Freative Friday Episode 88 Video Podcast - The Art of Listening

Welcome to free to Friday. Mark Danolo here, art school MBA and CEO of Sales Globe. And is that day of the week. We get to take a fresh look at creative logic driven problem solving. And this week I want to talk about our fast moving topic that's important to plan for for your future and for the future of your organization. And that's AI for Sales. And the goal of our conversations that I'm calling AI or you is not to review all the new developments in AI. There are plenty of people just that. My goal is to help you think through the human and AI relationship and how we can increase your asset value and build your future and your organization's future in a world where AI exists and it plays a significant role. And like I've said before, I want to help you invest in that one personal asset you have that can't be AI'd, which is your human ability to creatively solve problems. So today we're going to talk about a super critical skill for problem solving for you to build as part of your human asset, which is the art of listening. And I'm going to begin with a question. Where do you start when you're solving a problem? I mean creatively solving a problem. Well, you need information, information about what the problem is or what the challenge is. And you need information to better define or redefine the problem. And you need information to learn about and solve the problem. Well, how do you receive information? Well, in a lot of ways through whatever senses we use. So we can read, we can read reports or we can read information, we can observe and we can see, we can sense viscerally or intuitively. We can experience things kinesthetically. We can smell and taste like something's burning or something I've eaten is burned. And we can hear. So let's take that one further. We can listen. We can hear beyond listening. And in the context of sales and life, one critical way we can and AI does receive information is through listening. As far as interactions go, AI is currently listening to untold millions of conversations between people and all sorts of interactions. It's listening to conversations between customers and salespeople and it's happening online by video or by phone. AI is listening and it can be listening through interactions through other methods that we voluntarily use, like Alexa, Siri and Google Home. So we allow AI into our lives to do that voluntarily. So when it comes to listening to customer conversations and helping us learn from the customer about the problem they're trying to solve or learning about how our interaction with the Customer is going to Learning the art of listening is critical, and if you can use AI for some of this, it can help. But if you're not on video or talking by phone, do you think your customer is really going to willingly let you use your AI platform or device to listen in on a conversation between them, the customer, and you, your organization? Probably not. Customers are typically careful about what they share with salespeople, so it's not likely they're going to allow you to monitor and analyze their conversations and their speech patterns and their body language. And when you're walking the customer's factory floor, AI may not be walking with you, observing what you observe and listening to the conversations you're having with people working there. If AI could do that, it would certainly collect more data verbatim than you ever could through your own two years. Because we tend to have bias, we tend to not hear everything, and we tend to gloss over things. But when it comes to listening and sensing and understanding what another human or groups of humans are saying, and being able to follow through and develop the conversation in an empathetically human way, you have a human asset, a human superpower you can develop. Because AI may never be able to understand hidden agendas or read between the lines of a conversation, or empathize with the needs of another human like a customer or someone in your organization or someone in your life. And it may never be able to respond to and develop the conversation to help the customer or that person effectively solve a human problem. And recall, like we said before, that almost all customer problems and products and services are ultimately addressing a human need. So I'd like to explore a few areas where you can build your human superpower of the art of listening. And this is not so you can outdo AI. It's so you can build your human asset to become a better creator. Whether you're leveraging AI or doing it old school human. So picture yourself. You're on a video call. It's an important conversation with a customer. Maybe one of your teammates is leading the call and the customer is talking about some of their top challenges. And your teammate makes a couple of comments and your customer talks some more, and you throw in a comment to show you understand and the conversation continues and you think, I wonder if Stacy got back to me with that statement of work. I have to get over to that other customer. It's almost 4 o', clock, so you slide your email inbox window up next to your video window so you can check your email while it still looks like you're looking at the camera and engaged in the meeting and so you're checking your inbox. Oh, Wayfair, they have a 24 hour sale on table lamps. I'm going to flag that one. Okay, no email from Stacy. So you pull out your phone and you send her a quick text. And you're holding it up just below the camera line so it still looks like you're paying attention. Hey, Scotty texted you. You haven't heard back from him in a week. What's up? And over the computer speakers are here. So, Mark, what do you think? It's your teammate or was it the customer? Can you restate that question? You couldn't be here now, could you? You had to multitask. Or better yet, you had to attention split. And did you even hear what the customer said? And does the customer even think that you think they're important anymore? Maybe your competitor will think the customer is more important than you do. How's that working for you? So let's talk about the muscles you can build to differentiate yourself and become more effective at the art of listening. I'm going to give you seven exercises to build your human superpower of listening. Number one, leverage the power of focus. Often when we're in conversation, we've got five other things going on in our minds. And if we're sitting in front of another person, our inner voices start speaking to us and they start diverting our attention. Like what time does the dry cleaner close? Or how am I going to get ready for my next meeting? So when you're on the phone or video, it gets even worse because you can divert our attention by going off camera and doing something else. Or on the phone, you could be cleaning your desk and doing something completely different than listening to the conversation. So when you're listening, turn your attention to that person or that group and train your brain on the conversation. Resist the other conversations in your head and resist that spike of anxiety that runs up your spine because you have something else urgent you have to do. Focus on the moment and receive. Number two, clear your mind before you receive. Think about listening like meditation. When we meditate, one of the things we do to prepare is to clear the mind from other thoughts and distractions so we're ready to concentrate and listen and connect. The same goes for listening. Before you enter a conversation, clear your mind and prepare yourself for the experience of receiving. If you have to come into the conversation hot off another meeting, pause for a moment or two, clear your mind and be intentional about listening. Like meditation, thoughts May come to your mind as you're in the conversation. They could be random thoughts about anything. This is what some meditation experts call monkey mind, because your mind's jumping all over like a wild monkey. And when that happens, take the thought and label it. It's a thought about my dry cleaning. And clear it out. Focus back on listening. The act of meditation is called practice, and it's called practice for a reason, because it takes practice. And the same concept applies to listening and practicing, clearing your mind. Number three, don't think ahead. Now, this sounds counterintuitive to how you might plan and facilitate a conversation. And of course, you should have a conversation plan and a listening plan. And when you're listening, you want to facilitate the conversation according to your plan. But put that at the next mental layer, below your listening layer. And instead of thinking about what you're going to say or ask next before the person is done talking, Concentrate on listening, finding the patterns and letting the conversation and listening flow naturally. Number four. Listen to the words people use, especially when they may not know what they're telling you. An old friend of mine who is an actor and observer of people Once told me something valuable. She said, people usually tell you what they mean if you really listen. And I thought that was a great tip. She was saying, people use words and they say things intentionally, even if not consciously, that tell you what's important to them. As humans, though, sometimes we listen for what we want to hear, and we don't grab onto the other information someone's sharing with you. So next time when you listen to someone talking to you, listen carefully to the words they're using and listen for the why behind what they're saying. Number five, Watch for nonverbal cues. When we speak, we're human, so we give nonverbal cues that go along with or counter our words. And nonverbal cues can include tone of voice. Is the tone upbeat, positive, flat, negative, aggressive, changing and intonation during the conversation? Facial expression. If you turned off the volume of the conversation so you couldn't hear the person's voice, what would their facial expressions say? Do they match what they're saying with their words? Body language. Is the person's body position closed, meaning their legs are crossed or their arms are crossed, or is it open like their leg positions relaxed and their arm positions are open? Are the person's motions within a certain range, or are they animated and expressive? Where's the person looking when he's speaking? Are they looking at you and making eye contact? Are they looking in another direction, looking up, looking down. So watch for the nonverbal cues to see if they match what's being said. Use Active Listening of course, with active listening, you're showing that you hear and understand what the person's saying. You may reflect back some key points the person is making, acknowledge your understanding, or draw out additional explanation. But if you're reflecting back, don't parrot back and repeat the speaker's words verbatim back to them. Once is fine, but continued parroting can make your listener wonder if you're listening and absorbing or mechanically repeating back what you hear. If you're giving the person verbal confirmation that you're understanding what they're saying, avoid using and repeating shallow filler phrases like that's very interesting or I find that fascinating. Instead, use a simple acknowledgement like I understand or a nod or add to the conversation by showing an understanding of what they're saying. So let's look at an example. The speaker says when we're the category captain in snack foods at the retailer and it gives us a lot of power in terms of strengthening our shelf position, a weak response might be wow, that's really interesting. And then the speaker wonders whether the listener was even listening or was thinking about our grocery list. A better response might be that makes sense. So in what percentage of the large format food retailers in your market do you have category captain position? And what do you think that's done for your business? Overall, the speaker knows the listener understands because the listeners demonstrated it. While active listening may involve you doing and saying rather than listening, it can facilitate the conversation and prompt the speaker to share additional important information that can improve what you have to listen for and learn from. Keep Asking Better Questions Solving a problem effectively and creatively starts with asking the right questions. Your problem statement you start with, though may not tell you enough about what you're trying to solve. And the problem with a problem statement is it kind of sits there like an inanimate object waiting to be solved. And the first thing we do with a problem statement is we go after it and we try to solve it. But what if we're solving the wrong problem? I like questions better than statements. Questions provoke thinking. If I make a statement, your mind focuses on that statement and it tries to go after that statement. But if I ask you a question, your mind opens up and starts thinking about more open ended questions. So start with better questions that describe the problem in terms of challenge questions and keep expanding upon those and asking new questions while you're in conversation and you're listening and it'll open up more rich information to listen for and lead you to a better solution. So when you're taking information by listening rather than harvesting and cataloging like a machine, use the art of listening to make it one of your human creative superpowers. Start today in your next conversation by practicing the art of listening to build your creative problem solving assets. And try this in your free to Friday and every day.