🐿️ Zealous Listening - The Insanely Profitable Tech Newsletter

Originally published 4th March 2024

I watched the Head of Product listen carefully to an impassioned plea to expand the company’s offerings to new countries—then curtly reply, “We’re not doing that now.” I was initially pleased that he’d heeded my coaching to be clear and decisive, but the next day he surprised me by rowing back. “I looked into it further, “ he said, “and it turns out that internationalisation affects our whole go-to-market plan. If we don’t lay the foundations now, we can’t expand later in the year when we need to.” He and I had both ignored something vital in the planning meeting: the person making the request was a senior engineer who had key information about the lead time for supporting new regions, but we hadn’t understood that she was raising a technical issue rather than making a product request. Thank heavens the product leader revisited the question, or we might have set back sales by many months.

The mistake here wasn’t precisely a failure to listen: the Head of Product had paid very close attention and even asked for clarification to be sure he understood. The problem is that this sort of active listening doesn’t go nearly far enough, because it doesn’t reach what I call the “Exactly Moment”: when you repeat back what the other person said so well, echoing not only the meaning but the reasoning and emotion that underlies it, that he says, “Yes, exactly!” Listening this thoroughly and energetically takes real skill with tools like the Ladder of Inference and distinguishing positions from interests, and it can be exhausting (there’s a reason I take naps on full coaching days!) But when you get it right, you reap huge rewards in increased trust and mitigated risk.

If you’re doubting whether you or your team can learn to observe and respond this way, have a look at what Xavier Amador does. He teaches people effective ways to work with severely delusional people—those who believe that aliens on the Moon are controlling their parents, for example. And the first step is not to deny or argue against the hallucinations, but in fact to listen to them very carefully and repeat every element in detail, a surprisingly difficult task. Once you’ve got this right, you can go on to empathise and work on a solution in partnership, without ever actually endorsing the mistaken beliefs. Now here’s the challenge to you: if Dr. Amador’s students can manage to absorb and reflect the truly mad beliefs of schizophrenics, surely you can hear and respond to the wild and surprising ideas of your slightly less crazy engineers, marketers, and operations staff—right?

This first appeared in my weekly Insanely Profitable Tech Newsletter which is received as part of the Squirrel Squadron every Monday, and was originally posted on 4th March 2024. To get my provocative thoughts and tips direct to your inbox first, sign up here: https://squirrelsquadron.com/