Active Listening and the Pink Gorilla in the Room

Listening is an amazing skill. In a team there are many voices and everyone wants to be heard. We are all human, and every person has a distinct opinion. Transforming a team to change how they talk to each other can be challenging, especially when there are many different personalities who need to be part of the conversation.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I don’t run meetings. I facilitate workshops. What I have experienced is that there are many different personalities that I am trying to bring together to align on outcomes. These personalities include:

The loudest person, the introvert, the debater, the agreeable one, the one filled with suspicion, the angry one, the smarty pants, the jokester….

You get the idea. Especially with a leadership team, it’s important that everybody is on equal ground. Active listening embodies phrases that will open up and invite people in to the conversation. The opposite of this are phrases that are closed and shut down the conversation. Ground rules should be set at the beginning of the meeting to not use the phrases that stop the conversation:

• “No, but…”
• “Try to…”
• “We Can’t…”
• “We won’t….”
• “I assume that…”
• “That won’t work…”
• “You should…”

Instead use phrases that will openly engage:

• “How might we…”
• “What is stopping us from…”
• “What would it look like if…”
• “What is the problem that we are trying to solve?”
• “What else could we try?”
• “Can you tell me more?”

I once used a 4 foot pink gorilla that the workshop participants had to hold if they used any of the negative phrases. They were required to put it on their lap as a funny way to “publicly shame” them (or really just become aware…) until the next person used one of the phrases. The team remembered the exercise for future workshops and it really did shift the way the team talked to each other. They laughed and high-fived each other when the conversation would go past 5 minutes without passing the monkey.

If we all took more time to try to listen to each other how might this simple act shift an organizational culture?

• Listen to agree
• Listen to disagree
• Listen to respond
• Listen to understand

It won’t just transform teams, it will also transform leaders.