Listening to Learn

Asking the right questions and listening are two sides of the same coin. You just can’t have one without the other. While hearing refers to the sounds we hear, listening entails focused attention with a willingness to understand and an openness to learn.

“When you talk you only repeat what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.”  ~Dalai Lama

Hearing is easy. Listening is hard.

It reminds me of a nursery rhyme framed on the wall in a Tahoe vacation cabin we once rented. I couldn’t trace its origin.

“There was an old owl who sat in an oak.
The more he watched; the less he spoke.
The less he spoke; the more he heard.
Why can’t we be like that wise old bird?”

Listening is hard because it requires focus and attention, but it’s not difficult to master. If we train ourselves to observe and speak less, we’ll become better listeners. It’s the perfect anagram; to listen, we have to be silent. There’s a reason we have two ears and one mouth.

Modern life is busy. We rush through our days keeping a frenetic pace running around on overdrive. As a result, we spend less and less time listening to one another. Time is our most precious commodity. And, thus listening is perhaps the greatest gift we can give. It’s the gift of our time and attention. Listening is a key component of all effective communications and all healthy and successful relationships. Stephen Covey lists listening as habit 5 of 7 habits of highly successful people. To listen well, we have to listen with the intent to fully understand and not to reply.

Listening requires intention. It takes practice.

Listening tips:

1. Step up - show up with the intention to genuinely listen.
2. Tune in - be present and pay focused attention to what is said.
3. Let go – withhold judgment, don’t make assumptions, & release expectations.
4. Give generously – remember the 5 A’s: appreciation, acknowledgement, affirmation, asking & acceptance.

Let me add more about the 5 A’s of listening:

Appreciation: recognize the good qualities of the speaker and/or the good points s/he made.
Acknowledgment: express your appreciation for the speaker and/or the good points made.
Affirmation: use words that build up, inspire, motivate, and encourage the speaker.
Asking: be curious about new perspectives and approaches. Ask the right questions to learn more about the person and the situation.
Acceptance: At times we have to agree to disagree. We have to accept the differences and embrace them because our lives are enriched through being exposed to new ideas, opinions, styles, practices, and values.

In his short TED Talk “5 Ways to Listen Better” Julian Treasure shares 5 strategies to improve conscious listening. It’s definitely worth 7 minutes and 50 seconds of your time.

http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_5_ways_to_listen_better?language=en

Asking the Right Questions

The questions we ask ourselves and others might change the course of lives. Great leaders are those who consistently make good decisions. But how do we become great at making good decisions? By overcoming our instinct to provide answers. Asking rather than telling is the key to unleashing excellence. While telling others what to do might be the quickest way to solve a problem, it impedes long-term growth and innovation. Asking the right questions on the other hand inspires people to explore new ways of doing things and to find the best answers and better solutions. The ability to ask the right questions is one of the most important skills a person should master when leading others whether in business, at home, or in the community.

The key being on asking “the right questions.” Tossing questions in every direction can get really annoying really fast. Good questions have a purpose and result in learning. Always ask yourself whether your question would increase your or others’ learning and help build a positive relationship. Asking always starts with you first. Get in the habit of thinking trough issues before you ask others for information. It shows respect to others’ time, and it would help you ask better questions. The right questions challenge assumptions, stimulate thinking, trigger insights, create energy, and drive for best answers and progress. To ask the right questions, always consider the three P’s: Purpose, Possibilities, and Progress.

• Purpose: what can be learned and achieved?
• Possibilities: what new ideas and paths can be generated?
• Progress: how to support development and growth?

Like any skill, asking the right questions requires continuous practice before it becomes easy and automatic. I highly recommend John Maxwell’s book “Good Leaders Ask Great Questions.” Many of my clients have found it very valuable in improving their ability to ask the right questions and to improve their leadership in both their professional and personal life. The book offers hundreds of questions to ask yourself, your team, your peers, and your family and friends.

I also highly recommend James Curleigh TED Talk about asking the right questions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1pPMqG2NWo

I’ll leave you with this TED Talk question:

What questions aren’t you asking today?

What a mess Messi!

Call it soccer or football; it is the greatest sport in the world. I am a die-hard Brazil fan, but I still love Lionel Messi. I am so sorry and find it hard to believe he was found guilty of tax fraud. Messi denied having any knowledge of his financial and tax affairs. However, the court dismissed his argument and held that indifference and ignorance do not clear Messi from his fiscal responsibility. Messi would appeal, and we would probably never know whether he was oblivious to the way his money was handled by his financial advisors, but it really doesn’t matter. He chose to be ignorant when he should have been interested and involved.

It reminds me of an old joke my kids used to tell me (right after the “knock knock” phase): “What’s the difference between ignorance and indifference?” Answer, “I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

Well, sometimes it’s critical that we care and keep in the know. This is an important life lesson that can be applied to both our personal and professional life.  Deliberately keeping uninformed when the information is within reach can hurt us. Yes, there are situations where ignorance is bliss. However, there’s an important difference between rational ignorance and deliberate ignorance. Rational ignorance is a conscious decision to not pay attention to information that would yield little to no benefit, such as the happenings of the Kardashians. Deliberate ignorance, on the other hand, is equivalent to burying one’s head in the sand; choosing to ignore critical facts and exercise due diligence.

Classic examples of deliberate ignorance are bankers charged with laundering money who claim they never knew it was drug money, or top management in whistle-blowing cases being asked not only about what they knew but about what they could and should have known to avoid wrongdoing on their watch.

Whether in our personal life or at work we have a responsibility to be well-informed, which seems easy to do when we have unlimited knowledge at our fingertips. We can look up any topic and get instant answers. Who hasn’t self-diagnosed consulting Dr. Google? However, the answers we get are only as valuable as the questions we ask.

“The most common source of management mistakes is not the failure to find the right answers. It is the failure to ask the right questions… Nothing is more dangerous in business than the right answer to the wrong question” ~ Peter Drucker

Asking questions is the most powerful tool leaders and coaches possess. Asking the right question at the right moment may inspire deep insights and open up a whole new world. Yes, I am a coach and my superpower is changing lives one question at a time.

More on asking questions in my next post.

Self-imposed Limitations

How can we get out of our way and fulfill our greatest potential? The transition from “I wish” to “I will” may require examining and rewriting our emotional scripts. Our self-imposed limitations are almost always the result of feelings and our inner emotional processing rather than rational thought and objective analysis. As we consider making changes we tend to find comfort in assumptions and beliefs based on past experiences rather than consider a broader perspective and welcome new ideas.

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”  ~ Mark Twain

The scarier the change, the tighter we hold on to our beliefs, the narrower our view becomes, and the more these self-imposed limitations hold us back. Through the many years of coaching people for success, helping them move from avoidance to achievement, I’ve learned that most of us are wired to give ourselves less credit than what we are actually capable of. We often declare failure before even trying because the possibility of failure is just too scary. Once you learn how to free yourself from self-limiting beliefs and identify what’s holding you back, you’d realize you are stronger than you thought, and you will be able to accomplish a whole lot more than you ever gave yourself credit for.

The key is to remain confident and attuned to the opportunities presenting. If you’ve ever attended a Sales training, you may be familiar with the story about the two shoe sales reps who were sent to Africa to see if there was a market for their foot wear. One reported back, “No one wears shoes. No business opportunities” whereas the other reported back “No one wears shoes. Fantastic business opportunities.”

Which sales rep are you?

Everything we are and everything we do is a result of all the things we’ve learned. One important step in our learning is to recognize the voices of our inner critics, our very own personal gremlins who try hard to stop us from moving forward with any goals and future plans. The most effective strategy to silence our inner gremlins is trying. Every risk you take is an opportunity to move past the self-imposed limitations, one small step at a time. Learn to be curious about the possibilities rather than critical about what is or isn’t possible. Assume an experimental and playful approach to exploring new options.

Ask yourself the Three Magic Questions:

1. What are you happy you did?
2. What is working well for you?
3. What else would you like to try?

And then make a decision to tackle a challenge. Ask yourself what’s the worst that can happen if you go for it? Dig deep to expose the inner gremlins and your real fear about making the change. Then make a plan and just do it.

I highly recommend “Taming Your Gremlin” by Rick Carson. He offers simple strategies and good exercises to break through negative self-talk and self-imposed limitations.

I’d love to hear about your gremlins and your success in taming them as you dared try something new and accomplished something you truly care about.

Be All You Can Be

In one of my previous posts I mentioned a question from a recent grad about making a difference at work, and I’d like to follow-up with a statement that I find Millennials (born 1981-1999) to be the generation most engaged in the pursuit of meaning and in redefining personal and professional success. I’ve come to think about them as the generation in search for meaning.

In coaching conversations, Millennials often point out that “we,” their parents, teachers, and coaches, have lied to them when we kept saying that as long as they put their mind to it, they could be anything they wanted to be. In all fairness, this message is delivered with the best of intentions to encourage our children to dream big and to set ambitious goals.

But the truth is that none of us can do anything we want. Only a select few reach upper-echelon status in business, science, sports, etc.  There were less than 500 players on the 2015-2016 NBA opening-day roster.  I can say without a doubt, I could never be one of them, nor a prima ballerina for that matter. It’s not in my genes. To further illustrate this point, let me quote Professor Scott Trappe, Human Performance Lab at Ball State University, who says that if you want to be a world-class sprinter, you’d better choose your parents wisely. His research shows it’s all about having just the right muscle fibers to be either a sprinter or a marathoner. And even when we are genetically endowed to pursue success in certain fields it would typically take years of practice and hard work.

So how about we stop telling our children they can be anything they want and just allow them to be themselves? Let’s help them uncover and develop their natural gifts, talents, and joys and grow to be all that they can be. Perhaps it’s time to re-define success as making the most of our opportunities?

We all face real limits but also have great strengths. Should we focus on improving our weaknesses or building on our strengths to seek and achieve greater success?

I first started pondering this question when attending Marcus Buckingham’s presentation at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) annual conference in San Diego in 2010. He started his presentation telling us about a school conference where he and his wife saw the beautiful drawings created by their son’s classmates whereas their son’s art work consisted of a hastily drawn set of stick figures. He shared that his first reaction was that of embarrassment, shame, and guilt that his son was lagging behind at age 5. He was seriously considering getting a private tutor to help their son improve until the teacher told them their son had superior math skills. His story struck a chord with me. My son’s preschool drawings were beautiful, but it turned out each one was a collaborative art project, my son not included. He would ask the girls to do his work while he was out playing in the yard. I had a light-bulb moment and vowed to switch my parenting style from nagging for improvement to recognizing and rewarding strengths. And I applied the same principle to work refocusing performance conversations on areas of greatest potential and on capitalizing strengths.

I highly recommend “Now Discover Your Strengths” by Marcus Buckingham & Donald Clifton.  The message is very powerful: we would only get marginally better if we keep focusing on improving on our weaknesses. Spending our days putting much effort on work for little gain is not fun. We are better off focusing on what we do well at optimal capacity. Once we commit to playing to our strengths we may not be anything we want, but we can become someone we are proud and happy to be.

Note: we can’t discuss limits and strengths without addressing the issue of self-imposed limitations – more on the topic in my next post.