Thanks to David Gurteen’s  May 2009 Knowledge Letter, I recently discovered Nancy Dixon, a knowledge management (KM) consultant who specializes in the personal/human aspects of KM. In a post on her blog, Conversation Matters, she described the value of conversation:

“The greatest benefit of conversation is that it produces five categories of responses [answers, meta knowledge, problem reformulation, validation and legitimization], not just the answer. We get so much more from conversation, e.g. an unexpected insight, a sense of affirmation that inspires us to new heights or, equally useful, having to confront a realization that we’ve been trying to avoid; deepening the relationship with a colleague or the introduction to a collaborator we would never have discovered on our own; and on and on. The multiplicity of benefits addresses the very real problem of not knowing what we don’t know. A problem that is so frequent when the issues we are addressing are ambiguous and complex.”

Suddenly a conversation with the right person is laden with possibilities. Could change-ability really be so simple? Let me know how conversation has increased your change-ability.

Notice facial expressions when listening

Photo: L.M. Solonynko

In my opinion, listening is so critical for resilience that it should really be change-ability tip #1. We all spend much of our daily lives listening. If you live with another person, pets, or even a radio, listening starts when you wake up in the morning. However, if you’re concerned about your resilience and change-ability rating right now, I propose that you consider fine tuning your listening skills.

Well developed listening skills (also called “active listening”) affect our resilience in two significant ways. First, active listening facilitates learning and information exchange–essential for navigating change. As soon as we’re feeling stressed or anxious, listening becomes more difficult. We’re preoccupied, probably fatigued, and often afraid of what is happening or what we think could happen. However, when we engage in active listening, we take in information from all sources available, including the speaker’s tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, pauses, etc. We take note of what the speaker chooses NOT to say as well. We encourage the speaker to continue by nodding or saying “uh huh … ” at appropriate moments and by resisting the urge to complete sentences for them. We look at the speaker and may lean forward slightly as occurs naturally when we’re interested in what is being communicated. Active listening provides the space for the speaker to communicate without being rushed or fear of being judged before completing a thought. Active listeners encourage free information flow, ask questions to clarify, and paraphrase to confirm their understanding. When in need of change-ability, never miss an opportunity to gather critical information as efficiently as possible.

The second way that active or “empathetic listening” as it is sometimes called, can make us more change-able is less obvious but perhaps more powerful. People who hone and practice high level listening skills are perceived as providing extraordinary value and leadership to others–probably because they do! Marshall Goldsmith, one of my favourite bloggers at HarvardBusiness.org, wrote in his book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There (p. 153): “The ability to make a person feel that, when you’re with that person, he or she is the most important (and the only) person in the room is the skill that separates the great from the near-great.” This quote is from his chapter on listening.

Change-ability tip #11 is challenging but essential. Active listening is like glue that builds relationships, networks, and community. You can never have too many friends and connections when you’re in the throes of change!

I’d love to hear your tips for developing better listening skills or ways that active listening has helped you be more change-able.

First, storytelling never happens in a vacuum. And second, no listening space is neutral. The space into which we speak is already shaped by other stories. … [N]o matter what I say, what matters in the end is what the audience thinks they hear.

From: The Center for Narrative Studies. “Story as the Shape of Our Listening: The Lessons Learnt from Listening Teams.”

Whatever your story, your listeners will place it within their own framework, which includes expectations, assumptions, and experiences. By being aware of story listeners and potential interpretations, you can create or tell your stories in different ways. While you can never know all of the filters that story listeners are using, being aware of this aspect of the story process can help you watch for unintended reactions or misinterpretations.