#227: How to Listen Better

Dear Friends
 
First, an announcement. From Thursday, my parents are visiting what is a currently a windy Southern Peninsula (the whales seem to be hiding out or have left) and so I am taking a break from writing to spend time with them. We’ll be back on 24 November for four more newsletters and then that’s it for another year.

I have been tasting wines with Afrikaans names in the past few weeks.

First up was Young Winemaker of the Year Stephanie Wiid’s Knapsekêrel Cabernet Franc and her Brandnetel Chenin Blanc (Wiid’s maiden release, the 2016 Duwweltjie Chenin created quite a stir, winning South Africa’s highest wine accolade on debut). Then I moved to a new kid on the block, the 2022 Staanspoor Syrah. All were delicious.

/strategy
Last week, I introduced Chip and Dan Heath’s concept, the ‘Curse of Knowledge’.

Simply, the more we know about something, the more we’re inclined to make assumptions about what others understand, and so be more likely to do a poor job of explaining it (unless we’re self-aware and consciously correct).

Well, confession time.

A few weeks ago, I started a series of letters exploring Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy Bad Strategy. My thinking is as the year ends, we are all thinking about our personal and business strategies.

This week, I was reviewing those letters, and realised whilst I had explained what Rumelt says strategy does, introduced some key levers, and contrasted it with bad strategy nowhere had I given you his concise, powerful definition of strategy.

Here it is.

“A good strategy has an essential logical structure that I call the kernel. The kernel of a strategy contains three elements: a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent action.”

There you have it. A real-life demonstration of the curse of knowledge in action. I had gotten so immersed in the details, I had neglected to share the cornerstone of Rumelt’s work, the definition. It happens to all of us. Be aware.

(By the way, Rumelt says “The core of strategy work is always the same: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors”. It is this core, diagnosis, that I see skipped over or skimped on most often).

//self
Last week’s strategy section ended with this quotation, “The cardinal sin of communication, which compromises all speech and relationship, is assuming that what was said is what was heard” (Budd and Rothstein, You Are What You Say).

Jonah Berger’s Magic Words helps us understand how to use ‘linguistic concreteness’ make people feel heard.

Reviewing several large studies of effective customer service, Berger concludes “… it’s not enough just to listen. To make people feel heard, we have to show them that we listened. We have to respond in a way that demonstrates that we attended to and understood what they said.

… Concrete language provides that signal. Using specific, concrete language shows that rather than just going through the motions, someone went to the effort to attend to and understand what was said. Or, said differently, to listen”.

In one study, “when employees used more concrete language, customers spent 30 percent more time with the retailer in the following weeks”.

In customer service, it can be quite simple. You ask the assistant to bring you size 8 of the sneakers you have in your hand. They say, “Sure. I’ll be back with the black NNormal, size 8, in five minutes”.

That gives you confidence. Despite Arnold Schwarzenegger, “I’ll be back” is less convincing.  

In conversation, complex projects, and understanding each other, demonstrating concreteness is a more subtle process.

It doesn’t mean repeating verbatim what you’ve heard. That can be annoying. Rephrase what you’ve heard and work to get to a greater level of specificity. We often speak in abstraction or with imprecise terms. A good listener gently reflects whilst probing for a more concrete understanding. A good listener can help us express ourselves more clearly.

When you shift the conversation to concrete you open two possibilities.

First, you demonstrate you are listening. You’re engaged. You care.

Second, because language is complex, it gives the other person an opportunity to refine your (and their own) understanding, in case you (or they) are slightly off the mark. Once that happens, you’re in a deep listening conversation.

For example, a colleague says, “The product team is impossible to work with”. One response is “I know, they’re awful”, but that doesn’t really provide much in the way of conversation. An open-ended question “What happened?”, might lead to “Well, Karl is running late on feature A”, and suddenly you’re in a world of possibility.

When in conversation with a client, I might share an insight or an example, “What you’ve said, reminds of…” Followed by an open-ended question, “How does that compare to your experience?” By comparing and contrasting, we’re able to get to a more concrete understanding of the opportunity in front of us.

Berger summarises, “for someone to feel heard, three things have to happen. First, they have to feel like the other person paid attention to what they said. Second, they have to feel like the other person understood what they said. And third, the other person has to demonstrate that they listened.”

///soul
I published the first edition of strategy, soul, & self on 19 January 2020. A few months later I was surprised by an email from Mike Schalit, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of influential ad agency Net#work saying, ‘We love your letter, but it needs a visual identity. You’re inspiring us, and we’d like to give you that gift”. I didn’t know he was reading.

Mike was named South Africa’s No.1 Creative Director for eleven consecutive years and, among multiple other awards, has won 3 Cannes Grand Prix, so this was both incredibly generous and an amazing endorsement. Design guru and artist, Emma Strydom, then immersed herself in the words and they came back with the design you’ve seen ever since.

A few years later, digital guru Twala Ng’ambi nudged me along with some incredible strategic direction for Instagram and another talented creative director Anne Hoefinghoff (who somehow manages to successfully bridge the world’s of luxury hospitality and not-for-profit social impact) helped bring Emma and Mike’s work into that world. However, my implementation has been erratic.

I was slightly uncomfortable. I didn’t and don’t want any kind of influencer label. And I was reluctant to flood the world with more content. There’s so much and social media is so closely associated with so many ills.

Along the way, Dr. Carla Enslin, one of the Vega School of Brand Leadership’s founder members, kept encouraging me saying that the occasional snippets I shared provided useful reminders and inspiration.

Carla’s prompting, the amazing support of Mike, Emma, Twala and Anne, and my investment of some 3000 hours in researching and writing 227 letters kept me exploring ways to more effectively share the content.

A conversation with Anne over a few months sparked an idea, I could establish a separate presence for the newsletter. And so, over the last eight weeks, I have been working with Aminah Samodien, Kauthar and Farah Manuel of We-Rise Communications to bring strategy, soul, & self alive on Instagram. I have been humbled by the sensitivity and beauty they brought to the last five years’ work.

Click here to go to the page.

We’re still testing, exploring and refining. Your input is welcomed, indeed is needed. We know it needs improving. Everything always does.

I hope we’re finding a way to share something useful, that provokes curiosity, and leads you to reading and connecting with yourself and others.

I think we’re headed in the right direction, and I still have a niggle about developing something in that space.  In the final analysis, I hope that providing a quiet, reflective voice of reflection might subtly alter the web of meaning that shapes our world.

Please let me know what you think. If you think we’re on the right track, follow it and share it with your friends. As always, your support and insights are precious to me.

See you in two weeks.
 
All the best
 
Karl

Thank you for reading and being part of this ever-growing community. I hope it provokes, inspires and enriches. Please share this letter with people you like. They can subscribe here.