Marshall Goldsmith; Mark Reiter. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful (Kindle Locations 2552-3928). Hyperion. Kindle Edition.
CHAPTER 9
Listening
JACK NICKLAUS SAID THAT 80 percent of a successful golf shot begins with a proper grip and how you stand over the ball. In other words, success is almost a foregone conclusion before you exert one muscle.
It’s the same with listening: 80 percent of our success in learning from other people is based upon how well we listen. In other words, success or failure is determined before we do anything.
The thing about listening that escapes most people is that they think of it as a passive activity. You don’t have to do anything. You sit there like a lump and hear someone out.
Not true. Good listeners regard what they do as a highly active process—with every muscle engaged, especially the brain.
Basically, there are three things that all good listeners do: They think before they speak; they listen with respect; and they’re always gauging their response by asking themselves, “Is it worth it?” Let’s examine each one and see if it makes us better listeners.
Think Before You Speak
The first active choice you have to make in listening is to think before you speak. You can’t listen if you’re talking. So keeping your mouth shut is an active choice (and as we know, for some people it’s tougher to do than bench-pressing 500 pounds).
I don’t know anyone better at it than Frances Hesselbein. Frances is one of my all-time heroes—someone I respect, admire, and love on a par with my wife and kids. She was the executive director of the Girl Scouts for 13 years during which she revived a sagging organization, increased enrollment, funding, and diversity, and balanced the budget. She has 17 honorary degrees. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998 (America’s highest civilian award). Peter Drucker called her the finest executive he’s ever known.
Frances Hesselbein does a lot of things well. But she does one thing superbly above all else. She thinks before she speaks. As a result she is a world-class listener. If you asked her if this was a passive gesture, she would assure you that it requires great discipline, particularly when she is upset about what she’s hearing. After all, what do most of us do when we’re angry? We speak (and not in the carefully measured tones of a diplomat).
What do we do when we’re upset? We talk.
What do we do when we’re confused or surprised or shocked? Again, we talk. This is so predictable that we can see the other party almost cringe in anticipation of our harsh unthinking autoreflex response.
Not so with Frances Hesselbein. You could tell her the world was about to end and she would think before opening her mouth, not only about what she would say but how she would phrase it.
Whereas most people think of listening as something we do during those moments when we are not talking, Frances Hesselbine knows that listening is a two-part maneuver. There’s the part where we actually listen. And there’s the part where we speak. Speaking establishes how we are perceived as a listener. What we say is proof of how well we listen. They are two sides of the same coin.
I defy you to argue that this approach is anything but a highly active, decisive choice. Telling your brain and mouth not to do something is no different than telling them to do it.
If you can master this, you can listen effectively.
Listen with Respect
To learn from people, you have to listen to them with respect. Again, not as easy to do as you might imagine. It too requires the use of unfamiliar muscles.
Has this ever happened to you? You’re reading a book, watching TV, or shuffling papers while your significant other is talking to you. Suddenly you hear, “You’re not listening to me.”
You look up and say, “Yes I am.” And calmly provide a verbatim playback of everything said to prove that you were listening and that your companion in life is . . . wrong.
What have you accomplished by this virtuosic display of your multitasking skills? Was it smart? No. Does your partner think more highly of you? Not likely. Is anyone impressed? Hardly.
The only thing going through your partner’s mind is, “Gee, I thought you weren’t listening. But now I realize it’s a much deeper issue. You’re a complete jerk.”
This is what happens when we listen without showing respect. It’s not enough to keep our ears open; we have to demonstrate that we are totally engaged.
Bill Clinton was the absolute master at this. My wife and I had several opportunities see the President in public forums. It didn’t matter if you were a head of state or a bell clerk, when you were talking with Bill Clinton he acted as if you were the only person in the room. Every fiber of his being, from his eyes to his body language, communicated that he was locked into what you were saying. He conveyed how important you were, not how important he was.
If you don’t think this is an active, practically aerobic piece of mental and muscular exertion, try it sometime in a receiving line of 500 people, all of whom regard this brief transaction with you as part of their lifetime highlight reel.
If you’ve never done it, listening with respect makes you sweat.
Ask Yourself, “Is It Worth It?”
Listening also requires us to answer a difficult question before we speak: “Is it worth it?”
The trouble with listening for many of us is that while we’re supposedly doing it, we’re actually busy composing what we’re going to say next.
This is a negative two-fer: You’re not only failing to hear the other person, you’re orchestrating a comment that may annoy them, either because it misses the point, adds meaningless value to the discussion, or worst of all, injects a destructive tone into the mix. Not the desired result of listening. Keep it up and soon you won’t have to worry about listening—because no one will be talking to you anymore.
When someone tells us something, we have a menu of options to fashion our response. Some of our responses are smart, some are stupid. Some are on point, some miss the point. Some will encourage the other person, some will discourage her. Some will make her feel appreciated, some will not.
Asking “Is it worth it?” forces you to consider what the other person will feel after hearing your response. It forces you to play at least two moves ahead. Not many people do that. You talk. They talk. And so on—back and forth like a beginner’s chess game where no one thinks beyond the move in front of them. It’s the lowest form of chess; it’s also the lowest grade of listening. Asking, “Is it worth it?” engages you in thinking beyond the discussion to consider (a) how the other person regards you, (b) what that person will do afterwards, and (c) how that person will behave the next time you talk.
That’s a lot of consequences emanating out of “Is it worth it?”
Think about the last time you floated an idea in a meeting and the most senior person in the room (assuming it wasn’t you) ripped you for saying it. It doesn’t matter whether your idea was dumb and the other person’s response was brilliant—or vice versa. Just think about how you felt. Did you think more highly of the other person saying it? Did it make you appreciate anew that person’s tremendous listening skills? Did it inspire you to go back to your work with fresh enthusiasm? Did it make you more eager to speak up the next time you were in a meeting with that person? I’d wager the answers are no, no, no, and no.
That’s what happens when you respond without asking “Is it worth it?” People not only think you don’t listen, but you have instigated a three-part chain of consequences: (1) they are hurt; (2) they harbor ill feelings toward the person who inflicted the hurt (i.e., they hate you); and (3) in the predictable response to negative reinforcement, they are less likely to repeat the event (i.e., they won’t speak up next time).
Keep it up, and here’s what will happen: Everyone will think you’re an ass (a personal judgment, not necessarily damaging, but certainly not nice). They won’t perform well for you (which damages your reputation as a leader). And they’ll stop giving you ideas (which reduces your knowledge base). This is hardly the formula for leadership success.
One of my clients was the chief operating officer of a multi-billion dollar company (and now the CEO). His goal was to become a better listener and be perceived as a more open-minded boss. After working with him for 18 months, I asked him what was the major learning kernel he got out of the experience. He said, “Before speaking, I take a breath and ask myself one question, ‘Is it worth it?’ I learned that 50 percent of what I was going to say was correct—maybe—but saying it wasn’t worth it.”
He learned what Frances Hesselbein knew—that people’s opinions of our listening ability are largely shaped by the decisions we make immediately after asking, “Is it worth it?” Do we speak or shut up? Do we argue or simply say, “Thank you”? Do we add our needless two cents or bite our tongue? Do we rate the comments or simply acknowledge them?
It’s not up to me to tell you what to say in a meeting. All I’m saying is that you should consider if it’s worth it—and if you believe it is, speak freely.
This is what my client absorbed. As a result, his scores for being a better listener and an open-minded boss skyrocketed. And he became the CEO.
The implications of “Is it worth it?” are profound—and go beyond listening. In effect, you are taking the age-old question of self-interest, “What’s in it for me?” one step further to ask, “What’s in it for him?” That’s a profound consequential leap of thought. Suddenly, you’re seeing the bigger picture.
As I say over and over again, this is simple stuff—but it’s not easy. If you do it, everything will get better. So much of our interpersonal problems at work are formulaic. You say something that ticks me off. I lash back at you. Suddenly, we have an interpersonal crisis (otherwise known as a fight). It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about global warming or whom to hire to make a widget. The content is irrelevant. What matters is how easily we slip into small behavioral patterns that create friction in the workplace—and how just as easily we could assume behavioral patterns that don’t create friction. That’s why simple disciplines—such as thinking before speaking, listening with respect, and asking, “Is it worth it?”—work. They don’t require nuance. We just need to do them.
The Skill that Separates the Near-Great from the Great
Two lawyers are sitting at the bar at Spark’s Steakhouse in New York City. One is my friend Tom, the other is his law partner, Dave. They’re having a leisurely drink, waiting for their table to open up. They’re in no rush. Spark’s is the kind of place where you don’t mind hanging around. It’s a landmark steakhouse, with a huge dining room, a world-famous wine list, and a handful of New York’s rich, powerful, or glamorous in attendance every night. (It’s also notorious as the site where New York crime boss Paul Castellano was gunned down by John Gotti’s henchmen.) On this night, the A-list name is superstar attorney David Boies, who has just walked in and immediately makes a beeline to the bar to say hello to lawyer Dave, whom he knows from previous trials. Boies joins Tom and Dave for a drink. A few minutes later Dave gets up to make a phone call outside. It turns into a very long call.
Boies remains at the bar, talking to my pal Tom for 45 minutes.
What the two lawyers discussed is not relevant here.
What’s relevant is my friend Tom’s recollection of the encounter.
“I’d never met Boies before,” said Tom. “He didn’t have to hang around the bar talking to me. And I have to tell you, I wasn’t bowled over by his intelligence, or his piercing questions, or his anecdotes. What impressed me was that when he asked a question, he waited for the answer. He not only listened, he made me feel like I was the only person in the room.”
I submit that Tom’s last 13 words perfectly describe the single skill that separates the great from the near-great.
My friend Tom isn’t easily impressed. He’s vice chairman of a prosperous 300-lawyer firm in New York. His partner Dave is a highly skilled litigator. Boies, of course, is a legal superstar, the attorney the U.S. government hired to argue its antitrust case against Bill Gates and Microsoft, the same attorney Al Gore turned to in 2000 to argue his presidential election challenge in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Let’s examine what happened at the bar. Tom stayed in his seat. Dave, for inexplicable reasons, disappeared to make a phone call outside. Boies, on the other hand, stuck around and made a lasting positive impression on Tom. There was no reason for him to treat Tom as his new best friend. The two attorneys have different practices; the chances that their paths would cross in court or that they could help each other is virtually nil. In other words, Boies wasn’t thinking that there would be some future benefit in being nice to Tom. And yet, he still made my friend Tom feel like the most important person in the room. In showing interest, asking questions, and most important, listening for the answers without distraction, Boies was simply being himself, practicing the one skill that has made him an inarguably great success.
The ability to make a person feel that, when you’re with that person, he or she is the most important (and the only) person in the room is the skill that separates the great from the near-great.
Television interviewers like Oprah Winfrey, Katie Couric, and Diane Sawyer, I’m told by people who’ve met them, have it. When they’re talking to you, on camera or off, you feel as if you’re the only one who matters to them. It’s the skill that defines them.
A British acquaintance told me about an aging executive who could always be seen at London restaurants dining with the most beautiful women in the world. It wasn’t his looks or animal magnetism. He was short, jowly, overweight, bald, and well into his seventies. But when my acquaintance asked one woman why she was so enthralled with this man, she answered, “He never takes his eyes off me. Even if the Queen walked in, he wouldn’t be distracted. He would still be devoting his full attention to me. That’s hard to resist.”
As I say, Bill Clinton has this skill in spades. Whether you were meeting him for the first time in a receiving line, or dealing with him one-on-one in a private session, Clinton made a point of knowing something positive about you and, without making a big show of it, saying something to let you know he knew it. In effect, he was bragging about you to you. That’s a very meaningful gesture. (Imagine how you’d feel if, instead of being forced to tell someone how swell you are, they pointed out your swellness to you and to everyone within earshot. Kinda nice, huh? Wouldn’t you really respond to that person?) Couple that with a laser-like focus on what you had to say, and you understand why Clinton ascended far from his humble Arkansas origins.
I’m not sure why all of us don’t execute this precious interpersonal maneuver all the time. We’re certainly capable of doing so when it really matters to us.
If we’re on a first date with a guy or girl whom we really want to impress, we will be paragons of attentiveness and interest. We will ask all the right questions, and we will pay attention to the answers with the concentration of a brain surgeon operating inside a patient’s skull. If we’re really smart, we will calibrate the conversation to make sure we don’t talk too much.
If we’re in a meeting with our boss, we will listen without interruption to every word she says. We will mark the boss’s vocal inflections, seeing nuance and meaning that may or may not be intended. We will lock in on the boss’s eyes and mouth, searching for smiles or frowns, as if they were significant clues about our career prospects. Basically, we are treating our boss as if she’s the most important person in the room (because she is).
Likewise, if we’re on a sales call with a prospect who could make or break our year. We prepare by knowing something personal about the prospect. We ask questions designed to reveal the prospect’s inclinations. We scan the prospect’s face for clues about how badly he needs what we’re selling. We are at Defcon Five in terms of attentiveness. Full alert.
The only difference between us and the super-successful among us—the near-great and the great—is that the great ones do this all the time. It’s automatic for them. For them there’s no on and off switch for caring and empathy and showing respect. It’s always on. They don’t rank personal encounters as A, B, or C in importance. They treat everyone equally—and everyone eventually notices.
The weird part here is that all of us, at every level of success, already know this. I’ve asked my clients point blank, “What interpersonal skill stands out in the most successful people you’ve met?” In one form or another, they always cite this “make the other person feel singularly special” ability—usually because (like my friend Tom) they’re so impressed by people who make them feel that way.
So, I don’t think I’m promulgating something new or hard to accept here. We already believe it.
The question is: Why don’t we do it?
Answer: We forget. We get distracted. We don’t have the mental discipline to make it automatic.
That’s it in a nutshell.
Ninety percent of this skill is listening, of course. And listening requires a modicum of discipline—the discipline to concentrate. So I’ve developed a simple exercise to test my clients’ listening skills. It’s simple—as simple as asking people to touch their toes to establish how limber they are. I ask them to close their eyes and count slowly to fifty with one simple goal: They cannot let another thought intrude into their mind. They must concentrate on maintaining the count.
What could be simpler than that? Try it.
Incredibly, more than half my clients can’t do it. Somewhere around twenty or thirty, nagging thoughts invade their brain. They think about a problem at work, or their kids, or how much they ate for dinner the night before.
This may sound like a concentration test, but it’s really a listening exercise. After all, if you can’t listen to yourself (someone you presumably like and respect) as you count to fifty, how will you ever be able to listen to another person?
Like any exercise, this drill both exposes a weakness and helps you get stronger. If I ask you to touch your toes and you can’t, we’ve revealed that your muscles are tight. If you practice touching your toes each day, eventually you’ll become more limber.
That’s what this fifty-count exercise achieves. It exposes how easily distracted we can be when we’re not talking. But it also helps us develop our concentration muscles—our ability to maintain focus. Do this exercise regularly and you’ll soon be counting to 50 without interrupting yourself. This newfound power of concentration will make you a better listener.
After that, you’re ready for a test drive.
Put this book down and make your next interpersonal encounter—whether it’s with your spouse or a colleague or a stranger—an exercise in making the other person feel like a million bucks. Try to employ the tiny tactics we’ve outlined here.
• Listen.
• Don’t interrupt.
• Don’t finish the other person’s sentences.
• Don’t say “I knew that.”
• Don’t even agree with the other person (even if he praises you, just say, “Thank you”).
• Don’t use the words “no,” “but,” and “however.”
• Don’t be distracted. Don’t let your eyes or attention wander elsewhere while the other person is talking.
• Maintain your end of the dialogue by asking intelligent questions that (a) show you’re paying attention, (b) move the conversation forward, and (c) require the other person to talk (while you listen).
• Eliminate any striving to impress the other person with how smart or funny you are. Your only aim is to let the other person feel that he or she is accomplishing that.
If you can do that, you’ll uncover a glaring paradox: The more you subsume your desire to shine, the more you will shine in the other person’s eyes. I’ve seen this happen so many times, it’s almost comical. I’ve watched two people have a discussion where one person is clearly doing all the talking while the other person patiently listens and asks questions. Later on, when I’ve asked the dominant talker what he thought of the other person, he never regards the other person’s relative silence as evidence that he’s dull, uninformed, and uninteresting. On the contrary, he invariably says, “What a great guy!”
You’d say the same thing about anyone who brought out the best in you, who made you feel like the most important person in the room.
Please note that this test run is not an exercise in developing newfound charm, or learning the jargon of seduction, or using body language as subtle levers of persuasion. It’s nothing more than an exercise in active listening. Active in the sense that there’s a purpose to your listening. If your objective is to make people feel like a million bucks in your presence, you’ll score a bull’s-eye. You already know how to do it—on a first date, on a sales call, in a meeting with your boss. From now on, it’s a matter of remembering to do it all the time.