How Silence Can Create a Higher Performance Team as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader

Ever wonder why some conversations leave you feeling drained while others seem to strengthen your relationships?

In this episode, we dive deep into the art of effective listening and its critical role in building trust and enhancing communication. Whether you’re a seasoned leader or just starting out, mastering the techniques of listening can transform your interactions and deepen your connections.

In this 17 minute episode you'll learn:

• What it means to be a great listener when it comes to creating a higher performance team
• Apply three powerful listening techniques that can immediately enhance your communication skills.
• Recognize the signs of poor listening and learn how to correct them for better outcomes.

Listen now to unlock the secrets of impactful listening and elevate your personal and professional relationships.

WHAT IS YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE?

Want to know how to lead better?  It starts by understanding your leadership style.   To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.  Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome my aspiring modern humanitarian and development leader. I hope you're having a wonderful week. So in today's episode, you're going to learn: the type of listening that will improve your relationship and trust with others, how to know if you're listening well and three listening techniques that you can start applying even today and see immediate improvements in your communication and your relationships. Are you ready? Let's get started.

So today we're going to be focused on, I think you've guessed it by now, listening. And the importance of listening. And even if you think that you are already good at listening, or you are a good listener. I really recommend that you stick it out and listen to today's episode. Because there are some things I'm going to share with you that you probably have not thought of before. And the other thing is the power of listening is so great. That I see it all the time.

It's one of the main takeaways that a lot of my students have when they take my six week course is saying that they have become better listeners and immediately seeing improvements, not only in working relationships, but in relationships at home. Yeah. I've had a few former students tell me that their partner is grateful for them taking the course, because now they are actually listening to them.

And of course, when we listen better, we improve relationships.

We build trust. We understand each other better. You learn a lot more. And we become better communicators and all of that leads to more efficiency. Saving time and greater impact. And of course when we have a better relationship with our team that also means that they become higher performing.

And I wanted to start with a story. Something that I remember, which I think captures the power of listening. Or just the importance of listening. And when it's not happening. We're getting into a if you are on the American fiscal year the end of the fiscal year is actually September. And around September, October, you're probably going to be doing some performance planning, development, planning, conversations. And I was having one such conversation with my supervisor.

So. This person was asking me questions like, how was my work going? What did I like the most? What did I feel was my biggest strength? Those kinds of questions. We all know those questions, right? They're the standard performance planning questions. And as I was answering these questions, I could hear this person russling around on their desk.

We were on Skype, but there was no video. And so I couldn't see what they were doing. But I could tell just by the way, they were communicating with me that they were not listening. They were doing other things. They were checking their email. I could hear them clicking through emails, I could hear them rustling and probably signing papers. And the answers that I was getting as well from them when I would say something and we're like, aha.

Aha. Okay. That's great.

And this led me to feel well, Not valued, but also I just shut down. And so my answers got shorter and shorter and this person, I don't think they even noticed at the time. I think this was just a check the box exercise that sometimes we all go through. And I left the conversation feeling less valued and less motivated and it just didn't achieve what I think the organization, or even my supervisor, would have wanted from that conversation, which is a more motivated, productive, inspired person. So I think we've all been there. This is a kind of an extreme example.

However, in today's busy, distracted world, I have more and more leaders come to me and say, I don't have time to listen. Well, what's interesting is first they say that they don't know how, but we all understand on a basic level how to listen. It's just that it's like a muscle. We have to practice it in order to get better at it.

We have to strengthen it. We have to be committed and we have to understand the importance of it and why we want to be better listeners. Because otherwise it's easy to go through our day only half listening. And so even though you might think you don't have time for listening, what I find is a lot of times people who don't take the time to listen end up wasting even more time. Because they misunderstand another person that's communicating with them. They don't hear the full instructions. They don't fully understand where the other person is coming from. And so you have a lot of miscommunication.

And like I just said, if someone feels like they're not being fully heard and you can sense it, you can sense when someone is not fully listening to you, then you are going to lose trust and erode or damage the relationship.

Whereas, of course, if we are listening well, then we can strengthen our relationships,

build trust and also just understand each other better and there'll be less conflicts and so on. So I think you understand the benefits of being intentional about listening. But once again, there are many types of listening and the type of listening that I'm going to talk about today is one where we listen from a place of not knowing a place of openness and a place of curiosity. And part of that is using silence. So I'm going to give you three listening techniques that will help you. But first of all, how do you know if you're not listening well?

One of the main ways is if you walk away from a conversation and you are still left with questions. That might be a sign of you not listening well. Another sign might be if you are talking more than you are listening. If you're talking more than you're listening probably are not listening well.

And if you find yourself distracted and not focusing on what the other person is saying, then chances are, you are also not listening well.

And if you are lucky enough to have the type of relationship with your team where you can ask them, How do you feel in terms of how I'm listening to you? And they'll be honest about it, that can be a very powerful way of really understanding whether they felt heard or not. And that could be your partner as well, or your friends or whomever, you feel like trusts you enough to tell you the truth about how good a listener you are. Now you might be a better listener to your partner than you are to your staff, or you might be better listener to your supervisor than you are to your implementing partner, or there could be some variations in that, but in general, I do feel that we tend to listen at the same level throughout our day. Of course energy levels and so on can impact that. But once again, the more intentional you can be about listening and listening to learn or to understand, not just listening to hear, but listening to really understand the other person speaking, can be a very powerful way of strengthening your relationship with them.

Okay, so here are the three techniques. The first one is something that we use in coaching a lot -of course listening is a big part of coaching. But listening from a place of curiosity. So once again, focusing on what the other person is saying, but approaching the conversation or listening to them as if you do not know anything.

And I had a student recently who actually applied this with one of their colleagues. And they asked questions that they thought they already knew the answers to. And what they found was this person actually was looking at the situation from a very different perspective. And so when they took the opportunity to listen to them and their perspective, they were able to better accommodate what that person wanted or needed as well as what they wanted and needed. And so it became a win-win. So listening to understand.

And as if you do not know, going into the conversation as if you don't know or assume as little as possible can be very powerful way to listen. And one thing that we do in in the six week course "becoming the modern, humanitarian and development leader" is an exercise where we practice listening with empathy.

And part of that is just what I call listening without an agenda where you are just listening and focused on the other person without thinking about what you're going to say next. And it's a very powerful thing. If you're able to do it, it's very difficult, especially as a supervisor. But if you can practice doing it, it can be very, very powerful in terms of strengthening your understanding of others and your relationships.

Okay. Technique number two. Using silence. So silence, I think is also very underrated when it comes to listening. Of course, when we are listening, we are silent. But a lot of us are very uncomfortable with silence. We feel that whenever there's a pause in the conversation, we have to fill it. The problem is sometimes we might be communicating with someone who is an introvert or a slow talker, or they're speaking in a second, third, fourth language other than their native language. And so they need more time to process and to think, and to communicate.

And so when they stop talking and we immediately start talking it actually interrupts them and interrupts their train of thought. And we lose something there. So I'm not saying to pause and count to five at the end of every conversation or every sentence when someone is talking. But. You know, try using it throughout your week.

Just pausing. When somebody is done talking, just wait. And see what happens and you might be surprised how often they will tell you even more about the situation or the problem that you would not have known otherwise, if you had kept talking. And sometimes people are verbal processors and this is one of the easiest type of people to coach because when they start talking, they just keep talking and next thing you know, they've solved their own problem.

And they're like, thank you so much. And you say, wow, I didn't say anything, but you're welcome. So sometimes people just need to talk. And you listening can really mean a lot, especially in today's busy world, where we actually have jobs which are paid to listen. Like counseling. And coaching.

And that shows you how rare it's becoming in these days. Finally third thing. Is to self-evaluate. So as you exit a conversation after a meeting with someone or any conversation with someone. You can ask yourself who did more of the talking? Was it me or was it them? If it was you, you probably are not listening as much. So the more you can shift to more of the listening where silence and less talking, the more you will learn and understand the other person, become a better listener and improve your relationships, which of course leads to a higher performing team.

Okay. So really quickly, the three techniques are number one, really focusing on the other person and not on what you have to say next. Approaching the conversation as if you do not know little about it. Number two, using silence and counting to five when is appropriate. And number three, self evaluation: are you talking or listening more? All right.

So I challenge you this week to apply at least one of these techniques, even starting today, right after this discussion. I find it so interesting that so many of my students, they tell me "oh, well, I didn't have enough time to listen this week, or I didn't have the opportunity to listen." And I tell them, it's not that you have to be coaching to, to practice listening.

You can practice listening at any time. It's just deciding and creating that intention. So I want you to create the intention this week to really focus going into a meeting, going into a conversation with someone on being a better listener. All right. And until then, keep evolving. Bye for now.