Shae Hadden

Shae Hadden

5 Tips for Effective Listening

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Listening is much more than just hearing words or reading body language.

We now have the ability to communicate more frequently with more people than ever before. And yet, there is something missing. Something that could help us avoid misunderstandings, resolve conflicts, build trust and increase our effectiveness as leaders. That something is the art of listening.

Normally, even if we’re interested in learning about what matters to someone, the best we can do is make assumptions and then leave it at that. Effective listening allows us to go beyond our assumptions, choose actions that will address everyone’s unspoken concerns, and move things forward.

Listening is much more than just hearing words or reading body language. It requires that we:

  • Be totally ‘present’ in the moment (not be distracted by other thoughts or activities)
  • Be quiet and stop talking
  • Accept the other person as they are (be non-judgmental and listen without censoring)
  • Maintain an open mind
  • Do not plan what we are going to do or say next
  • Be willing to interact with whatever shows up in the moment.

Being listened to in this non-judgmental, ‘generous’ way creates a space for us to tap into our own wisdom and to create possibilities. When someone really listens to us, we can be inspired to invent solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems.

5 TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE LISTENING

1. Listen with Intention

Commit to seeing how the world looks to the other person. Keep your attention focused on them, on what they are saying, on what they are not saying and on the non-verbal cues they are unconsciously giving you. Notice their energy level and mood. Listen deeply to what they are not saying to discover the essence of their concerns. If you find yourself holding an internal conversation in your head about whether you disagree or agree with them, remember to maintain an open mind.

2. Ask for Specifics

Focus your listening on what they are dissatisfied with and any opportunities they see. Ask direct questions and record the essence of what they say (not your opinions about their responses). Dissatisfactions and opportunities point the way to specific concerns.

3. Consider & Observe to Understand

Consider several aspects of what you have heard in your conversations with this person. Review what issues and events they consistently focus on, what they always take action to improve, what things quickly and frequently distract them and what they will interrupt almost anything for. Observe what you’ve heard in terms of themes, contradictions, assessments and anything you see that is missing.

4. Share Your Interpretation

Paraphrase what they have said and describe the underlying emotions you observe in their speaking. In the spirit of promoting mutual understanding, share your interpretation with the other person. Ask them to elucidate, correct and fine-tune what you offer to ensure you ‘get’ what they are trying to communicate. This is not the same as agreeing with them. In situations where people do not agree, creating this partial understanding changes the mood of the conversation to one of cooperation and increases the possibility of collaborating and resolving the conflict. Once you are both clear, you’ll be able to easily begin to explore specific conditions of satisfaction that will address both of your concerns.

5. Be Compassionate and Consistent

Many people have never have experienced deep, generous listening. Be compassionate even if they are only comfortable speaking superficially. The more they experience being really listened to, the more they will be open to communicating more and also the more they will be willing to listen to you.

Professional actors and singers master effective listening as part of their craft. Whether we perform on a stage in front of an audience or in an organization in front of our colleagues or clients, mastering listening in this way can make the difference between giving an average performance and achieving extraordinary results. Leaders who really listen can learn more from the people they work with, can be more effective in their speaking and can do more good when they move into action.

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Originally published by Paracomm Partners International

Are you being heard?

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We’ve heard it before. Providing ongoing feedback throughout the performance management process is a wise investment that can pay huge dividends. Just-in-time feedback can leverage our training investments, bridge the skills gap, and develop leadership among managers—all at minimal cost. Got it.

Just one question. Giving feedback is never as easy as it sounds. How do we do it in the moment in a way that people can hear us, not take offense, and be empowered by our observations?

Getting C.L.E.A.R.

Success comes from being clear and intentional about five things:

  • Context – what assumptions we bring to the feedback conversation and our relationship
  • Language – what distinctions we make and what words we use to share what we distinguish
  • Expectations – what we expect of each other
  • Assessments – what judgments we have made and the facts we have to back them up
  • Results – what we’re committed to producing through this conversation.

The context from which we observe and communicate determines what we see and what we don’t see about the other person, what we consider is possible and what seems impossible for them. Context is decisive.

The good news: as leaders, we have more than one context available to us. Effective just-in-time feedback starts with consciously choosing and creating the best context for the one-on-one conversation we are having with the person in front of us.

Context: Management

Wearing our “manager’s hat”, we usually come into a just-in-time feedback conversation for the purpose of motivating an individual to improve and to “fix” their actions and behaviors. We know the legal consequences of not clearly recording and communicating any gaps between the job requirements and their performance. And so we’ve been measuring their performance against our expectations. We’ve been tracking their critical incidents and mistakes, ranking them against others, or assessing changes in their competency levels. Our responsibility is to ensure they develop in such a way that they can fulfill their responsibilities to the organization.

Within this “corrective” context, our feedback remains remedial, focusing on making sure people change in the ways we tell them to deliver specific results. This approach to handling performance issues often comes across as directive and controlling. While useful in some situations, feedback delivered from this “corrective” context can generate multiple forms of resistance, ranging from covert back-channel complaints to peers and superiors to open conflict or to, worst of all, demotivation and declining performance.

Context: Mentoring

Let’s switch hats now. As a mentor, we approach almost every conversation—and especially real-time feedback—as an opportunity to share best practices and success strategies. Our responsibility is to contribute our wisdom, knowledge, and experience in support of developing others. We have been measuring our mentee’s performance against our assessment of “right” or “wrong”, “good” or “bad” choices as compared to similar situations we’ve encountered. We’ve been observing what they’ve been learning and where they can still learn something from us.

Within this “prescriptive” context, our input will be shaped by any assessments we have about choices the person made that didn’t work out well and any belief we have that we know the “right way” (or at least we know of a “better” way based on what has worked for us in the past). Our feedback will tend to come across as solution-oriented.

Solutions can have practical value when our mentee is dealing with challenges that we’ve previously encountered and overcome. But prescriptions have their limits. They can reinforce black-and-white, either-or thinking and create false dilemmas (situations in which only limited alternatives are considered). Unless we are careful, dealing in prescriptive solutions can also create an expectation that something our mentee has to do will be difficult based on our past experience—an expectation that can then become a roadblock or a self-fulfilling prophecy for them.

Context: Coaching

Now let’s look at what masterful coaches do. They create a powerful context for aligning an individual’s purpose with career goals, professional development, and personal growth. Coaches commit to their coachee’s commitments—whatever they may be. Coaches use specific linguistic tools to give their coachees new ways of observing and relating to themselves, other people, and their circumstances.

Taking a coaching approach means coming into a real-time feedback conversation as if it has the potential to produce a breakthrough in the person’s performance within what they’re committed to—which may not necessarily be what the organization needs or expects from them. When we wear our “coach” hat, we focus on helping people increase their self-awareness and explore different perspectives and possibilities. We don’t put forward “right” or “wrong” ways of doing things: we’re helping individuals discover the many ways they can do things and the potential futures their choices may generate. We not only use mistakes, failures, disagreement, and conflict to deepen learning, but we also welcome them as ways to evolve our coaching relationship. Within this context, what we contribute as just-in-time feedback is, therefore, less likely to be interpreted as “criticism” or “harassment”.

Within this “generative” coaching context, people who receive real-time feedback are left with two things: the insight that there are many ways they can do things, and the realization that they are now more aware of some of the considerations to take into account when choosing. This doesn’t require that we, as coach, have “answers” for their problems and challenges. It does require, however, that we appreciate them as they are for who they are and respect their ability to grow, to learn, and to make their own choices.

What better way to instill a desire for continuous improvement?

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Originally published by HRVOICE.ORG (now People Talk Online), Chartered Professionals in Human Resources of British Columbia and Yukon

Image by rawpixel from Pixabay

What is the blue pearl?

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I’ve heard that meditators often see a blue pearl of light just the moment before enlightenment. They say that blue pearl represents the potential of the Universe.

The blue pearl is a metaphor for what I see is at the heart of effective coaching relationships. I’ve observed masterful coaches relating to their clients as if they were a blue pearl. As if they were pure possibility. That’s where the magic of coaching lies—in that “blue pearl” way of relating to another person.

 

globe_west_2048I also use the image of the blue pearl in my work with coaches as a reminder of the larger context in which we all operate: that is, our beautiful blue planet. Yes, we have a responsibility to our clients. But we also have a responsibility for the wellbeing of this blue pearl as well. One does not exist without the other.

And so, if you are a  coach, I invite you to see yourself not just as a guide, but also as a leader and a co-creator of our shared future.

It is up to us to contribute what is uniquely ours to give to the wellbeing of humanity and the planet.

You and I—we—are the ones we have been waiting for.

 

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This blog post by Shae Hadden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Young Women: The Hope of the World

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I believe young women are the hope of the world.

And my heart goes out to them—especially to those in college today. Our collective future is uncertain. Our world is in such turmoil: fear dominates our conversations. Trying to figure out your individual future in these times must be mind-boggling, if not depressing.

What can we as coaches give young women today that can help them create a positive future for themselves—and for us all?

Recently, I was coaching a policy advocacy student on her career choice. When we first met, the uncertainty and doubt she had at the direction she had chosen was palpable. Clearly, something was missing. Knowing how challenging it is to land a job, let alone fund a higher education today, I committed to helping her make the best choices she could now to have a future she would love to live.

Asking her “What do you want to do when you grow up?” made no sense. She was already on a path towards a specific “doing”.

Asking “Who do you want to be?” would probably be even worse. She would likely to come up blank—or respond with, at best, an example of a public figure that is someone like who she thinks she wants to be. Perhaps the next Hillary Clinton. Or another Lynne Twist.

Neither line of inquiry would move her forward. And both would subtly imply that she, as herself, is not yet a resourceful and powerful woman in her own right.

I believe she is.

There are two questions I asked her to cut to the heart of the matter.

  1. “What and who do you care about most in this world?”
  2. “What commitment are you willing to make to take care of that?”

This line of inquiry led her answers that were unique and intriguing to us both. And they revealed to me—and to her—her multiple talents, who she is here to serve, and what will feed her soul.

She realized that her current career path had a very distant connection to what she cared about and no connection at all to whom she cared about. So she researched what kinds of activities and people did connect to her “cares”. What emerged was a new vision of herself as an entrepreneur using her power in a variety of different ways. Through our coaching conversations, she began to see herself as the blue pearl I see her as and to take actions that have led to a good-paying job and access to the education she needs and wants.

I see young women like her as potent human beings. Given the right support, they can develop their innate capacity to consciously create our collective future. An ability that will stand us all in good stead as the systems that have given us the world we have today break down.

 

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This blog post by Shae Hadden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Image by Rizal Deathrasher from Pixabay

Creative Resistance (aka Procrastination)

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I’m going to write my book. I think I’ll just start tomorrow.

I find it intriguing how we can excel at transforming our creative urges into creative resistance. It takes imagination to turn fear and self-doubt into rationalizations for why we can’t or shouldn’t start creating. This ability isn’t exclusive to artists. Most human beings can come up with at least one or two variations on the resistance theme. (The variations are endless—which actually proves our innate creative abilities.)

For example, we can have lots of troubles that we have to deal with first—before we get to that creative project.

We can distract ourselves with self-medications or obsessions with someone or something else.

We can convert everything that’s happening in our life—or the lives of those closest to us—into a big drama.

We can focus on others and criticize them for what they have or haven’t done.

Or we can quite simply fall victim to the “busyness syndrome”.

Creative resistance is an art form.

The reasons why we don’t create don’t really matter.

What really matters is how we switch art forms.

 

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This blog post by Shae Hadden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Image by Rizal Deathrasher from Pixabay

What is your purpose?

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I used to believe life was about using your talents. I hated uncertainty, chaos, and unpredictability. All I had to do was figure out what my talents were and develop them. Then life could be neatly organized into 3 boxes: before, during, and after career. As in, preparing to work (education), working, and retiring from work. Success, according to my youthful definition, involved moving through all 3 boxes with my creative talents and financial resources relatively intact. 

A few years after graduating from university, I realized that education and work overlap. You work to learn. And then you must keep learning and developing yourself to keep up—no matter what field you’re working in. Then about a decade ago, I started meeting Baby Boomers who were working beyond their official retirement.

The walls between all three boxes collapsed. My definition of a successful life disintegrated. I’ve been reconstructing ever since.

Today I appreciate the capability we have as human beings to choose and to create. I can choose why I’m here. I can create my own definition of success.

This week I heard about the Japanese concept of “ikagai”, a reason to get up in the morning. A reason for Being that gives you satisfaction. A purpose you can bring to every moment that makes your dance with life juicy and joyous.

With an ikagai, you can cherish unpredictability—instead of fear it—and welcome new, perhaps unconventional definitions of success.

My ikagai is to help people articulate their ideas.

What’s yours?

 

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This blog post by Shae Hadden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.