Fine-tune your Listening skills

(Active listening is one of the most important tools a leader can apply. It
facilitates greater understanding of situations, challenges and, most importantly,
of the people who do the work)
( M. G. ESKAROS, Parsons International Ltd., Abu Dhabi, UAE )

Patient listening is the doorway to superior leadership for every executive, manager and
supervisor. It is also the doorway for gaining respect from associates and commitment
and loyalty from subordinates. It is the most important of all leadership skills.
An effective leader spends at least half of his or her communication time listening
because it means using the brainpower of every team member. And that brainpower
could be for identifying and understanding a problem or a potential problem, finding a
solution, or for implementing a brilliant idea and developing a new and more efficient
approach to handling daily business.
In our business, we get wrapped in tight schedules and critical deadlines and forget the
importance of being with the troops in a relaxed environment to listen and understand.
Successful leaders invent communication loops to open the channels of feedback by
thinking out of the office and inviting employees for breakfast, meeting them for coffee
or holding informal lunches. Objective managers will refrain from speaking too much
during these activities and will only ask questions and listen. So get out with your team,
listen to their complaints and suggestions, and try to fully understand them.
Seek first to understand. Most of us listen with the intent to reply. We're either speaking
or preparing to speak to be understood. We need to learn and practice the highest form
of listening: empathic listening. This is when every word said really gets inside you. You
look out through it and you see the world the way the speaker sees it.
Communication experts estimate that only 10% of our communication is represented by
the words we say. Another 30% is represented by our sound, and 60 percent by our
body language. In empathic listening you listen with your ears but you also, and more
importantly, listen with your eyes and heart. You listen for feeling, meaning and
behavior; you sense, intuit and feel.
Empathic listening is powerful because it gives you accurate data to work with. You are
dealing with the reality inside another person's head and heart. You're listening to
understand, and you're focused on receiving the deep communication of another human
soul.
Now how do you feel when you work with a boss that does all that? Better yet, how
would you like to be the one who truly practices all that? Superior managers are well
informed and work hard to stay that way. Strength comes from knowledge. The
essence of knowledge, is having it, to use it, as Confucius said. The best way to
acquire daily management knowledge is to listen to your associates, teammates,

bosses and subordinates and use that knowledge to solve problems, fulfill your plans
and reach your goals.
HOW TO DO IT
Let's focus on our most important management rule, which is reporting problems. A
procedure must certainly be developed to not shoot the messenger,but must welcome
the bad news and disagreements as another opportunity to excel. General George C.
Marshall, US Army chief of staff during WWII once said, Unless I hear all of the
arguments against something, I am not certain I have made the right decision or not.
Don't shoot the messenger. When a person asks to see you, do not invite him or her
unless you are really willing to listen and ready to focus without interruptions. Hold all
your calls and silence your cellular phone. Give your full attention to show the person
how serious, appreciative, and respectful you are. That also tells the person to be
concise and to the point. Here's the procedure (refer to Fig. 1).

( A simplified chart for problem solving and crisis management.

Each step's success hinges on the individual's listening skills )

1. Encourage the messenger of bad news or disagreements by saying a few words

of welcome to reduce anxiety, then clear your brains and listen empathically.
2. Smile warmly, do not interrupt, and take some notes.
3. At the end of the person's report, ask very politely if there are more details, and
continue listening.
4. Ask the reporter if he or she thought of corrective actions. Listen and take more
notes.
5. Convey your appreciation to the person for the information.
6. Now you can ask questions. You have had time to compare this situation with
others in your experience, so that you may now apply previous lessons learned.
7. Make sure that when you talk, the reporter is at ease and will also listen
empathically. Make it clear that you want to be sure that you have fully
understood what the reporter said and intended to tell you. Do not be accusatory,
and keep the dialogue going.
8. Ask if the reporter has any recommendations on how to proceed. Get all the
details and listen.
9. At the end, again praise and thank the reporter.

Case history. At a major engineering company in the early '70s, there was a big
demand for process engineers for large projects. Many fresh graduates were hired. One
of the process unit's senior lead engineers was bombarded with questions and tried to
patiently answer them. For a few weeks half of his time was spent with the young
engineers, coaching and answering their questions.
Working overtime early one morning, the department head quietly came to the lead
engineer's desk, sat down and offered coffee and donuts. Then he asked if there were
any problems or suggestions. The lead engineer mentioned that half of his time was
being spent answering the same question, asked by a different person. And he
suggested that the group start a training program. The boss listened empathically,
thanked the fellow and carried on with his rounds.
Two weeks later, the boss visited again. He had a request from the vice president of
engineering to the lead engineer to immediately start preparing a training program for
the fresh graduates, the first ever in the company's history.
Over a period of two years, more than two hundred engineers, process and other
disciplines attended the training sessions. The effort was rewarding, and everyone
reaped the benefits. The key to this success truly was the boss's emphatic listening
skills.

Meetings and letters. Well-organized meetings are preceded by an agenda sent in

advance to all participants to ensure awareness and preparedness. Objective meetings
provide time to listen, understand, learn, then speak clearly to the point to make plans
and solve problems. Common problems with meetings include impatience, interruptions
and bad timing in replying before the speaker finishes. Briefly, lack of empathic listening
skills from one or more of the attendees can cause frustrations and create bad feelings
and could lead to significant loss of time and subsequent delays.
Properly conducted meetings where the coordinator has good listening skills and
imposes them provide golden opportunities for all participants to communicate
effectively. Empathic listening by everyone creates an atmosphere of genuine respect,
understanding and bonding among all. In meetings, you are having a dialogue and
communicating with people by listening, asking questions, getting clarifications, coming
to an understanding and then making decisions.
Trying to solve problems through letters where you communicate to people what you
want is much less effective than a meeting. There is no dialogue or instant clarifications
and exchange of ideas or reference to the right documentation. Nowadays,
videoconferences facilitate meetings with participants anywhere in the world. However,
keep in mind that during the videoconference you need to exercise the good habits of
empathic listening. Letters can be written for the record, but are less productive than
meetings to answer questions, provide solutions and solve problems.
Recent experiences. During a major project development, an issue was raised
regarding documentation for process control, cause and effect diagrams, emergency
shutdown and not standard (complex) control loops narratives. Much of this
documentation was to be produced by the special equipment and package vendors.
The engineering, procurement and construction contractor, covering its part of the effort,
produced the first issue, which lacked the vendor input because it was too early in the
game. Vendor documents were supposed to follow. The client personnel wrote letters
referring to contractual clauses that identified which loops needed to be described in a
narrative. The contractor responded that this is not required based on the contract!
Consequently, the client rejected the documents for being incomplete and in violation of
the contractual agreement.
Letters were exchanged for over six months and nothing was resolved. Finally, a
meeting was called. The participants came from the jobsite in the Gulf area to the
contractor's office in Europe. A senior person from the client's side adopted the
cleverest approach. He requested to be given 15 minutes to state his problem and that
all attendees listen without interruptions. Everyone respected the request and listened
empathically.
When the contractor's personnel responded, every one from the client side listened
empathically. Correct contractual documentation was reviewed on the spot,
clarifications were exchanged and an understanding was developed. In less than two
hours, agreements were reached. The minutes of the meeting listing the actions to be
taken and the contents of documents to be produced were clearly written, reviewed,
accepted and signed the next day.

Another real-world example. Here's another experience encountered during the

development of a clean fuels project. The general specs called for all flanges 6 in. or
larger in hydrogen-rich services, inaccessible from grade, to be equipped with steam
rings to snuff any self-ignition spot fire. The contractor issued a letter saying that
practically this arrangement is needed only for hot services above the self-ignition
temperature of the particular stream.
The client's project engineer's response, through a letter, was that the contract must be
followed. The contractor responded, through another letter, saying that there are
thousands of flanges; providing the steam ring to every one of them would create a
maze of small-bore lines, 1-in. diameter, all over the hydrotreaters, reformers,
isomerization and auxiliary units. Again the project personnel, through another letter,
insisted.
A senior process engineer from the client side was called to look into the problem. He
listened to both sides and called for a meeting and invited the operating personnel,
contractor and project staff to attend. A request was made that all should empathically
listen when one spoke. In less than 45 minutes, an agreement was reached. All
consented to identify the hot service lines, the operating temperature and the hydrogen
partial pressure, and mark up the P&IDs, then review the 3D model to determine grade
accessibility, thus precisely identifying the flanges to be provided with steam rings.
Empathic listening is a tremendously valuable tool. When applied, it creates respect,
understanding and exceptional accomplishments.

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Fine-tune your Listening Skills
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Title:
Fine-tune your Listening skills
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Reliance Industries Ltd.
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Creation Date:
8/12/2005 5:29 PM
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