Latest / Daily Influence / 623, The Art of Listening to Learn (S.M.A.R.T. Listening) (rerun)

Transcript

623, The Art of Listening to Learn (S.M.A.R.T. Listening) (rerun) · Daily Influence

• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the daily influence where our mission is to deliver a daily dose of positive influence that can uplift you personally or be shared within your sphere of influence.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: While not every episode may directly apply to your unique circumstances, we strive to provide insights and inspiration relevant to most people's daily, weekly, and monthly lives.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whether you are tuning in during the morning, noon or night, the daily influence is here for you.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Listen, share, and embrace the power of influence in your life.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hey everybody, Brian Smith here with the I&Team series and your daily influence.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And today we are going to, well, we're going to talk about listening and I'm going to do a lot of talking and I'm hoping that what you hear from me will provide.
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: some opportunities for you to learn to improve specifically in how you listen.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in what listening means to you.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Listening is one of the most effective smart communication tools that we have.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you're going to hear me constantly now bringing smart into my dialogue and smart into what we do.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: We believe smart is the foundation of everything we do here.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that includes how we listen.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: We listen for specificity.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: We listen for measurement.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: We listen to find out if things are attainable.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or if I can attain what's being asked, we listen for realism or
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: is a relative and we listen for timeliness.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And part of listening is asking good questions to get people to give us more information, asking pointed questions, asking questions that move us through the layers of information to the path of understanding.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: so that we understand in full context.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our goal in listening should always be to understand contextually, whatever it is, the topic of conversation, the topic of influence that we find ourselves.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: If we're making assumptions, we don't have full understanding.
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: We need to find a way to ask the right questions, the who's, the what's the why's the house, the when's, the how much is,
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you need to remind yourself about how to ask those questions, write yourself out a cheat sheet of questions to ask.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you don't know the questions to ask, as you listen to somebody, and as that conversation progresses, and you get to a point where you need clarification, ask for clarification.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: don't add to a conversation something if you don't know what it is.
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Don't suppose that you know something until you ask for clarification.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: How many times have you jumped into a conversation only to learn that what you thought the conversation was about was something different.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know I have.
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: and wait to get context, or I have to ask, what's the context of this conversation so that I might be able to contribute and learn from it?
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And my approach towards listening is to learn.
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, that's what we call it here at I.A.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Listen to learn.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it is the foundation of our smart communication program that supports our smart management program.
• 3:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: We have to listen to what's going on around us, listen to our teams, listen to what they're saying.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Listen to the challenges they have.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes we talk over the top of a morning we miss what they're trying to tell us.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when we don't listen to learn from those that are in support of us, when we take for granted everything about what they're doing and we don't hear what they're trying to say to us.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then we lose opportunity to help them.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: We lose opportunity to improve.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: not just ourselves between us and them, but also as an organization or as an area of influence, whatever that might be.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I go out and talk to our warehouse people or our construction people, our line people who are in manufacturing, who are out on the front lines dealing with our customers.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't just assume what the problems are.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I hear a problem, I don't just assume that it would
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: for service from a vendor or just a crazy customer.
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I listen to everything in context.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I drill through and I ask questions until I get to the foundation.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: What I find oftentimes is what I thought might have been a problem lied somewhere else.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: For example, out in the field, I might have team members who are struggling with product.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: You might walk through and back into and find out that we bought the wrong materials.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: What is that light?
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is that light with the person who bought them or the person who gave them the instructions to buy them?
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or did it lie with the vendor who supplied the wrong materials because they misunderstood?
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did we communicate that poorly?
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did we not give them smart information?
• 5:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Where and along that process from the field,
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: where it touches our customer all the way back to where we acquired the product when we ordered the product.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: We set the standard to get that product.
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Was there a breakdown?
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if we don't walk through that properly, if we don't map that out and get smart about it, we may try to solve the problem somewhere where it's not really the problem.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: and it will perpetuate itself and happen again and again and again and again and we might eventually get there through frustration.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: As we tackle the same problems over and over and over again and we finally wake up and say, you know, the problem might not be where I'm looking and might be one or two or three or five steps behind us.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Generally in my area of influence, I find people learning that much later in the resolution cycle.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Had they listened earlier, listen to learn about what
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: really going on and applied smart listening to what it is they were facing, they would have got there much quicker, they would have had much better resolution and everybody would have improved.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when we practice this type of listening, listening to learn, listening to understand listening for context.
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: asking smart questions to create a listening experience that takes us away from assumption and to understanding of what we're doing in all areas of influence we have.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what listening to learn is.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: To help support you in being the best individual you can, remember, you can pick up our books, individual influence, find the eye in team, positive influence, be the eye in team.
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And our new book, Responsible Influence, build the eye in team.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you have a good day.