How to Get Your Team Members and Clients to Listen to You

Ex-FBI negotiator Chris Voss teaches a valuable skill that can help your engineering career

When you speak to project managers, you sometimes hear horror stories about web developers they have to work with.

You hear how some developers are rude to the clients, so project managers can’t take developers to meetings. And you hear how developers make the worst excuses for not doing things and how they are rude to customers via email.

If you are a web developer, that is not a good way to be. And it surely does not make you more employable. Having communication skills as an engineer will do a lot for you as a person. And it will also have a huge impact on your work and your career.

If you are a person people like to work with, then they will want to work more with you, hire you, and recommend you to other employees. And yes, they will more readily give you a promotion.

And, they will say nice things about you when you do a job interview elsewhere.

So yes, you need to have a good knowledge stack. And it’s not just technology. Communication skills are the second pillar for your success.

There’s one strategy that you must use if you want people to listen to you: listen to them.

Regardless if you have all the information and even if this is a formal meeting with you standing in front of 20 suits, one thing is true: if you don’t listen to them, they won’t listen to you.

If you prefer watching a video version of this article, you can see it on Youtube:

Developing Software Is a Team Project

The worst project teams are those that appear bad-tempered and sulky. You can just feel that team members are not revealing their thoughts or feelings readily.

They hold meetings with no structure, where no one wants to talk and no one wants to listen. Everyone has their own agenda and is not willing to share it. You can see there is no listening and no understanding. Also, in this kind of a team, there is no cooperation.

On the other hand, great project teams have a lively personality. People look forward to meetings. They come well-prepared. And the meeting makes them feel good, appreciated, valued, and heard. This is what makes people motivated. You can also see team members with humor in this kind of a team.

If you want to work better one-on-one or in a team, there is a number one skill you need to master. It would be best if you become a great active listener.

How to Be a Great Active Listener

If the person you speak with feels that their message came across, and they feel they were heard and understood, they will be more open to listening to your version of the story.

If you want to be heard, you need to listen first.

Being a great active listener is the way to get what you want.

Chris Voss, ex-leading FBI negotiator, says this:

“What’s it going to take to get the hostage-taker to come out? He’ll tell you. But you have to learn to do more than just listen passively or try to talk them into anything. You have to work with what you get out of them to make a deal.”

In other words, you need to listen to them if you want them to do what you want. And maybe, if you listen to them, they might even introduce a solution that is better than yours. It can happen.

It’s not about who has a bigger ego and who wins. It’s about working effectively together and learn to get better. You cannot do that if you think you already have all the answers.

Some research suggests that 60% of people who consider themselves good listeners tend to underperform (referenced in Black Swan Group). Their overconfidence prevents their success. The overconfidence stops them from truly understanding the motivation of the other side.

If you think you know it all, you are the one who is losing.

As Albert Einstein says in his famous quote:

“The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”

The same goes for conversation. You might think you know what the other side is thinking. And you might even interpret everything they say as a confirmation of what you believed before the talk.

This behavior is called confirmation bias.

Wikipedia defines it as:

“Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or strengthens one’s prior personal beliefs or hypotheses. It is a type of cognitive bias.”

Nothing puts a relationship in danger faster than poor listening. It does not take long for the other to estimate your commitment to listening.

Did you know only 7% of the message is about the words you say? (Research by UCLA psychology professor emeritus, Albert Mehrabian, found that 7% of a message was derived from the words, 38% from the intonation, and 55% from the facial expression or body language.)

It is not easy to convince someone else that you are listening if, in fact, you are not.

Listening to Respond vs. Listening to Understand

There is a very thin line between listening to understand and listening to respond.

When we listen to respond, we are looking for flaws in what the other is saying. When we find that flaw, then we are just waiting to interrupt them. If they run out of breath, that is our chance to point out how wrong they are in comparison to our beliefs.

We all do this. I’m no different. The only way to stop it is to be conscious of it.

Once you know you are doing it, you can catch yourself doing it. And when you do, you stop. You stop once, twice, every time you tend to do so.

You lose so much valuable information if you don’t.

I know that I have to stop myself from doing this, especially when I feel as though the other person is so off-base that I have to straighten them out ASAP.

I’m guessing no coder ever had that feeling before…

Have you ever experienced that you tried to get someone on the same page as you and the first chance they get to talk back, everything they say is argumentative and clearly the beginning of a debate over issues?

What makes us think we can do the same to others? Listening to understand is basically the same as active listening.

Here are some tips to help you be an active listener:

• Have a curious mind. Don’t assume and jump to conclusions.
• When the other person speaks, repeat the last few words they say. Say them in a curious tone. And stay silent. You don’t want to add more questions here. Just repeat the last three words and shut up. Repeating the words will make the other party want to explain and elaborate on what they were saying.
• Use calibrated questions. Ask questions that start with what and how. How can we resolve this? What steps did you try so far to resolve this?
• Don’t ask why questions. Do you remember when you where a child and your mom started screaming at you: “Why did you break that thing?” When you ask your co-worker: “Why did you use this library?” it comes off as an accusation, even if well-intended. It is better to ask something like: “What are the positive traits of this library?”
• Don’t use “I understand” when they explain. The real problem with the “I understand” response is that people use it as a poor shortcut to really understanding the other person. “I understand” usually has a “but” stuck to it. It comes off as “I understand but listen to what I have to say now.” When we hear the other say “I understand” to us, they usually have no concept of what our problem or issue really is. They just want us to stop talking so they can tell us their opinion. This behavior shows they did not hear a word, and they have not taken it into account. For some strange reason, they expect us to think we have been heard. They are doing more damage to communication than they realize. We don’t need to do the same.
• If you want to show you are listening, use short confirmations like yes, OK, hmm. Or, try to rephrase with sentences like “It seems like you want…,” “It looks like it makes you…,” “You seem like you are frustrated with…” These are the phrases that leave an option that you might be wrong. And most importantly, it leaves you out of the equation. It’s not about you; it’s about them. You will get your turn.
• Summarize, summarize, summarize. Once you have gotten a true picture of what their viewpoint is, the next step is to repeat back to them what their “world” looks like.
• You will get your turn to speak when the other party says: “That’s right.” When they say that’s right, you know you have nailed it.
• But don’t get confused: “You’re right” and “that’s right” are way different. When they say “You’re right,” they just want to get rid of you. They want you to leave them alone.

When you have demonstrated your active listening skills, it is your turn to speak about your view of the matter. And when the other party feels confident that you have listened and understood their point-of-view, they will be more willing to listen to you.

They will be more open to cooperate with you. And even agree that your way is the best way. This is where you want to be.

References

Chris Voss’s book, Never Split the Difference, inspired this article.

Some articles you might also like:

Enjoy your day!