Love Leadership
When we want to negotiate, collaborate or simply maintain good relationships with our co-workers or clients, it is vital that we listen first, advises leadership expert Katherine Farnworth
How good are you at listening? When you listen genuinely and wholeheartedly, do you generally feel that it is something you do to help the other person, or yourself? Or both?
Many people will have heard of the push-pull model, an influencing model. The idea being that when you ‘push’ it is more about pushing your own agenda, maybe getting what you want, making sure the other person listens to what you have to say. This can generally be useful in a non-negotiable situation, maybe there is a law or rule or safety procedure that must be followed, maybe you are in a discussing with a supplier that needs to fulfil a contractual obligation. And just because we ‘push’ our agenda, doesn’t necessarily mean we have to be impolite, as Albert Mehrabian demonstrated with his communication model, it’s not what we say it is how we say it. He demonstrated that when we interact, our words form only seven per cent of the impression given, whilst 93 per cent is made up of our non-verbal communication; our tone being 38 per cent and our body language and facial expression making 55 per cent.
When we ‘pull’ we are more concerned with the agenda, or objectives, of the other person. We will ask ‘open’ questions (anything starting with what, where, who, when, why, how) to encourage the other person to speak and to share. Our listening to speaking ratio will significantly go up as we give the other person time to be heard. The ‘pull’ is very good when working in collaboration with others, when we want to foster good and healthy long-term relationships, where we want to have less of a ‘parent-child’ relationship (think Transactional Analysis by Dr Eric Berne) but create more of an ‘adult to adult’ dynamic, demonstrating respect and empowerment.
However, what happens when we really want to put across our point of view but keep a good, long term relationship healthy, and maybe the other person also wants to put forward their opinion too? Potentially conflict can occur. The secret might be in a statement from leadership author Stephen Covey who said, ‘seek first to understand, to be understood’. Interestingly, the more we listen, the more we can also achieve our objectives, and keep a good relationship. When we do give people a voice, and space to be heard, they will be much more willing to reciprocate, and in turn, listen to us too. And much more willingly. So, when you want to negotiate, discuss, collaborate, and maintain a good relationship, and even if you want to put forward your point of view, your lowest price, your baseline, and you find that you want to be heard yourself, take a moment to breathe, to pause, and remember the key is to listen first.
