The importance of actively listening and asking “What else..?”
My 9-year-old son recently went through a challenging time at school. Some antisocial behaviour from a classmate, a former friend. It was nothing physical but it was equally unacceptable... name calling and being excluded from the group. But this is not the essence of this post.
As a Business and Executive Coach, I pride myself on my emotional intelligence and ability to help others overcome challenges, achieve goals and take actions towards desired outcomes. In coaching interactions, I always pay close attention to my own biases or beliefs and ensure I'm not influencing the other person’s desired actions and outcomes. My role is to support the coachee to form their own outcome; this is always more successful, as it drives ownership and buy-in. After all most people will know - at some level - what they want much more clearly than I do.
When reflecting on my son’s situation, I realised that I was so emotionally attached to the situation, and so eager to make it better for him, that I was jumping to solutions - but my solutions, not his.
"You need to…", "You should do this…", "Tell X that he is an absolute…” - please fill in the blanks.
I wasn't helping him in any way. I could see this in his frustration, his non action and his blank response to my suggestions.
Time for a different tactic.
It was time to start listening - actively listening - if I wanted to understand what he wanted, what he wanted to do and, perhaps more importantly, what he didn't want to do. This required me to park a lot of emotional and emotional interruptions.
I used a lot of silence as I wanted to create the space for his thoughts and response. Using lots of minimal encouragement (hmms, ahs, I sees, ohhs and what do you thinks) and silence did indeed give him the space to work it through but with my support.
It was hard during the discussion to park my thoughts, emotions and internal interruptions. I kept getting a little voice inside my head - my voice - but I kept silent, and it worked.
Our chat ended with, "Thanks Dad. I feel so much better. I know what I need to do now.".
Sometimes we’re so eager to fix a problem for colleagues, customers, loved ones and indeed ourselves that we stop listening (or we listen, but with judgement) to what is needed at that moment to get to the right outcome
Think about this in your sales interactions!
How often do we really listen, actively listen, to our customers with the intent of truly understanding their views, challenges, issues and pain points?
Often, we’re so eager to present our agenda, our solution, our opinion, or a counter to their objection that we listen. But we listen with the intent of voicing our opinion, agenda or insight - often disagreeing or dismissing their beliefs and opinions. The customer picks this up at a conscious or unconscious level, and it breaks the trust, rapport and goodwill we’ve worked so hard to build.
The next time you’re in a sales interaction and you feel compelled to respond with your insights, your evidence or your opinion, press pause and ask yourself “Do I really know what’s going on here?”, “Do I have all the information?” and “Am I still listening or am I now listening to myself?”.
Use of silence and asking, “What else?” with our customer will yield much more insight we can use to support their desired outcomes.