Archive for October, 2008

I had an upsetting wake-up call last night about the skills.  Looking back on my behavior at a meeting I am pretty embarrassed by my yelling, cutting people off, shaking my head, not looking at the people who were trying to explain their point of view, etc.  I acted that way for the entire 2 hours of the meeting, and I was still upset as people left.  And I didn’t care.

I was furious at the 4 other people because I knew I was ‘right’ about my argument (as many of us feel in situations of disagreement where there is a lot at stake).  The result I was trying to achieve meant a lot to me, and I believed it was necessary for the future health of our organization.  I was angry because one person said nothing, and the other three seemed to be trying to hedge instead of saying a hard truth about an important Resolution we were writing.

I realized afterward that the only real problem was that I wasn’t ‘on the balcony.’  I just wanted what I wanted, as did everyone else.  I was in the conversation, on ‘the stage.’ I know that doesn’t work, especially with strong emotions present.  Even after 30+ years of practice with the skills, I can’t access when I’m not “on the balcony.”

I’m not sure what I’d have done if I had been ‘on the balcony.’  I really didn’t want to hear what I was hearing.  To listen would have required a real faith in the skills, to use them when I didn’t feel like it.  All I know is that without listening, from me or from anyone else at the meeting, it degenerated into a fiasco that left no one feeling good about our result.  So I think we have to listen when we don’t want to in cases like this, and that requires (1) being ‘on the balcony,’ and (2) having faith in the listening process beyond our current feelings.  This doesn’t seem easy to me, and I don’t know what works better.

Ed

Point: Listening, and understanding what is really going on for a speaker, can make listeners  uncomfortable enough to want to run away.

Example:  I was having lunch one day with 5 participants from a “**People Skills” workshop.  One of the women started to talk about her unhappiness with the feedback she received from a profile instrument.  She was distressed because she had done a lot of work on herself over the past few years, and the profile indicated that her behavior with others evidenced the same negative characteristics she thought she had left behind years ago.  One of the people at the table began to reassure her (non-listening response #11), and another began to diagnose (#4) the situation.  I stopped them, and coached them to try listening as this issue seemed very important to Grace, the woman speaking about it.

So, we all began to listen, and as we did, Grace became more and more distressed about her failure at becoming a “nicer” person.  She didn’t understand the feedback she had received and was very confused about what it meant.  We kept listening with feedback, for example: So, this profile tells you that all the work you’ve done on yourself hasn’t made any difference.  And now you don’t even know who you are. w  As we listened, she began to cry.  We kept listening: “What a disappointment (that feedback was) for you.”

The other people at the table were doing great, and I could see they were becoming more and more uncomfortable with Grace’s mounting distress.  Listening to the energy I was feeling from them, I said, “You all seem uncomfortable, I think because Grace doesn’t seem to be any happier with your listening.  In fact, she seems to be feeling worse. I suggested about the process to that point, It’s OK.  Listening isn’t about making a person feel better, it’s about understanding wherever they are, and helping them to understand where they are.  You’re doing great.

Grace talked some more about her pain, crying softly, and the people continued to listen although they were all becoming more and more stressed.  Part of their discomfort came, I think, from listening to strong emotions coming from a person who they all knew as strong, confident, purposeful, assertive, etc.  They didn’t know what to do with this change in character.  One person at the table who happened to be Grace’s boss, said, as all this was going on, I feel so helpless. Listening to that, I said to him, You want to do something, you want to make her feel better. Grace’s boss said, Yes, and I said, There’s nothing more you can do than exactly what you are doing.  Listening doesn’t necessarily feel as good as giving advice, and it’s much more effective.  Life isn’t like a TV program that gets wrapped up in 23.5 minutes, give or take a few commercials.  This is the best we can do for Grace, and she’ll be working on this for awhile as she tries to piece things together. At least we are allowing her space to think and to feel what she is feeling.  We are showing great respect for her intelligence and strength to make sense of her own life.  From here, maybe tomorrow or next week, she will move further, in whatever direction she needs to move.  This isn’t going to be “over” by the end of lunch when we go back to class.”

Point: Listening is not about making sad people happy.  Listening is more about helping a person who is feeling sad to feel that sadness, fully, and to be able to express and share it with another human being.   That process will move the speaker where he/she needs to move.  How can we be experts on other peoples’ lives?  How can we be sure, in a case like this, that distracting Grace from her distress is the best thing for her?  Maybe her deep feelings will be the source of a significant life change for her.  We can’t ever know that.

Ed

All listening really seems to be is an attitude of “you” vs. “me.”  Do I want to understand what the other person is communicating, or do I want to say something about it, react to it?

Most of us automatically  say something about it.  We immediately take a speaking turn, offering one or more of the standard 14 reactions: advice, questions, reassurance, agreement or disagreement, etc.  Why would I not want to interrupt from my own perspective?  It would only be because I might be more interested in hearing and understanding what the speaker is saying, than in making my own point about it.  I don’t interrupt when I am more interested in “you” than in “me.”  As I observe how conversations take place, most of us seem to be pretty self-absorbed.

Example: I choose to share this example because no profound results came for the speaker from my listening.  I just chose to listen to my lawyer friend because he wanted to share something with me.  It was a 10 minute phone conversation where he was describing a series of Court hearings involving a client he was representing in an alimony case.  Nothing “happened” as a result of my listening.  There was no “result.”  He didn’t achieve a breakthrough in his thinking, or “progress” from Point A to Point B.  He simply told me how excited he was about winning the case against big odds, and I let him do that by listening.  That was it.

Richie doesn’t usually sound this excited about his law practice (preferring to talk mostly about his magic shows), so I decided to start feeding back what I heard him talking about.  I fed back what I was hearing about 8 or 10 times in the 10 minutes:

• “So, with you not present at the first hearing, you believe something weird happened because the alimony award of $650/week was ludicrous given that your client was only making $2500/month in retirement income”
• “You figured his ex-wife must have lied, or her attorneys made something up, or that the judge just didn’t care”
• “You know his ex-wife’s law firm has a reputation for soaking their clients by having countless hearings and extensions, and you wanted to avoid that”
• “It was pretty amazing to you that you won all 3 motions from a different judge at that third hearing”
• “You walked out of that one with your head pretty high in front of those other attorneys.”

The interesting thing for me about this conversation was that my listening made absolutely no difference in how or what he shared.  It was as if I wasn’t even there. He kept speaking, and I kept listening.  After about 10 minutes he stopped and said, “Hey, Ed, let me tell you about the magic show I’m doing tomorrow.”

Point: I realized from this conversation that listening is simple.  Someone speaks and you listen.  Or you don’t.  You either stay in another person’s world for awhile to try to understand what life is like for him/her, or you don’t.  It’s not about profound insights happening for a speaker, or completions of serious issues, or clear movement from point A to point B. Those things often do occur, and when they do we are often present to a miracle.  And, those incredible results are more like side effects. Listening is just an attitude — do I listen when others talk to me? or do I speak (one of the 14 reactions) when others talk to me?

It’s that simple.

Ed

Welcome to the Lisbe Partners Blog.

I’ll be writing my thoughts and experiences (1) with “people skills” each day, and (2) with examples I see around me where adults interact with children in accordance with or in violation of the “My ‘Body’ - Your ‘Body’” model of socially just conflict resolution in “power over” relationships.

I hope you will write with your own issues and questions, and will share examples from your lives. This should be a lively dialogue. I’m very much looking forward to it.

Best, Ed