Suraya HW Assignment

LO3.1 Describe and evaluate the process of active listening.

LO3.2 Explain and evaluate barriers to effective listening an common types of non-listening behaviors.

LO3.3 Describe the elements of questions that enhance listening and learning.

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LO3.4 Explain the principles of team communication in high-performing teams.

LO3.5 Describe and demonstrate approaches to planning, running, and following up on meetings.

LO3.6 Explain basic principles for handling difficult conversations.

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Dozens of studies have shown that listening is ranked among the most important communication skills. For example, 7,674 business school alumni who graduated between 2000 and 2010 were asked to rank the most important communication skills for success in the business world (see Table 3.1 ). They ranked listening skills second, only slightly behind the broad ability to work with others.

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Michael Hoppe of the Center for Creative Leadership has defined active listening as “a person’s willingness and ability to hear and understand. At its core, active listening is a state of mind. . . . It involves bringing about and finding common ground, connecting to each other, and opening up new possibilities.”

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Hoppe breaks active listening down into six skills: (1) paying attention, (2) holding judgment, (3) reflecting, (4) clarifying, (5) summarizing, and (6) sharing.

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The traditional Chinese character for listen (displayed in Figure 3.1 ) captures the importance of listening with all of our senses and all of our efforts. The character includes components that represent the ears, the eyes, the heart, undivided attention, and king. The implication is that listening requires all one’s senses and that you treat the speaker like royalty.

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This first step involves devoting your whole attention to others and allowing them enough comfort and time to express themselves completely. As others speak to you, try to understand everything they say from their perspective. Paying attention requires active nonverbal communication. Your body language, including appropriate eye contact, should show you are eager to understand the other person. Lean forward. Keep an open body position. Sit up straight. Nod to show you are listening. Smile as appropriate. Pay attention to the speaker’s nonverbal behaviors.

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People will only share their ideas and feelings with you if they feel safe. Holding judgment is particularly important in tense and emotionally charged situations. One of the best ways to make others feel comfortable expressing themselves fully is to demonstrate a learner mind-set rather than a judger mind-set.

Holding judgment does not mean that you agree with everything you hear. It also does not mean you avoid critiquing the ideas of others. Rather, it’s a commitment to hearing the entire version of others’ ideas and experiences.

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In a learner mind-set , you show eagerness to hear others’ ideas and perspectives and listen with an open mind. You do not have your mind made up before listening fully. When you disagree, you stay open to the possibility of finding common ground and mutually beneficial solutions. Under the learner mind-set, difference of opinion is considered normal, even healthy, and potentially solution-producing.

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In a judger mind-set , people have their minds made up before listening carefully to others’ ideas, perspective, and experiences. Judgers view disagreement rigidly, with little possibility of finding common ground unless the other person changes his or her views. Judging often involves punishing others for disagreement. At its extreme, the judger mindset involves ascribing negative traits to others and labeling them in undesirable terms.

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You can create an environment in which others open up and you can listen more effectively with learner statements , which show your commitment to hearing people out. In effective learner statements, you explicitly state your desire to hear differing opinions with statements such as “I have a different perspective, so I want to understand how you see this.” By contrast, people who make judger statements , which show you are closed off to hearing people out, shut down honest conversations.

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Notice in Table 3.2 the distinctions between judger statements and learner statements that pick up from the opening case in which Barbara and Andrea disagree about Internet pricing for group guests.

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Active listening requires that you reflect on the ideas and emotions of others.

To make sure you really understand others, you should frequently paraphrase what you’re hearing.

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As Table 3.3 shows, good reflecting statements begin with phrases such as, “It sounds as though you think . . .”; “So, you’re not happy with . . .”; or “Let me make sure I understand. . . .”

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Clarifying involves making sure you have a clear understanding of what others mean. It includes double-checking that you understand the perspectives of others and asking them to elaborate and qualify their thoughts. It is more than simply paraphrasing. It involves trying to connect the thoughts of others so you can better understand how they are making conclusions.

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As Table 3.4 shows, good clarifying questions are open-ended and start with learner-oriented phrases such as, “What are your thoughts on . . .?” or
“Could you explain how . . . ?”

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The goal of summarizing is to restate major themes so that you can make sense of the big issues from the perspective of the other person. Ideally, you can show that you understand the major direction of the conversation. Active listening also involves expressing your own perspectives and feelings. If you do not share your own ideas completely, your colleagues do not know what you really think.

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You can summarize with statements that begin with phrases such as “So, your main concern is . . .” or “It sounds as though your key points are . . .,” as shown in Table 3.5 .

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Active listening is not easy, especially in certain corporate culture and in the face of time constraints. Some barriers to listening are lack of time, lack of patience and attention span, image of leadership, communication technology, fear of bad news, defending, “Me too” statements, advice-giving, and judging. Consider which barriers to listening are most challenging to you.

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Figure 3.2 displays defensive and non-defensive replies to a potentially upsetting comment. Avoiding defensiveness requires a high level of self-awareness and self-management.

It requires understanding the triggers that make you feel threatened in a professional environment. It also requires understanding how to manage these emotions so that you can maintain your roles as an active listener and a problem solver.

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Listening involves a cluster of communication skills. A crucial one is the ability to ask the right questions. Good questions are not good in and of themselves, however. Unless you truly listen to the answers and even encourage other perspectives and dissent, you may not achieve learning. Notice examples of questions in Table 3.6 that reflect judger mind-sets and learner mind-sets.

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Generally, most good questions are open-ended. In contrast, closed questions require simple responses such as yes or no . Some basic types of learning-centered

questions include rapport-building questions, funnel questions, probing questions, and solution-oriented questions. See Table 3.7 for examples of each type of question.

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Most poor questions fall into the category of the judgmental mind-set and can actually lead to less listening. Poor questions include leading questions, disguised statements, and cross-examination questions. Table 3.8 provides examples.

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Some teams are formally and permanently organized and titled (such as the marketing team ). Other teams are temporarily formed for completing a project or an activity (i.e., project team, committee). The most common functions of teams are handling special projects, completing the work of particular departments, developing internal systems innovations, creating customer-service innovations, developing product innovations, engaging in employee development, and reducing time to market for products and services.

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In a recent survey, business professionals cited ineffective communication (66 percent) as the biggest barrier to team effectiveness. Other major barriers included lack of effective chartering and goal setting (56 percent), lack of clarity and understanding of roles (47 percent), low morale (44 percent), low productivity (42 percent), and lack of trust (36 percent). Each of these factors in turn relate to communication competencies.

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Nearly all high-performing teams go through four stages before they maximize their performance. In best-case scenarios, work teams take roughly six to seven months to reach this level (see Figure 3.3 ). Typically, leaders become less directive and more consultative as the team progresses through the stages: forming, storming, norming, and performing.

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In the forming stage, team members focus on gaining acceptance and avoiding conflict. In some ways, this stage is a honeymoon period in which team members get to know one another.

In the storming stage, team members open up with their competing ideas about how the team should approach work. This stage is typically the least productive, since team members are attempting to make sense of uncertain roles, goals, and accountabilities.

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In the norming stage, the team arrives at a work plan, including the roles, goals, and accountabilities. In the performing stage, teams operate efficiently

toward accomplishing their goals. They have evolved to a level where they can transform disagreement and conflict into consensus for future action.

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Organizations and teams constantly attempt to foster unity and high performance. Team culture refers to a set of shared perceptions and commitment to collective values, norms, roles, responsibilities, and goals. High-performing teams avoid simply going with the flow. Rather, they frequently, explicitly, and openly discuss the set of values, norms, and goals they share. Out of every 100 comments team members in high-performing groups make, 60 to 70 directly relate to work—goals, coordination, roles, task clarification, and other project-related issues. Most groups underperform because they do not spend enough time meeting. Frequent meetings are necessary to establish shared perceptions

of roles, goals, and accountabilities. High-performing teams embrace conflict. They see differences of opinion as natural and as a path to creativity and innovation.

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Two principles that team members use to embrace and respond to differing viewpoints are disassociation and association. Disassociation is a process by which professionals accept critique of their ideas without taking it personally and becoming defensive. On the other hand, association is the psychological bonding that occurs between people and their ideas. Since the purpose of most meetings and team communication is to increase agreement about roles, goals, and accountabilities and to increase the group’s sense of purpose, team members should seek association by the end of a meeting or team communication. Generally, high-performing teams go through repeated cycles of disassociation

and association.

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Planning for meetings requires strategy, scheduling, and coordination. At a minimum, you should answer the following questions in your

preparations:

● What is the purpose of the meeting? What outcomes do I expect?

● Who should attend?

● When should the meeting be scheduled?

● What roles and responsibilities should people at the meeting have?

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Some additional questions to ask are:

● What will be the agenda?

● What materials should I distribute prior to the meeting?

● When and how should I invite others?

● What logistical issues do I need to take care of (reserving rooms, getting equipment,

printing materials)?

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Agendas provide structure for meetings. For most meetings, preparing and distributing an agenda ahead of time allows each meeting participant to form expectations and prepare. Most agendas should include items to be covered, time frames, goals and/or expected outcomes, roles, and materials needed. You can foster more effective meetings by getting others involved in the agenda-creation process.

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If you’ve planned and prepared well for the meeting, you are in a great position to carry out your meeting objectives. Ideally, you’ve provided clear expectations for meeting participants—what they should have done before the meeting and what they can expect in terms of content and length of the meeting. Once the meeting arrives, you have several options for achieving productive outcomes.

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One priority should be to end the meeting on time. Before ending the meeting, summarize what you have accomplished. In just a few minutes, you can recap action items that the team has agreed on. After a meeting ends (even for those you do not lead), you should mentally evaluate your performance.

Consider these questions:

● How much information, analysis, and interpretation did I provide?

● Did I communicate my ideas even if they conflicted with someone else’s?

● Did I participate in the implementation of the timeline? Did I meet deadlines?

● Did I facilitate the decision-making process? Or did I just go with the flow?

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Follow up by distributing the minutes of the meeting (as a memo, in an email, in a meetings folder on the corporate intranet, or as part of a team blog or wiki). Minutes of the meeting should include the date and time, team members present, decisions, key discussion points, open issues, and action items and related deadlines. You can also include names of people who were invited but were absent and the assigned roles (i.e., note-taker).

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Business professionals routinely—often on a daily basis—encounter difficult conversations, especially when working in teams and collaborating with others. Difficult

conversations are approached with apprehension, nervousness, anxiety, and even fear. Difficult conversations often center on disagreements, conflict, and bad news.

Many people prefer to avoid difficult conversations because they want to avoid hurting the feelings of others or want to avoid conflict.

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Most people back away from uncomfortable or unpleasant conversations. This is particularly the case when we feel we have a lot to gain but risk heavy losses if it doesn’t go right. For these reasons, difficult conversations are often emotionally challenging. Successful people in the workplace do not evade difficult conversations. Those who regularly tackle them with skill and tact improve work performance for themselves and others.

Some tried-and-true principles for handling difficult conversations in the workplace are:

• Embrace difficult conversations.
• Assume the best in others.
• Adopt a learning stance.
• Stay calm/overcome noise.
• Find common ground.
• Disagree diplomatically.
• Avoid exaggeration and either/or approaches.

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One way to embrace difficult conversations is to view conflict as an opportunity. That is, the exchange of perspectives and competing ideas reflects open and honest

communication. If there is no conflict, employees are likely not voicing their true perspectives. Generally, colleagues tend to respect one another more when they know they can safely disagree.

The components of difficult conversations are:

• Start well/declare your intent
• Listen to their story
• Tell your story
• Create a shared story

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