Dr. Steven Covey siad: "Seek first to understand & then to be understood." Listening is a key skill to developing individuals & teams to perform at their best. This short article offers a few helpful insights into achieving that goal.

1. Effective Listening – A coaching approach to improving
relationships between managers & their teams - Alex Clapson
“If we were supposed to talk more than listen we would have
two tongues & one ear.”
Mark Twain
Listening is a key tool in the manager’s toolbox to enable their teams to work at their best.
When you interact with your team, being able to effectively listen to them can go a long
way in understanding their needs, addressing their issues, & improving employee
engagement.
Here are a few ways listening helps to improve team relationships:
#1 – It improves the level of trust
When team members know that their manager really listens to their issues & works to
resolve them, the level of trust is enhanced. Team members appreciate it when they are
treated as a problem solving partner & do not feel the need to have to repeat things to get
you to pay attention.
#2 – It enhances the your credibility
Credibility is a key in effective team relationships. As a manager, when you are able to
provide direction & make decisions based on the information that the team have provided,
it builds credibility, & significantly improves the relationship you have with them.
#3 – It increases the level of discretionary effort
When team members genuinely feel listened to & involved in collaborative decision
making, they are more likely to go the extra mile to finish tasks, invest in the continuous
improvement of products & services & so on. A sense of shared ownership of workplace
challenges is created by connecting with teams through effective listening. Listening is
one of the essential tools that get results.
#4 – It increases loyalty & staff retention
When your teams know that you listen & genuinely invest in understanding their needs,
strong relationships are formed, & loyalty is built. Effective listening leads to increased
staff retention.
“Seek first to understand… then to be understood…”
Stephen Covey: Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

2. We have been given two ears & one mouth & should use them in that proportion. Dr
Steven Covey’s advice that we ought to be creating environments in which we listen more
than we talk so that we can better understand one another is so true.
There are degrees, or levels of listening:
 Ignoring – not really listening at all
 Pretending – making the right noises, but faking it
 Listening to respond – ready to offer their thoughts
 Selective listening – delete, distort, generalise
 Active listening – genuinely valuing what is being said & enabling the speaker to
feel important & understood
The following checklist is a helpful reminder of what many of us do when we ought to be
actively listening…
You are not listening… if you:
 Finish my sentences for me (distort / delete what I am saying)
 Give me your opinion (evaluate)
 Suggest an immediate answer to my problem (advise)
 Say that you understand before I have finished
 Find what I am saying boring & tell me through your body language…
 Are just bursting to tell me something (searching for gaps)
 Talk about your experiences, making mine seem unimportant
 Seem distracted & / or communicate with someone (or something, such as a
mobile phone) else during our interaction
 Ask questions all the time (probe)
Developing strong conversational & listening skills can go a long way to building effective
working relationships, & can alleviate the chance of mistakes or misinterpretations.
The 4S framework helps to develop the required skills & approach to avoid blunders:
1. State
 Controlling your emotions
 Engaging rational brain
2. Safe
 Avoid triggering emotional
reactions in others – e.g.
defensiveness
3. Surface
 Explore to understand their
‘story’
4. Share
 Explain your ‘story’
 Jointly problem solve

3. State – This is the area most under your control: physical, emotional & mental. Self-
awareness before & during the conversation will make you more resilient against your
emotional triggers. The ideal state for a courageous conversation is to be sensitive, calm,
direct & curious.
Dampen down your emotional reaction & let your rational brain regain control by:
 Noticing – pay attention to your body – physically & emotionally
 Labelling the emotion – “I am feeling annoyed”
 Analysing – about how you feel & why? “I am annoyed because the constant
questioning is making me doubt my competence to do my job”
 Counting to 10, taking a deep-breath, or faking a break to ensure that your
emotions are under control
Safe – Keeping a conversation ‘safe’ means that both parties can openly express their
views & feelings without fear of being verbally attacked, humiliated, or otherwise made to
feel vulnerable.
Three things can help, either on their own, or in combination:
 Be upfront & state what you do & what you don’t intend in having the conversation
– “I don’t want to criticise you, I do want to understand the situation from your
perspective & come up with a solution that we’re both happy with”.
 Apologise if something that you said, or did has contributed towards the current
situation – “I’m sorry – I realise that I haven’t been keeping you informed as
regularly as I should which hasn’t helped the situation.”
 Find a mutual goal – “I know that we both want this project to succeed for the good
of ourselves & the team.”
Surface – It is important that you patiently explore the other person’s perspective,
assumptions, thoughts, beliefs, emotions etc. first before sharing your own.
To do this well, you must actively listen, question for clarity & not interrupt. This takes
time, but the rewards are worth the investment.
Examples of helpful questions:
 “Tell me how you see the situation”
 “How are you feeling about this”
 “What thoughts have you had about progress on this project”
 “What were your expectations”
Share – On most occasions it will be appropriate for you to share your own experience of
the situation. However, concerns have been raised during the Surface conversation
(such as external factors impacting upon their performance), then you may decide to wait
to share.
 Restate your goal & explain the situation from your perspective
 Explain how the situation, or behaviour made / makes you feel
 Share how addressing this situation can help you to achieve your goal

4.  Share how it can help the other person achieve her / his goal, then check whether
they agree
It is important to agree a clear way forward which we can support, monitor & evaluate. As
a result, we will be celebrating their achievements with them & enjoying improved working
relationships too. What will you do differently to improve your listening skills?
Alex Clapson – Independent Trainer, Coach, Facilitator & Consultant
I hope that you have found this short article useful. If you would like to get in touch:
info@talkworks.org.uk 07855 636535
Created: 10th
April 2019