How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life pdfdrive com

It’s not about you
. First, let go of your need to feel helpful by making
comments and suggestions. You’re giving the other person something at least
as precious: the encouragement and time to think clearly. You can provide
more traditional forms of help later on, if needed.
Let the other person set the topic.
If it’s not already obvious what he or she
is struggling with, ask, “What would you find helpful to talk through?”
Don’t interrupt.
Let them talk at length; aim for at least five minutes. It’s
sometimes hard not to fill the gaps when the other person pauses to think. But
don’t jump in. Listen intently. Make encouraging noises. Nod. Wait.
Maintain eye contact.
Even when the other person glances away, keep your
eyes on them. Stay present and responsive.
Keep them talking.
When the other person runs out of steam, invite them to
continue. Ask: “Is there anything else you’re thinking about this?” If the
answer is no, that’s fine. When they’re done, ask, “So what do you think
you’ll do now?” Don’t feel you need to offer anything clever beyond that.

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And once again, remember: it’s about the other person, not you.
Your
thoughts, ideas, and suggestions will be bubbling up inside you. If they
threaten to boil over, remember that you’ll have a chance to share them some
other time, and bring your focus back to the other person.
Once when I was demonstrating this technique to a group of senior
executives, they sat transfixed by the unfamiliar sight of one of their colleagues
being listened to carefully rather than having to fight for airtime. After we
stopped to discuss the technique, one of the executives started giggling. “But it’s
just like flirting!” he said. It was so rare for him to witness anyone paying
undivided attention to another person that the only reference point he had was
the experience of wooing his spouse. And he was right in a way: flirting tends to
make us feel good precisely because the rapt attention of the other person makes
us feel interesting and smart. But this workplace example of extreme listening
seemed perfectly professional to the volunteer. When we asked him how it had
felt, he said, “Great, actually. I felt like I had time to think, and that you cared
about what I was saying, even though you weren’t commenting. And I got
somewhere useful.”
Ros is a senior healthcare executive who now sees extreme listening as a vital
management tool. Her work involves leading complex projects that seek to
improve the quality of patient care, involving huge numbers of people—often
including family doctors, insurers, government officials, hospitals, and
community groups. She can be successful only if she’s helping other people do
their best work. But how to do that? Ros says she’d gone through most of her
life “trying to solve people’s problems,” a habit she developed while growing up
in a large family, and she had always assumed this was the best way to support
colleagues who asked for her help. But it was tiring, and she knew it wasn’t
helping people to get better at doing their jobs. “So I tried out some of this
extreme listening with Alex, my deputy.” He had an issue he wanted to talk
about, and normally Ros would have tried to fix it for him. “But instead,” Ros
says, “I let him talk without interruption, and I actually explicitly told him the
‘rule’ I was following, that I wasn’t going to interrupt his train of thought. I
nodded, encouraged him, and asked ‘What else?’ when he flagged. Within five
minutes he’d literally solved the whole thing himself. We both laughed so hard.
It absolutely worked, and I didn’t have to do anything.” Alex went on to use the
technique with his colleagues, and now they both use it frequently. As Ros says:
“I realized one of the biggest gifts you can give someone is to make them feel

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capable of handling things themselves.”