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Creating Sustainable Change
I mean, not just checking things off a to-do list or focusing on an employee survey score and raising it. This is about really feeling a sense of awe because together you did something different this time. You found the high leverage points to achieve success. You had real conversations with your co-workers that inspired creative thinking. There was no fear of conflict and you eliminated surface talk. It can happen. It does happen. Are you up for it?
Deep Listening
I have learned a few things over the years about listening and communication.
- People want to be heard and if you give them a chance to share, they will.
- The quality of your questions determine the quality of the conversation.
- The quality of your energy and presence has a direct impact on what is shared.
- The way you listen determines what you really hear.
In a world of sound bytes, rapid pace, and electronic connection, we’re losing our ability to listen. It is only through this ability that real innovation, change, and relationship can happen.
Here are some suggestions on how to enhance our listening skills at home and in our organizations.
People want to be heard
Most often I find that my clients, who really feel they’re good listeners and generally are good listeners, have not set up the right structures or environment for listening and sharing to really happen. Intentions are good, but we unconsciously block what we’re trying to allow.
Here are some easy changes you can make:
Meeting structures and agendas: do we allow time to check in and check out and let people share what’s going on in life as well as work before we “get down to work?”
Do we have spaces in our office that invite conversation and sharing to happen? Not meeting rooms: conversation rooms – places to rest and share and reflect together without tables or physical barriers that come between people?
Do we commit to and stick to one on one time with each other and allow ourselves to witness, learn and share?
Are our large scale meetings set up for sharing and conversation or just top down feedback and data dump?
When have we last asked the question: “what would it take for us to create an environment that increases our ability to listen and share?”
Quality Questions
Learning how to ask quality questions takes years of practice. Quality questions are those that cause someone to pause….to take a deep breathe and reflect. You know you’ve asked a quality question when the person responds, “Wow. That’s a really good question.”
As part of my consulting process, I conduct stakeholder interviews. By asking a group of individuals the same questions, we can discover patterns in the system and understand what is trying to emerge. I have found that the order of these questions also makes a difference as we want to create a safe and comfortable place for storytelling to happen and for truth to be spoken.
Here are some of my favorite questions (many from which came from The Presencing Institute.) What are yours? Be disciplined about reflecting on your inquiry skills and think about what questions change conversations and create connections and which ones don’t.
- Describe your leadership journey and how you got to “here”
- What significant challenges have you experienced in this journey and how did you deal with those challenges?
- What are your core values in life? What’s most important to you?
- If you were to give your child advice for living in one word, what word would you choose?
- What is a life motto or words you live by?
- In order for you to be successful, what do you need to learn and what do you need to let go of?
- What wants to happen here? What is waiting to emerge if we just let it?
- Why are you here and what do you want?
The quality of your energy and presence
I just had the privilege of spending the day with Otto Scharmer from the Presencing Institute, an event hosted by The Heartland Institute.
I believe he said it best: we need to move from “I think, therefore I am” (Descartes) to “I attend this way therefore it emerges that way.”
I have learned time and time again, that what I do before a conversation, interview or a day with a group, affects the quality of my energy and presence during the interaction.
Too many times I had an early morning interview or session and my typical habits got the best of me: I’m not a morning person, I wake up late, I have to skip meditation and yoga practice, and I rush out to the door to walk in right when we’re about to start.
NOT GOOD.
In fact, it’s down right irresponsible of me.
I’m still learning, but what I do know is that spending time to tend to the quality of my own presence has a direct impact on every interaction I have. So, at a minimum, I take a breath, try to find a quiet space by myself, and clear my head. Ideally, I spend 30 minutes meditating, do my yoga practice, sip my coffee slowly, fuel with a healthy breakfast, and create a sense of presence.
But this is just the beginning. A great beginning, but just the start. This requires a life review in many respects. How does our life style impact our inner state? Do we create space for reflection, exercise, balance, creativity? Do we have routines in place that allow for reflection and growth. You’ll be amazed at how your state of mind affects how you see the world AND the energy and the interactions around you.
We need to slow down to speed up. Our bodies, hearts, mind and spirit are dying for us to give them some breathing space. When you do, you’ll be amazed at how different your experience and outcome is.
The Way We Listen
Listening is a skill that is learned. Leaders and practitioners who are skilled at listening, can clear the way for greatness to happen.
Otto, in his book The U Theory, describes four levels of listening. I think most of us get stuck in the first two:
- Downloading: listening from a place of knowing and reconfirming your own world views. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that already” is the inner voice.
- Factual: paying attention to facts, words, data only and comparing it to what you already know – is it similar or different. “Look at that: this is similar or different to what I think” and you respond based on that similarity or difference.
- Empathic: we listen from a deeper level of understanding – a place of connection with someone else or something else and connect from a deep place. This is where true dialogue can happen and often, when it does, profound shifts are made in both parties. “I know how you feel” is often the sense. We forget ourselves in the conversation and create space.
- Generative: By the end of the conversation, you’re no longer the same person. Generative listening changes people because it requires us to listen from a source deep within us – one not controlled by our head or even our heart – but from a capacity to connect to the highest future possibility or something that wants to emerge.
Every time I talk to someone, I try to check in on my quality of listening. If I catch myself in stages 1 or 2, I take a deep breath and try to lean into empathic listening. When I do, the conversation takes a turn, we drop to a deeper place, and it’s like the whole world around us goes quiet. That’s when the real stuff starts to come out and only when it’s real, can we transform.
As you finish reading this, I encourage you to reflect on your own listening skills, the quality of your attention, the quality of your inner state, and pay attention to your next conversation. The act of listening is one of the greatest gifts we can give to each other.