Acknowledging

One of the qualities of excellent listening is to fully acknowledge what you are hearing, and to not criticize it. See the speaker in his or her full situation, and acknowledge the difficulty or constraints you are hearing. Disregard what you have heard from others while acknowledging. You won’t have the whole picture until much later.

Gaining Trust

This awareness and acknowledgement is essential to creating trust. You will be seen as an agent of the management which has hired you. But compassionate, open listening and actions to support the team will gain their trust.

Keeping confidences is also essential to creating trust. By using your influence with the management, you can present what the team needs, stated in management’s interest: “Allowing sales to add that extra headcount 60 days earlier than planned will not hurt cash-flow, and may be the difference in making the next-quarter numbers we promised the Board.” Notice that no request has been made by anyone in Sales, and no one has been named. In this way, you will become effective as a liaison between teams and management, and between teams with other teams.

Two teams were not communicating well about the new release of a product, and were getting surly. I had gained the trust of each vice president by listening well for many weeks, and attended a private meeting of the two VPs and their CEO. I did nothing but create an environment for clarity: I asked the CEO to not interrupt at all. I asked that each VP present his information completely without interruption by the other. This environment allowed each to define his issues, hear one another fully, and resolve the issues. I knew I had succeeded when one of the VPs said to me, “That was great. See? You didn’t need to be here at all.”

Ongoing, deeper acknowledgement

I responded, “You did great. Thank you for being so patient and clear.”