Leadership

Intentional Listening Means Being Curious

Are We Listening? Maybe. But How?

Chances are good that we don’t think much about how we listen. We just do it as we always have.

Maybe when we were younger, we were told to be quiet while someone else was speaking. Maybe we listen harder when we hear someone purposefully whispering or talking about us. The truth is, we generally don’t listen with the intention to do it well or to be helpful.

When we don’t know how to or don’t try to listen well, the conversation may not often go much beyond small talk. We may divert the conversation away from what the speaker wanted to say or cut it off before something important is said. We may even be unhelpful when we divert the conversation back to ourselves.

Add Curiosity To Your Listening

If you’re thinking listening is hard with certain people, keep reading, there is good news! The good news is that to have curiosity in a conversation is simply a relief! It means that you don’t need the answers. You can slow down and relax into the conversation, and simply rely on your innate sense of curiosity.

The first step to listening mastery is to be aware of our tendencies. In other words, knowing how we usually listen. Once we know that, we can try to improve it. Having a framework helps, of course!

So, here’s the framework we teach at TeamCatapult.

Framework for Listening

There are three levels of listening, according to “Co-Active Coaching: Changing Business, Transforming Lives” by Henry and Karen Kimsey-House.

Level I is called “Internal Listening”
Level II is called “Focused Listening”
Level III is called “Global Listening”

Internal Listening

This is the most common form, so you may recognize it. While we’re listening to someone else, we’re actually paying attention to our own thoughts. Our responses tend to be about ourselves, not the other person. Some examples are:

A: “I just went to Spain last week.”

B: “Oh, nice! I love Spain! I was there about 3 years ago.”

And, if we do ask a question, it tends to ask for data, something the person can answer pretty easily, usually with a “yes” or “no”.

A: “I was in Barcelona”

B: “Oh, did you go to the Sagrada Familia? That’s my favorite place there.”

Here is a work-related example of Level 1 listening:

A: “I need to talk to you about my team.”

B: “You and everyone else. My teams are falling behind this week too.”

A: “I’d like to try something new.”

B: “Have you already talked to John about it?”

Focused Listening

The objective is to listen for meaning (content, empathy, clarification, collaboration). If we ask a question, it continues the thread that was already started and hopefully, causes the person to share again.

A: “I just went to Spain last week.”

B: “Oh, nice! What attracted you to Spain?”

A: “My son just finished a semester there.”

B: “Wonderful. How did he like it?”

And, a work-related example of Level II listening:

A: “I need to talk to you about my team.”

B: “Okay, what’s going on?”

A: “I’d like to try something new.”

B: “Say more, I’m curious.”

Notice that in Level II listening, the focus remains on the person speaking. The listener may have thoughts about how the topic relates to him or her, but still keeps the focus on the other person.

Global Listening

The conversation objective is to listen for depth (intent, emotion and intuition). At this level of listening, sometimes we hear what isn’t said, or we notice something about the way in which something is said. We may notice facial expressions, changes in tone or body language.

A: “I just went to Spain last week.”

B: “Oh, nice! What attracted you to Spain?”

A: “My son just finished a semester there.”

B: “I noticed your whole face lit up when you said that!”

A: “I always wanted my children to have an international experience, so I’m just thrilled!”

And, for that work conversation:

A: “I need to talk to you about my team.”

B: “Okay. You seem stressed. What’s going on?”

A: “Yeah, I am very stressed out.”

B: “How could I help you release some stress before we talk about your team?”

Careful and Intentional Listening

As an Agile coach, we aim to be helpful and being helpful requires careful and intentional listening. That’s why it’s a fundamental skill to master. Not only will the skill of listening help you in professional settings, but it works wonders with a spouse, children and friends too. It starts with listening in ways that suspend judgment and communicate curiosity and respect.

When we master listening, we are able to reach new levels of conversations, likely deeper and more meaningful ones. We can even help someone learn about him or herself too. This is important because our role as Agile Coach is not to teach or give answers but to facilitate self-awareness and draw out the knowledge, creativity and resourcefulness that is already within someone.

Although the “Global Listening” may not feel natural at first, the good news is that it’s possible to practice the three levels of listening in every single conversation! Notice what level you usually use, then challenge yourself to move up one level and stay there for as long as you can. If you slip back into level I by talking about yourself, that’s okay. It’s common. Just notice it and go back to level II listening, staying focused on the other person.

Practice The Three Levels of Listening!

As you practice this, notice how the conversation goes. Does it feel different than other conversations? In what way? Notice how much you can learn about the other person. Did they tell you anything surprising? Notice where the other person takes the conversation and remain curious. As we coaches like to say… “Notice what you notice!”

Why Being Wrong Matters

‘How you do anything is how you do everything’

…including how you manage, perceive and continue to lead a team when you’re wrong.

Discover why and how you can navigate this professionally and easily.

Have You Ever Been Wrong?

Ever had that moment of “Wow! I really misjudged that situation…” or “Yikes! I just cut that person off in mid-sentence” or even “Ugh, I totally missed the obvious there”?

Of course, you have. If you’re human, you’re probably wrong several times a day.

Sometimes we’re wrong because we have limited data.

Other times it’s because we have an emotional attachment to a particular outcome, and while that outcome may not be what’s best, it’s hard to let go.

Being Wrong is a Critical Leadership Skill

Whether the source is emotional, or neurological, being wrong is a critical leadership skill.

Not in the sense of the ability to be wrong; as humans, we’ve got that covered. I’m referring here to the ability to accept and integrate, the possibility of being wrong.

Current neuroscience studies offer a lens into why we get things wrong. Sometimes it’s our brain that’s perceiving things wrong, as when it tries to complete a sentence for us, based on what we’ve heard so far, but the sentence ends with a different conclusion.

Our internal models for how things are supposed to work don’t always match what’s happening in the real world. Sometimes a threat response has been triggered, but the situation turns out to be relatively harmless.

Research data tells us that being wrong is a natural function and denying the possibility is not only counter to that data, it doesn’t serve us as we try to lead our teams to solve complex issues with higher thinking.

As leaders, we are called upon daily to put forth opinions and decisions when we don’t have all the pertinent data at our disposal. That means, that at least some of the time we’ll be wrong, as additional data emerges and our initial judgment doesn’t look as good as it once did.

The critical leadership skill, then, is having the ability to admit that we were wrong and accept the correct answer as better than our first attempt.

One way to think about it differently is to think about problem-solving from the perspective that there is often more than one right answer.

If we say to our team “I need the best solution to this issue by the end of the day today”, we set up a very different scenario for ourselves and others, then if we say “I need a few possible solutions to this issue by the end of the day today.”

Opening the thinking weakens the right/wrong dichotomy and creates possibilities. Those options not chosen are no longer mistakes but are simply part of the process.

Going Forward & Adapting

It is only in this state of openness that we can accept the lesson that being wrong offers us. We can adapt going forward. We can make better judgments in the future, all the while acknowledging that we will likely be wrong again.

This ongoing mental process of judging, failing, learning, and adapting is also a critical leadership skill. And we can’t access the process if we can’t be wrong.

The challenge for leaders is the ability to be vulnerable – open to being wrong, and not losing the status that makes us leaders in the first place. Our senses tell us that no one wants to follow someone who is wrong and so we bluster our way through our mistakes. We look for scapegoats, or excuses, or perfectly logical explanations for what we’ve done, or said, and our positions of power create the opportunity for others to collude with us in that blustering.

But, when we allow that to happen, we are blocking the learning that comes from making mistakes, owning them, and learning from them. As leaders, we have the opportunity to model vulnerability, and to normalize it in the workplace.

Innovation Lies in Learning from Mistakes

When we are capable of that, we create teams that can be honest in their feedback to us, and to one another, appropriately critical of their own missteps, and constantly learning. And learning is where innovation lies.

Our current environment relies heavily on collaboration. The inter-dependencies in our work creates this reliance and that’s not likely to change any time soon. Collaboration, by its very nature, requires that we hold two distinct thoughts simultaneously.

First, that we have an opinion on an issue that we believe to be correct, and two, that others hold opinions that may also be correct. As leaders who want to create innovation, we have an opportunity to come with an open mind and bring authentic inquiry into the conversation. Through inquiry, we can help our teams think about problems from more than one perspective.

We can’t all be right unless we’re all thinking the exact same thing and that’s not likely.

No two brains are alike, because we are hardwired by our experiences and we each experience the world differently. You and I might have the same experience, but our brains will hard-wire that experience in unique ways, based on our past, unshared experiences.

Thinking Together To Create a Solution

Effective collaboration is only possible when we allow ourselves to let go of whose opinion is the right one and think together toward creating the best possible solution.

True collaboration happens when we walk out of the room, flying high with the knowledge that we’ve solved a problem in the best way possible, but none of us knows who, exactly, came up with the solution. Because we were thinking together and collaborating, we all did!

A leadership team I worked with was analyzing why their marketing wasn’t having the impact they expected. The first response was to blame the marketing team, and the ad agency. But the team leader asked a simple, yet powerful question: “What’s another way to look at this?” That got the conversation rolling, and as everyone seemed to talk at once, the solution emerged – the ads were focused on the users, but the users weren’t the buyers. The advertising was tweaked to focus on both, with the emphasis on the buyers, and sales went up.

How do we balance the need to lead with the possibility that we are wrong? We can practice self-deprecation, for one, but that’s not always effective.

Being of Real, Direct Service to a Team

In my work with leaders, I hear them say things like “I’m not the smartest person in this room” or “I’m sure that many of you have better ideas than anything I can come up with.”

Are those statements demonstrating vulnerability?

Yes, but they go a step too far. They undermine the trust that the team has in the leader and raise questions about the leader’s ability to lead. No one wants to follow an incapable leader.

Practicing Curiosity

Another way to lead AND be vulnerable is to cultivate curiosity. Ask thoughtful, open-ended questions that get people to open up and share their thinking. Questions like “what’s another way to look at this?”, “What else should we consider?” and “What would it look like if…” can shift the direction of a conversation and create more curiosity.

Curiosity deepens thinking, and the more curious the leader, the more thought the team will put into creating the solution. We can suspend what we do know in service of learning more about what we don’t know.

It takes practice. Curiosity is a muscle that builds by using it, like a bicep, in order to be strong. Curiosity and vulnerability require courage — and people want to follow courageous leaders.

Curiosity is a critical leadership skill.

If we already have all the answers and we believe that our answers are always the right ones, we have left no work to be done by our teams.

We’ll experience this as dis-engagement, where the team doesn’t speak up, but just nods and does what we have suggested be done. But they won’t really follow, they will just comply.

No one wants to follow an incapable leader and no one sees the need to follow a leader who already has it all figured out.

What To Do When Change Requires a New Operating System

Change Can be Overwhelming

Have you ever faced the challenge of leading or championing a change that felt overwhelming? Where the gap between what life is like today and what you envision is so wide and vast that you are not sure where to start?

If you’ve spent any time around technology companies (and most businesses today are in the technology business*), you will most likely hear something about being more adaptable and agile in the way technology is developed, the way teams are led, and the way individuals are provided growth and development opportunities. In some companies, doing things in an agile manner – that places the customer first, delivers value every time, values collaboration, and makes feedback an integral part of pivots and adaption as a way of life – is not something they need to transform or become. They “get it.” Leaders support it. Teams execute on it and are rewarded for it.

But for some organizations, the road to being more agile is a bit more challenging because it fundamentally requires a different operating system.

Three Organizational Operating Systems

In his theory of Structural Dynamics, David Kantor identifies three types of operating systems that emerge in any human social system where information is being transferred. They are Open, Closed and Random. Think of these like the operating system on your computer: they are the norms, rules, and beliefs that shape and govern behavior within a system.

Here is a quick overview of each of the three systems:

Open System is oriented toward the collective. A belief here might be “hearing every voice is valuable and people will support what they help to create.” Leadership manages towards what’s best for the system, rather than what’s best for the individual. It’s okay to offer dissenting views and to speak candidly, even to those with power. Authority and power are shared.

Random System is the place of innovation, autonomy and freedom. Random systems can create, invent and make decisions in varying ways and at varying levels. A belief here might be “allowing autonomy for choices and decisions reveals new solutions that we never knew possible.” The focus in the random system is more on individuals, while authority and power are shared.

Closed System is the place of order and rules as well as predictability and efficiency. A belief here might be “order, roles and responsibilities – and a clear process for making decisions – are required to get things done.” The focus in the closed system is on the leader. You may see deference to power for decisions.

Why You Need a Balanced System

One system is not better than another. Like anything, each system has its advantages and its dark side (when overused). The overuse of an open system could lead to a lack of clear decision-making or fatigue of group process. Overuse of random system can feel chaotic and exhausting or cause innovation burnout. Overuse of a closed system can shut down new ideas and input that may be valuable.

While agile values align more with the beliefs in an open system, it does not mean that there is no room for both closed and random inside an agile organization. In fact, it is quite the opposite: organizations need a balance of all three systems. The balance may look different in each, but where organizations get into trouble is when there is a value judgment placed on one system over the other two.

For example, a startup company that operates 90% in a random system can have great success initially. But as the organization grows, there will be a need for some aspects of a closed system. An example may be putting some definition or structure around roles and responsibilities to provide guidance and help people make decisions. Putting a process in place is a closed system thing to do, but doing it in a way that informs decisions, rather than becoming a checklist, honors the random system preferences.

Another example would be a large organization that has existed for many years with much success in a closed system. The system is designed to support and reward authority; clear and structured decision-making; and defined rules and processes. But what happens when the external environment changes around that company and they need to be able to adapt more to customer needs? Their journey to becoming more agile will look and feel very different. They will need to address loosening their grip on formal processes. They may really struggle with a transformation to agile, as the agile values and principles are more similar to an open system.

Organizations can get themselves into trouble when they operate predominantly within one system. When closed is predominant, there is a value judgment placed on open and random as not being worthwhile. It is assumed that non-closed systems will not get results. This leads to overuse of one system.

Think of each system like knobs on equalizer: you need a mix of all three, depending on the situation. In the examples above, the goal is not to completely turn off one and turn up another. Instead, the goal is to balance the levels so that each system is heard.

In this way, you can create conversations where people in the organization can identify when the system is not serving them any longer and start from there.

Navigating Change Through The Operating System Lens

So what’s next? How do you work with change when the change you are proposing is different from the system that is in place?

A key tenet of the field of organization development is to “meet them where they are,” regardless of the system they are working in. Here are some ways to do just that:

Start by identifying your current system. How would you characterize it? How can you work with it?

Ask key questions. What aspect of your current system is not working for you right now? Where does it create challenges? In what ways is the operating system not serving the organization?

Help the organization see that the change they are asking for is different from the current system. How might this influence decisions to pursue change?

Find ways to honor the current operating system while incorporating aspects of another system. What can be preserved from the current system to show that not everything needs to change?

Help individual leaders expand their tolerance for different systems. How can they look at things differently without requiring a whole lot of initial change?

———–

*If you lead a company today, chances are you lead a technology business. Last February, the Wall Street Journal renamed its Marketplace section to Business and Technology. It’s a pretty accurate reflection of how influential and important technology is to business today.

Collaborative Leadership: It’s What’s Up Front that Counts

Collaboration and Leadership

I’ve been fortunate to spend a lot of time lately, pondering and poking at the concept of collaborative leadership. It’s a notion I’ve been drawn to for a long time, because I believe that people will support what they help to create (collaboration), and support is one of the things a leader needs to be effective.

The biggest challenge is this: collaboration and leadership are sometimes at odds with one another, and leaders aren’t always sure what to do with that tension.

Collaboration, on the one hand, is about getting into the mud and playing together. It’s about bringing out the best in all contributors, so that new ideas can emerge from the place where many minds are conversing, converging, diverging, and then converging again.

Leadership, on the other hand, is about, well, leading. Sometimes that means making a tough decision, or choosing among several good ideas. And it’s tough, really tough, to go from collaborating with a team to leading them. In collaboration, there’s an equality that doesn’t always carry over to the place where leadership needs to kick in.

In working with leaders, I’ve come across several common beliefs about collaborative leadership – some true, some false. Let’s take a closer look at seven of those beliefs.

Belief #1: Collaborating Means Giving Up Control

False

Collaborating is about getting people engaged in the exploratory process that creating something new requires. It doesn’t preclude the leader from maintaining control, as long as that’s clear from the start. A lot of heartache can be prevented with a few explicit statements. Here’s an example:

“I’d like to hear your ideas on this, which will help me make a more informed decision.”

Notice there was no negotiating about who would make the final decision in that statement. In collaboration, everyone knows that they are contributors, not decision makers.

Belief #2: Collaborating Means Everyone Must Agree

False

Reaching full agreement in any group of humans is a heavy lift. No two brains are alike, and so we each bring our own hardwiring (based on our unique combination of experiences) to any collaboration. No two people on a team will see a challenge or an idea the same way – and that’s the beauty of teams!

Leaders don’t need to spend a lot of time making sure that everyone is in agreement before moving forward. Establishing early on that a consensus will be reached when everyone can live with a choice, whether they love it or not, will allow for faster, cleaner decision making.

Belief #3: Collaboration is Time-Consuming

True

Collaboration IS time-consuming, but remember that people will support what they help to create. Think about how much more time it takes to move forward when there is no support from the team. Collaborating is an investment in time that it will pay off in the long run, when everyone can live with the conclusion, and time doesn’t need to be spent restating, reselling, or revisiting a decision that was made following a good collaborative process.

Belief #4: Collaborating Means Telling People What the Leader is Thinking, Then Helping Them Understand and Align to That Thinking

True

Collaborating isn’t really about telling, offering statements of fact, and seeking alignment to those facts. It’s more about asking questions: probing, prodding, and exploring together to tease out new ideas, potential obstacles, and building on one another’s creativity.

A leader who asks “what’s the biggest flaw in this logic?” creates a safe space for disagreement and a team that owns accountability for identifying risks, up front, where they can be dealt with.

Belief #5: Collaborating With a Few Smart People is Better Than Collaborating With a Group That Has Different Levels of Understanding of the Issue

Maybe

Remember the old story about the pizza delivery guy? He arrived at a midnight product development session to find the team deadlocked. Asked for his opinion from the frustrated team, he offered his outside perspective. He knew nothing about the endless debates the product development team had been circling around, but he was a potential consumer of the product. His uninformed input broke through the deadlock and had everyone cheering, patting him on the back, and offering to buy him a beer!

An outside perspective can be a great thing because our brain’s thirst for status can keep us from asking the questions that might be perceived as uninformed. Non-experts can bystand the issue and ask those questions, without having them be perceived as “dumb” questions.

Belief #6: Collaborative Leadership is a Process That Leads People to the Same Conclusion, Through a Series of Iterative Conversations

False

Collaborative leadership is a balance. The collaborative leader knows when to push for collaboration and when to lead. It takes practice. It takes skill in questioning, listening, and bystanding. It takes faith that people have meaningful contributions to make. It takes a willingness to be vulnerable.

It isn’t likely that the collaborative leader who knows all the answers is being very collaborative. Questions like “Don’t you think…?” and “Shouldn’t we just…?” aren’t going to elicit much input. In fact, they’ll probably lead you to your predetermined conclusion. While you might think you’ve collaborated, your team will know better. If you know the answers, don’t pretend to seek collaboration. You’ll damage trust and make future collaborations far more difficult.

Belief #7: Collaboration is Almost Always the Best Approach

False

Collaboration IS the best approach for exploring options that need exploring. Informing the team of a decision handed down from above isn’t collaborative, no matter what color glitter you roll it in. Be clear about the need for collaboration, and be even more clear about what you mean when you ask for it.

Therefore, collaborative leadership is also possible, even preferable, for those situations where buy-in is important. In fact, buy-in is most easily created through collaboration. Include planning, know your intention, know your desired outcome, and communicate all of this up front – even if it all seems obvious to you.

Your Turn

Which of these common beliefs do you agree or disagree with? Share your effective leadership insights with us in the comments.

Who is a Leader of Collaboration?

The Value of Collaboration for Leaders

Last week, I had the honor of sitting in a room with 22 leaders who inspired me.

These leaders have taken on a challenge few of us would be willing to attempt: increasing collaboration in an organization that does not reward it.

The fact is, many organizations have structures and systems that value the right answers over collaboration. But in an age of increasing business and market complexity, agile and lean management practices, and flatter organizational structures, collaboration is essential.

While I’m quite certain that no one leader in that organization would disagree with the values of collaboration, many don’t realize that, because their systems don’t reward it, it’s currently not safe to practice it.

What Does It Take To Be a Leader of Collaboration?

Here are some of the traits I observed while sitting with this remarkable group of leaders:

Collaboration Takes Courage

Courage to acknowledge the fear of trying to lead this work. Courage to step out and create their own vision for what this could be. Courage to be closer to their hopeful vision rather than letting the fear win out.

Collaboration Takes Vision

They had vision! Vision for the kind of leaders they wanted to be and the impact they wanted to have on others. Wow was it powerful!

Collaboration Takes Humility

Leaders of collaboration have powerful questions, not powerful answers. They let go of needing to lead from the front and find power in leading from behind. It comes from a belief that others are capable of creating their own solutions. If we take up too much space in the room we don’t leave room for others.

Collaboration Takes Humanness

They were human! This was tough work! They were wrestling with the challenge of what Peter Senge calls ‘creative tension’ – the gap between our vision and current reality. Importantly, they acknowledged it! That’s half the battle right there.

Collaborative Leadership

They built their own colleague network to support this journey. It will be tough and they will need each other to help pave the way.

Aren’t you excited for them? I know I am!

Where are you at in your journey of leading collaboration?

Leadership Lessons To Remember

Remember:

Leaders exist at ALL levels.
Leaders are made not born.
Leaders create the weather and create new value from difference.