Listening to users, customers, stakeholders, and development team members is crucial for us as product people. It allows us to build rapport, generate new insights, and make effective decisions. But listening deeply can be hard, especially when we are tired, distracted, or stressed. This article shares 12 techniques to help you improve your listening habits and become even better at understanding others.
Listen to Understand, not to Answer
“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply,” wrote Steve Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It’s true: We often listen with a specific goal in mind, with the intention to reply, to share our perspective, or to convince the other person. As a consequence, we don’t pay full attention to what the other person is saying or filter what is being said; we only hear what supports our view. We obtain partial or selected pieces of information, which can cause us to draw the wrong conclusions and get the wrong end of the stick. To avoid these issues, start by taking a sincere interest in the individual and what the person has to say. Make a conscious effort to listen to understand, not to reply, correct, or criticise.
Give the other Person Your Full Attention
As the person in charge of the product, you are likely to have many duties that compete for your time and attention. It can therefore be tempting to glance at your phone or smart watch to see if an urgent message has arrived while listening to someone. But instead of multi-tasking, minimise any distractions, switch off your devices or close the appropriate applications, and give your full and undivided attention to the other person. Being attentive increases the chances that you receive all the information and take in everything the individual says. It also makes the speaker feel valued and respected. Consequently, the individual is likely to be more trustful and open with you.
Listen for Facts, Feelings, and Needs
When you communicate with people, you may find that you listen for the facts—what is being said. For example, the issues some users experience with the latest version of your product. While facts are undoubtedly important, you shouldn’t stop there. Listen also for what is not being said—the emotions and needs of the other person, as Andrea Cohen et al. recommend in their book Practicing the Art of Compassionate Listening. Feelings, such as excitement, enthusiasm, frustration, or sadness, tell you how a person is while speaking. They often manifest themselves in the individual’s body language. Raised voice and a red face are likely to indicate that the person is angry, for example. Needs are the underlying motives we have when we speak. They refer to our intentions and goals and describe why we say what we are saying. Therefore, don’t just take what someone says at face value. Consider how the person is feeling and why she or he is sharing the piece of information. What are the individual’s interests and concerns? What’s really going on here? If you are unsure or want to find out more, ask clarifying questions.
Stay Intentionally Silent
Many people, including myself, are uncomfortable with tolerating silence in conversations. I can be in a rush to conclude the conversation without being fully aware of it; or I might be enjoying it so much that I don’t want to stop. But silence is often necessary to encourage the other person to continue to talk and share something that might be uncomfortable or difficult. To create the necessary space, take three deep breathes or count to ten before you speak giving the individual enough time to finish without feeling rushed. Additionally, being silent for a few seconds allows you to let what you have heard sink in and become aware of how you are before you answer.
Listen with an Open Mind
As the person in charge of the product, you may have strong views of what needs to be done to progress your product. While it’s great to have ideas and opinions, try to hold them lightly and make an effort to listen with an open mind. Don’t immediately judge and dismiss something you don’t like or agree with. Try to be receptive and appreciative of the other person’s perspective even if you initially consider it to be wrong. Otherwise, it will be difficult to receive all the information and understand the individual’s needs and interests. You might even discover that some of your preconceived ideas were wrong or find alternatives that are even more appropriate.
Pay Attention to the Individual’s Body Language
Paying attention to non-verbal information—like voice pitch and volume, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movement—is important: It expresses the speaker’s feelings and it helps you understand the individual’s interests. In fact, studies have found that over 60% of face-to-face is communication done non-verbally. For example, if somebody tells you that she fully supports your product roadmap but rolls her eyes or pulls a face, you know that the person is not being sincere. The individual either wants to make a joke and be jovial—or criticise and belittle the plan.
Ask Clarifying Questions
Asking clarifying questions ensures that you have correctly understood what was said, and it encourages people to provide more information. You might say, for instance, “Can you please give me an example of what you mean?” Asking questions can also make people feel appreciated and build strong relationships: They signal that you are listening and are interested in what the individual has to say. What’s more, questions can encourage people to come up with answers themselves. This leverages their creativity and it generates buy-in and shared ownership in a solution or course of action.
Be careful, though, which questions you ask. Avoid closed questions, as they carry the risk of bias and manipulation by limiting the answers that are available, as well as leading questions. The latter encourage the answer you want to hear and manipulate the conversation. A question like “We have all agreed that the current strategy is the right way forward, don’t we?” strongly encourages people to support your view and not to challenge the strategy.
Be Mindful of Your Own Emotions
Pay attention to how you are affected by what you are hearing. What is your emotional response? Do you feel pleased, flattered, surprised, overwhelmed, tense, irritated, upset, or angry, for example? Is your heart racing, are you shoulders tensioning, or is your throat getting dry? If so, why is that? Being mindful of your bodily sensations and becoming aware of your emotions helps you avoid reacting in an unskilful way—saying something you will later regret or using harsh, hurtful speech.
Maintain Eye Contact
Turn your body towards the speaker, look directly but respectfully at the person, and establish eye contact—unless that’s socially unacceptable, of course. This signals that you are paying attention and are interested in what the other person has to say, and it helps you take in the person’s body language.
Don’t Interrupt the Other Person
If you are anything like me, then you may find it hard to be patient and allow the other person to finish before sharing your perspective. But interrupting the speaker is not only impolite. It can make the individual feel insecure, rejected, hurt, or even angry. As a consequence, the individual will be less receptive to what you have to say or even reject your response in an attempt to retaliate—no matter how factually correct your answer may be.
Listen with Kindness
Successful communication does not only exchange information; it establishes a shared understanding, connects people, and builds strong relationships. To leverage the latter, listen to the other person with kindness: Try to develop a positive, warm-hearted attitude towards the individual. This might feel natural when you find the other person likeable. But if you dislike her or him, you might feel aversion or even ill-will. While that’s a common reaction, negative feelings make it hard to listen with an open mind and empathise with the individual. To overcome a negativity bias, bring to mind the person’s positive traits. Think of the good things the person has said or done. Additionally, separate opinion and individual. A difficult stakeholder may have a brilliant idea; and an opinion you strongly disagree with doesn’t make the individual a bad person.
Don’t Take S***t
While listening attentively, kindly, and with an open mind is helpful, it is important that you take good care of yourself. If you are patiently listening but find it increasingly hard to bear what you are hearing, then consider switching the topic or ending the conversation. For example, you might find that the other person is badmouthing colleagues or personally attacking or insulting you. Alternatively, you might find it upsetting what the person is saying and need time to deal with it. In these cases, it is best to stop the conversation and continue at a later point in time.
But leave a difficult conversation without making things worse, without accusing, blaming, or insulting the other person or retaliating in any other way. This will make it easier to restart the conversation and repair the relationship, if necessary.
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5 Comments
Hi Roman
Thanks for the reply. In terms of practical steps I think interaction with the dev’s is probably the easiest thing to tackle in so much as a lot of companies use Slack, Workplace, Jira, Confluence and the old favourite of e-mail all of which use text even though I know we encourage everyone to interact verbally these platforms can really help bridge the gap.
In some ways I’m lucky in that my deafness is prevalent in only one ear so I still have a good ear to help, but open plan offices can lead to a lot of background noise which is difficult when working with the dev team. As regards other internal stakeholders keep following things up with e-mails and documents making sure you’ve not missed anything.
I know we often deride e-mail or the number of different communication channels but a quick 5 minute e-mail confirming whats been discussed is a lifesaver.
As regards the most important people, the users, I’ve probably backed away (compared to my pre deafness) from one on one interaction and rely on the user researchers and observations in labs as well as recordings and transcripts. I also use heatmaps and screen recordings to pull a picture together of the users interaction. But by my own admission I feel less able to interact directly but I have some ideas around using my phone’s voice recorder to help back me up in those situations.
I’ve also been in a company where one of the developers was totally deaf and the company provided a sign language translator and ran sign language lessons. I’m not sure if that was part funded by the UK government but I know there are schemes and funding to help people with a range of disabilities get into work.
Its worth noting that 1 in 8 people in the UK of working age have some form of hearing loss but the employment rate is 65%. 41% of people with Hearing loss retired early as they struggled with communication at work.
If you or your readers are to take anything is that they need to be aware of the environment sometimes just stepping outside or into a vacant meeting room can make all the difference as well as following it up on slack or by e-mail.
Finally when socialising as a team again just be aware of the environment.
I think the sentiment of the article of being open is bang on the money its just some of the approaches do exclude people like me.
Thank you for sharing your experience and recommendations John. Very helpful.
Best wishes,
Roman
When communicating, I sometimes am just thinking about the person and forget about the disability. I always appreciate when the person reminds me, so I can make accommodations. I would never in a million years want to make communication hard for someone, but when I’m focused on a project, I just forget about other peoples’ disabilities sometimes. Just remind me.
Hi Roman
I think the intent and the sentiment is great but as a Product Professional with a hearing impairment it does feel like a kick in the teeth especially coming from someone as highly respected and experiences as yourself.
I think opening yourself up and being observant of your stakeholders, devs and users is a key trait Product Professionals and reflecting their needs are key and that physical ability shouldn’t dictate how you perform.
I do understand that its not written to exclude or to downplay Product Owners and Managers with hearing impairments or any other disabilities but I do think we need to be aware and support members of the Product Professional family who do have disabilities as diversity only strengthens a profession.
I do love the work you do and will continue to read and reflect on the insights you provide in order to continually improve my practice.
Hi John,
Thank you for your feedback. I am sorry that you felt excluded by my article. It was certainly not my intention to make anybody feel uneasy or discriminate anyone. Is there anything specific that I can change to make the article more inclusive for product people with a hearing impairment? Would it help to mention lip reading, for example? And could you tell me please which techniques you employ in your day-to-day work to converse with users, dev team members, and stakeholders?
Best regards,
Roman