• asking a question so simple that it’s insulting
• sounding like a cross-examiner (tone of voice is critical)
• not really listening to the answer
Use questions to:
• seek understanding
• clarify for yourself someone’s position or level of knowledge
• guide people in a certain direction
• build confidence, awareness and self-responsibility
I’m not suggesting that you never give a command or tell someone what to do. There are times when that is the most efficient way to communicate with someone, especially concerning a simple task. But asking effective questions is the primary skill employed by exceptional coaches with a strong developmental bias. This is how they develop people. Good coaches use this style of communication most of the time. In the chapters that follow, the skill of asking effective questions comes up time and time again.
Listen Actively
Once you ask a question, you need to listen well. Listening is a simple skill that is very hard to execute. This may be because we equate being in charge with talking. There is an illusion that if you are talking, you are in control. The only thing you are controlling, however, is airtime. If you really want to coach well, you need to know the person you are coaching, the issue they are dealing with and their ideas on possible solutions. The only way to get to know all this is to listen and observe.
If we respond to employees without listening, what we are doing is prescribing without having all the information needed to properly diagnose, and they may end up having very little faith in the solution. Let me explain. If I go to a doctor and start describing how I am feeling and outlining my symptoms, but I feel the doctor isn’t really listening or doesn’t really understand the situation, how much confidence will I have in the diagnosis? How comfortable will I be with the solution he prescribes?
Many of us tend to want to rush right into things and fix them without taking the time to diagnose and understand. Part of this deeper understanding relates to having real knowledge of the person, their idiosyncrasies and how they learn. Wally Kozak, former Canadian national women’s hockey coach and current scout, has a quote on his office wall at Hockey Canada that reads, “Coaching and teaching require one to find out how the player is smart, not how smart the player is.”
In a “normal” conversation, when one person is speaking, the other ought to be listening and focusing on what is being said. Each person, ideally, takes a turn, alternately listening and speaking. The whole process works well when this occurs. Unfortunately, many people aren’t particularly good in the listening role—those who have a need to control, for example, or are in a rush, or have a high opinion of their own knowledge or intellect, or quite simply don’t care what you think or have to say. These are people who do not possess a “toggle switch” for alternating between speaking and listening. Over the years their switch has become stuck in a more limited, self-serving range that alternates between speaking and waiting to speak.
These people—and some of them may have quite positive, pleasant personalities—will never effectively ignite the Third Factor in anyone. Listening—the act of being present to another human being with the intent of truly understanding what they are saying—is an incredibly powerful act, and it’s a skill mastered by effective coaches. Passive listening— paying attention and nodding—may be helpful in some instances, but active listening is the skill of choice if you really want to take on the role of developing others.
The “Activity” in Active Listening
Active listening is not only about truly paying attention to what others are saying, but also—and this is the active part—about letting them know that you understand them. According to leadership expert and author Stephen Covey, seeking to understand the other person is the first order of business in active listening. A really effective way to do this is to stop the other person every once in a while and let them know that you “get” what they are saying by relating back to them, in your own words, your understanding of what they have just told you.
Active listening performs the following functions:
• communicates respect
• gives you insight into another person’s thinking processes, blocks and ideas
• increases their self-esteem and confidence
• guides you in assessing what the next step should be for their development
Listening takes three forms:
• Simple passive listening: eye contact, nodding, acknowledging.
• Active listening: clarifying, probing, checking out that your understanding of what they are saying is accurate, seeking to understand. There are many blocks to understanding the message, which may include:
• people not feeling free to say what they really mean
• feelings being difficult to put into words
• the same words having different meanings for different people
• Keen observation of nonverbal cues: Observation involves not only using auditory skills but also watching for visual and kinesthetic cues. Often what you’re hearing does not match up with what you see and feel as you interact with the other person. Making that distinction and feeding it back to the individual can be very helpful to their development. For example: “Your words are indicating confidence, but I sense some concern or reluctance to commit fully.”
Often, all you have to work with when trying to help someone develop is what you see and hear. Your ability to observe well and articulate to the individual those observations is critical. The most common errors occur due to “mis-hearing” or “mis-reading” what someone is trying to communicate. Their words confuse rather than clarify because they do not match what you are seeing, or they are inappropriate, out of place, or over the top. Keen observation and active listening—combined—are the most useful ways in which to ensure that
• what you think you heard is in fact what the person intended to say, and
• you are dealing with the real issue or needs and not some symptom or false front.
What follows illustrates how anyone can become an active listener.
I met Robert in a leadership program at Queen’s University. Let me describe Robert by way of his results on the TAIS instrument, a tool we use with executives and elite athletes that, among other things, gauges how they pay attention and in what ways they are distracted. On the interpersonal scales, Robert scored 98 percent on his need for control (just behind Attila the Hun!), 99 percent for self-esteem (“I’m right and I know I’m right”), and also extremely high in extroversion (97th percentile). On all three communication scales (intellectual, negative/critical, positive/support) he scored above 85 percent. I don’t think you’ll be shocked to learn that everyone from all levels of his organization indicated on his 360 feedback* that he needed to learn to listen!
I should point out that Robert was an engaging fellow and wellliked by his colleagues and superiors despite his listening deficiency. I met with him for a 40-minute coaching session and asked him what he wanted to work on. He mentioned a small, obscure behavior from his 360 feedback. I let him know that I was more than willing to coach him in that area but asked, “What about listening?”
“I’ve never been a good listener,” he replied with a laugh. Then he talked about his history of not listening, describing incidents from elementary school and the home he’d grown up in. He finished by saying, “Peter, I don’t listen; it’s something I’ve never been good at.”
In the chapters that follow