughts and feelings, not just facts.

Some examples include:

• How do you think this project will go now?
• Fill me in on what you feel you want me to do.
• Why do you think Mary would be better than Nancy?
• How do you feel about that?
• What’s your reaction to Bill’s comments?

From a relational perspective, open-ended questions convey your desire to have answerers feel:

• Free to answer as they please
• You value their thoughts and feelings
• They control the direction of the discussion

The effect of open-ended questions is to:

• Minimize negative emotions
• Establish the questioner as someone with whom it’s easy to converse
• Encourage conversation and a longer interaction period
• Direct conversation with a talkative person

The downside of open-ended questions is that they can make discussions feel scattered or lacking purpose. That’s why we need to integrate them with other relationship building techniques.

Nevertheless, open-ended questions are often the first listening technique we learn. However, they let the other person know we are listening to them because we can’t use them well if we aren’t.

Linda Hill and Kent Lineback write in their April 5, 2011 HBR Blog Network post, “Why Does Criticism Seem More Effective than Praise?”:

A lot of evidence suggests that positive reinforcement — identifying and building on strengths — will produce better results than a relentless focus on faults.

However, as post’s title suggests, this isn’t always apparent. They do briefly talk about focus on the long term. Related to this perspective, the challenge I find in strategically using compliments is primarily our expectations; we expect a compliment to work immediately. Criticisms and other negative reinforcements do much better here but over the long run they don’t do much to develop a strong working relationship.

Thus, in order to make complimenting work, here are six expectations I find very important to effect change:

1. Focus on the long-term
2. Apply regularly
3. Appreciate the importance of personalizing compliments
4. Be patient
5. Reward positive change with additional complimenting
6. Employ other relationship building techniques

Yes, this means complimenting is a long-term proposition, but we can integrate compliments into our daily work routines. The difficult part is disciplining us to follow through and adhere to a complimentary regimen.

Once we achieve this part, we can take complimenting to a more strategic level in which we consciously plan the employment of compliments. This comes about by knowing what we want to:

• Achieve with every person we manage
• Say to the person if we have a moment to interact

Thus, in our minds we visualize the interactions we might have with our people and determine how to position the right compliments to effect the desired change. The process is no different than that used in thinking about the numbers we reviewed, the plans we will right or the resources we need to maximize.

In the November 2010 issue of the Harvard Business Review Jeff Weiss, Aram Donigian, Jonathan Huges discuss in their article “Extreme Negotiations” the importance of affecting process not just outcomes in negotiations. The same holds true in problem solving since negotiations are only problems of bringing two sides to agreement. Thus, you can get different solutions by changing your problem-solving process.

In one simple situation, Manager A took the initiative of drafting a plan for review. Manager B did not like it. Thus, they decided to collaborate on the next rendition. As another example, two hiring managers couldn’t agree on a candidate, so they changed the process by requiring the candidate to write a business plan for his hire.

Here are some techniques I use to alter the problem-solving process. I change the:

• Process by having another person or group create it
• Point at which people work independently and then come together
• Definition of the problem to include more lower-tier variables
• Makeup of the people or teams involved in the process
• Documentation required even to the point of using different forms and templates
• Timetable of when a solution is needed
• Any screening and filtering steps to allow more or fewer options
• Stakeholders involved in the process usually by adding new ones
• Objective of the process such as focusing on options not the solution
• Facilitator of the process
• Location of any meetings such as from office to offsite
• Forum for any meetings such as in person versus video conferences
• Initial parameters of what constitutes a viable option for processing

Of course, each problem-solving situation presents its own additional aspects that could effect change in process. So, if you’re not getting the solutions you want, change the process.

Long ago I sat in on the reprimand of an employee by a manager. The manager concluded his discussion by asking the employee, “Do you understand what I’m saying?” The employee responded, “Yes.” It suddenly occurred to me how biased we are in thinking that education alone will correct behavior. In other words, we assume that if someone understands our argument and reasons they will adopt our point of view.

In this above situation, there was no follow up by the manager to explore whether the employee agreed with the manager’s alternative action or whether the employee was moved to act accordingly in future situations. Yes, he was aware of the consequences, but we tend to forget that sometimes people are willing to pay those consequences.

I refer to making this false assumption about “Do you understand?” as a cognitive bias; we tend to believe that reasons, logic and rationales are enough to win the day. This bias will tend to make us wrongly believe that we’ve done “our best.”

I also experience this in non-disciplinary situations in which anyone is trying to influence another person. This cognitive bias happens frequently with instructors trying to move participants to take action in such settings as business training. They will ask participants, “Do you understand what I’ve shown (said, did, etc.)?”

Therefore, in summary, I find four basic hurdles, represented by the following questions, that we need to negotiate and verify before we can have significant confidence that we’ve persuaded someone:

1. Do you hear me?
2. Do you understand me?
3. Do you agree with me?
4. Are you moved to take the recommended action (to act on this idea)?

I’m often asked to improve employees’ “social skills” especially those who are classified as “quiet” or “introverted.” When I work with them, I establish two things first:

1. You don’t have to talk much to be a good conversationalist.
2. When people talk, especially about themselves, 95% of the time (if not 99%) they won’t notice that you aren’t talking.

Here is the major technique I teach them:

Focus on asking people questions especially open-ended ones encouraging elaboration.

I stumbled across this one day during college while visiting my brother at his college. He wasn’t at his fraternity so a fraternity brother entertained me until his return. Having driven for over eight hours, I was tired and unenthusiastic about returning any conversation. Fortunately, the fraternity brother was very talkative and it only took a few of my questions to carry him for almost forty-five minutes. Later, he told my brother what a “great conversationalist” I was.

Initially, people are skeptical, so I have them practice in social situations. In one case, I had an IT employee practice on his wife. When he saw how she ran with the conversation from his questions and how much more she enjoyed their “conversations,” he began integrating it into his work.

Focusing on asking questions works extremely well with people who might have an expertise that we don’t. This happened at a party last week. By focusing on the other person’s work, he carried the conversation for the entire twenty minutes while we ate together. I also learned quite a bit. However, as my wife has come to learn, you will begin to notice how few questions people really ask of others in conversation.

Related post:

Related post:

• Become a Good (or Better) Conversationalist Overnight (Part II)

Here is another site with some other good conversational techniques:

• 14 Methods and Mindset Tricks to Make you a More Interesting Conversationalist

I was recently advising a sales rep on one of her major clients when I asked midway through our conversation, “So, Kathy, have you ever told this client that you enjoyed working with her?”

After a pause, Kathy replied, “No, but she knows I enjoy working with her.”

“How?”

“Well, . . .” and Kathy proceeded to tell me all the things she did that helped the client to know that she enjoyed working with her. However, at no point did Kathy say that she ever told her client that she enjoyed working with her.

So, I asked, “Okay Kathy, so what you’re telling me is that if your husband believes you’re beautiful that there is no reason for him to tell you so as long as you know that he believes you are. True?” After this question, Kathy committed to telling her client that she enjoyed working with her.

The point is that we often “beat around the bush” with compliments. I was recently guilty myself when I told an executive recruiter that I enjoyed working with the candidate. She asked me, “Have you ever told him that?” After confessing guilt, I promised her I would, and I did.

We often comment on our dislike for those who “beat around the bush” and don’t get to the point. So, perhaps during this holiday season, while we’re enjoying our friends and families, we could extend the joy to clients, co-workers, employees, colleagues and many others in our careers that contribute to our enjoyment.

We can simply say, “I enjoy working with you.”

This technique is one of the most effective for dealing with angry and anxious business situations. It has helped me and those I’ve instructed tremendously. Encouraging people to talk can help them feel better and present a better environment to present solutions. The diagram visualizes the technique for us. Its nickname is “sucking out the venom,” for we are extracting people’s anger and anxiety.

Venting Process – General Concept

Tips:

• Avoid stifling venting; you want to clean the air for your solution so you can present it on good ground.
• Encourage venting through your questions and demonstration of interest in their situation.
• Empathize with them by saying something like, “If that happened to me, I would be upset too.”
• Apologize if possible.  Depending upon the situation though, apologies can carry legal ramifications so a good apology can be along the lines of “I’m sorry that you feel that way.”  Consult your legal counsel if need be.
• Present your solution after the venting wanes; presenting it too early might leave deeper resentments unaddressed.
• Don’t worry about solving the problem; sometimes, all it takes is listening.

Translating the diagram into specific steps, we arrive at this:

Venting Process – Steps

1. Receiver (red square) expresses a negative thought or emotion to the presenter
2. Presenter (blue circle) pulls the negative expressions from the receiver by using open questions and encouragement (intensity of the feelings will likely increase for a short period)
3. Eventually, the presenter will begin to feel the negative energy dissipate in the form of cessation of talking, longer pauses, or quieter voice tones by the receiver
4. The presenter begins to isolate the negativity by clarifying details and  summarizing points
5. The presenter presents a plan (if possible) to address the problem

Intuitive approaches require the identification of emotional drivers in influencing and problem solving. They generally work better than cognitive approaches because emotional drivers tend to impact behaviors, thoughts and decisions far more than logic, reasons and rationales. Therefore, if we want to effectively identify these drivers, we need techniques to help us. Our word choice is one such technique.

Generally speaking we can uncover feelings by simply asking, “How do you feel about . . .” If we ask, “What do you think about . . .” we’ll tend to receive a heady response rather than a heartfelt one. The word “believe” gives us more of a middle-of-the-road response. We need the mid-range approach because some people do not like to be asked how they feel about things. I once asked a woman how she felt about something, and she replied, “I hate it when you ask that question.” Therefore, we need a mid-range approach for these folks.

Furthermore, we can incorporate these words into our discussion, not just our questions. The more we use the word “feel” the more likely our discussion will hover on an emotional plane. Conversely, the more “think” is used the more likely it will hover on a logical one. In order to avoid redundancy we can incorporate more feeling words like emotions, empathy and sympathy. Thinking words would include reasons, rationale and logic and keep the discussion on a heady level.

If you will be teaching others how to use these words, you need to be aware that some people don’t like to even use the word “feel.” If so, they will have difficulty using this technique.