Just One Weird Trick!
I run engineering for Heroku. My job at it’s most basic distillation is to talk to people. This has been my job for quite a few years and I’ve developed a few skills, approaches, and mental frameworks to help me along the way.
This one is likely my favorite.
Do you want to be listened to more? Want someone to take your ideas seriously? Want to make a bigger impact?
Or perhaps you want someone to warm up to you? Want to defuse a difficult situation? Want to really get to know someone? Want someone to feel like you really understand? Feel you are really listening? Read on.
The trick is simple and nearly universal. It works because it’s real and actually provides value to the discussion.
What’s the trick?
Treat the other person (or people) as if they have more information than you and your only job is to extract and understand that information using empathy.
It’s that easy. It works with peers, managers, execs, programmers, spouses, friends, bureaucratic entities that really don’t care about you or your mental well-being.
Why does it work? It’s easy to say that we should listen to others; it’s harder to do that, or more, know how to do that. Going this route forces someone to engage, ask questions and actually listen before they speak, which is critical to making people feel they are being engaged rather than being spoken too.
I’m not going to lie, this adapted from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. It’s the 5th habit, ‘Seek First to Understand, Then be Understood’.
Use empathic listening to be genuinely influenced by a person, which compels them to reciprocate the listening and take an open mind to being influenced by you. This creates an atmosphere of caring, and positive problem solving.
I’ve been in technology for way to long at this point and this one simple trick would have saved thousands of poor interactions I’ve personally witnessed. Upon reflection, those poor interactions lacked the ‘listening’ element. Most people “listen” simply for their turn to talk. They view the conversation as a vehicle to have their idea heard, not other way around. At no time did either party actually care what the other had to say. Rather it was a time to gather their own thoughts or look for holes in the other position. This is not listening. This is not empathic. This is not genuine. This is not healthy. This is toxic.
This is also particularly dangerous for people in positions of influence. Obviously this means managers, but it also means tech leads, senior engineers, architects, or even long standing people in the company.
Truth is, it’s important for everyone. And more effective too. This approach is particularly effective with toxic communicators. Toxic communicators, as a rule, are people you don’t want in your organization. Their cost is almost always higher than their benefit, particularly as the company grows. Even so, we all have to deal with these types of people and this is a particularly effective way to diffuse much of their negativity or causticity. And, the more you use this technique, the better you get so the more effective you personally become in in all your communication, even dealing with the toxics of your world.
And because I’ve done this over the years, here are some simple ways to get the listening and understanding going.
Hmmm, I hadn’t considered that, can you help me understand it more? What about X, Y or Z? How did you get around those?
That’s not the way I was looking at this. How did you come to this position?
I was coming at this from a completely different angle, and I went through a few problems to get to where I was. What problems did you encounter on your way through the problem?
That’s interesting. Help me understand what you expect or expected to happen? What would have been the outcome/solution/path/blah you were looking for?
Now, the unfortunate truth is you don’t actually have to listen to what the other person is saying to make this work, but it really helps. That’s the empathy part. You can forget this and simply make this a narcissistic tool you can pull out when needed, and it’s going to work quite a bit of the time, maybe even most of the time, but I content it’s more effective to be genuine. It’s healthier in the long run and will actively build trust. Yes, it is more work, can be harder and even more uncomfortable, but it’s worth it.
So the next time you are going want to send an angry email, snap off a pretty vitriolic tweet/hipchat/slack/facebook comment, or even pop off at someone in a meeting, take a second to cool down and really ask yourself what the other person is trying to say and then actually ask them. Don’t assume, ask. Never assume, always ask.
