Effective communication

Conflict is very good at creating listening barriers. When they’re talking we’re only half listening while we wait to talk, formulate our comeback, struggle to keep calm, and fall into other habits that get in the way of good listening. If you’re in a position to help someone come back into good listening, try these four questions to prompt the return (you can use them with yourself, too).

It is astonishing how elements which seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens. How confusions which seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard.

It’s really hard to listen well in the middle of conflict, even when we know the importance of good listening. Distractions, preoccupations, misunderstanding, the other person’s long-windedness, strong emotions, and “going inside our heads” to formulate our response — listening barriers like these interfere with good problem solving.

Good questions and good listening are the rockstar duo of effective conflict resolution and good problem solving. They’ll get you 80% of the way there in most situations.

Tweet

They’re also the rockstar duo because we can use one to help us do the other better. When we listen well, the questions we ask get better because we’re hearing and understanding more deeply. And good questions trigger better engagement — and better listening.

Here are some of my favorite questions to help someone back into good listening.

1. What’s holding your attention?

Design thinking champion Ideo recommends using this question as a check-in at the beginning of a meeting to help participants release distractions and burdens they carry in with them.

But this question deserves a place at the table well beyond the start of a conversation. It’s one of my very favorite questions and I find it invaluable in moments like these:

• When I want to understand why someone seems to have checked out of the conversation.
• When I want to understand why the temperature of a conversation has gotten hotter.
• When I think something important is on someone’s mind but they haven’t shared it yet.
• When I want to interrupt a tirade and understand what triggered it.

I prefer this question to, What’s going on for you right now? because it feels less therapeutic and yields information without encouraging rumination.

2. What will working this out mean for you?

Conflict has this way of blocking our long view. There we are, our eyes on our destination, and conflict comes up and grabs us by the collar. We don’t even notice that it’s blocking our way because now our attention is on our collar.

This question helps us get out of collar-grab moments that aren’t really taking us anywhere. It helps us redirect attention away from the minor nuisance or distraction and refocus us on what’s important. Our listening can improve again because we’re no longer distracted by the tussle over our collar.

A similar question with equal merit is, How is this situation affecting you?

3. What is the problem we’re trying to solve here?

A repetitive argument is a sure sign there’s little listening going on. One reason arguments get repetitive, stuck in a cycle of the same positions, arguments, and even words, is that people are actually solving different problems. We become like two train tracks running parallel but never meeting, though we may not be conscious of it.

This question brings the hamster wheel debate to a standstill, and makes those distinctly separate train tracks visible. It also re-engages our interest in listening because we want to know what problem the others think we’re solving.

When we’re helping others in a conflict in which we have no part, the better version of this question is, What is the problem you’re trying to solve here? This may sound like splitting hairs. When I’m mediating, I try not to entangle myself in their conflict; the job’s hard enough as it is and by being clear with my language, I’m clearer in my mind, too.

4. I know you can’t…but if you could…?

Sometimes we stop listening because no solution seems to work and the situation feels hopelessly deadlocked. Can’t can’t can’t and won’t won’t won’t reverberate in our heads and the sense of impotence can make us withdraw.

Here’s what the question sounds like in practice:

• I know you can’t agree to that idea, but if you could, what would make it possible?
• I know you can’t agree to a solution that increases your expenses right now, but if you could agree, how could that happen?

This is a strange question but its weird power is indisputable. First, because it’s so weird, people re-engage and start listening again. Second, it acknowledges you’ve heard them say no to something, even though you’re about to question that very no. Finally, it invites them to think beyond the no.

Even after two decades of using this question to inspire both deeper listening and deeper problem-solving, it seems on the surface that it can’t possibly work. And sometimes it isn’t helpful. No question is a guaranteed slam dunk. But often, after triggering an odd look, it prompts really useful fodder for discussion and problem solving. And it brings them back into listening.

If you believe someone is aggressive, could they behave more aggressively with you than with others? If someone believes you are a hostile person, are you likely to act more hostile when you interact with them? It’s called behavioral confirmation and if you’re interested in your own or others’ conflict behavior, it’s worth understanding.

A man gets on an elevator with his dog. At the next floor, a second man gets on the elevator, scowls at the dog, and says angrily, “Dogs don’t belong in this building!” The dog growls at the man.

Several floors later, the annoyed man exits the elevator and a third man gets on. He smiles at the dog and says enthusiastically, “You are such a cute fellow!” The dog wags his tail happily at the man.

So where does the problem lie? Is the dog a “difficult dog”?

We can easily see that the problem lies not with the dog alone, but also with the annoyed man.

And it’s no different with humans, it turns out.

If someone expects you to be attractive, do you end up acting differently?

A classic social psychology experiment, replicated and expanded upon over the years, demonstrated that our expectations of others can cause them to behave in ways that confirm those expectations.

In the late 1970s University of Minnesota researchers had a hunch that people sense how others view them and start exhibiting the expected behaviors. To test their hunch, they decided to investigate the way stereotypes about appearance affect a person’s perceptions of sociability, intelligence, and the like.

The researchers arranged conversations between male and female university students. The pairs of students could not see each other, and before the conversation, researchers gave each male student two pieces of information: Biographical information and a photo of the woman they would be talking to. The bios were accurate, but the photos were fake.

Half the men were given the photo of a woman who had been rated as very attractive by others, the other half the photo of a woman rated as not very attractive.

The conversations were recorded. Later, university students who were not part of the conversations listened to the female portion of the recordings, assessing the voices on animation, enthusiasm, enjoyment, and so on.

You already suspect where this is going, don’t you?

In conversations with men who believed they were talking to an attractive woman, the women tended to exhibit more behaviors stereotypically attributed to attractiveness. They were viewed as more socially adept, humorous, and poised. In conversations with men who believed they were talking to an unattractive woman, the women tended to come off as more awkward, serious, and unsociable.

Remember: The photo the men had was not of the woman on the other end of the phone. And the women knew nothing about what was going on. Neither did the independent observers who listened to the women’s voices later.

Researchers concluded that the women had subconsciously picked up on the impressions the men had of them and inadvertently confirmed the stereotype projected on them.

Whoa.

The research has since been replicated using racial, gender, and weight stereotypes, loneliness, and even anticipation of hostility. In the latter study, when participants interacted with people who expected them to be hostile, they displayed greater hostility than those who were expected not to be hostile.

Behavioral confirmation

One of the original researchers, Mark Snyder, coined the term behavioral confirmation to describe the effect that behavioral expectations have on actual behavior.

It seems to happen in four stages:

1. The perceiver adopts a belief about the “target” (the recipient of the belief).
2. The perceiver then treats the target according to the belief, perhaps subconsciously.
3. The target picks up on cues in the perceiver’s words and attitude, and subconsciously modifies their own behavior.
4. The perceiver then uses the target’s behavior as confirmation of their belief.

From behavioral confirmation to emotional contagion to neural coupling, what’s beginning to emerge from research is a fuller picture of the ways we influence someone else’s behavior not just by what we do and say, but also by our beliefs and moods.

How can you use this?

A powerful takeaway from research like this is recognition that the conflict behavior we dislike in someone is not simply a matter of their own flaws.

We are a factor.

This is not just a mind-blowing truth about the complexity of human behavior. It’s also one that gives us greater agency, the sense that our own voluntary action can produce an effect.

Before we knew about behavioral confirmation, when we experienced someone’s conflict behavior as difficult, we had four general options:

• Persuade them to change their behavior.
• Wrangle them into different behavior.
• Avoid interacting with them.
• Ignore or learn to live with the behavior.

Now we have a fifth option and it might be the most powerful one of all: Adopt a different belief about them.

Two special notes for mediators

Mediator note 1

Fellow mediators are often surprised — and sometimes downright aghast — that I don’t set mediation ground rules at the start of my mediations. How on earth, they ask, do you get people to behave well?

Some don’t like my answer very much: I just expect them to.

Most of the time that’s enough. And behavioral confirmation explains why that’s the case.

Mediator note 2

If you’ve followed my work for any length of time, you know that I have very strong feelings about treating clients as somehow “less than” or “broken” (“high conflict,” for example).

When you find your thoughts turning to pet diagnoses when someone is acting in a way you find frustrating in the mediation room, remember: You may just be helping create some of the very conflict behavior you’re trying to address.

When we listen well, sometimes others hog air time and just keep talking. It’s an inadvertent, and often unwelcome, side effect of good listening. Here’s a way I like to handle long-winded talkers that’s both effective and kind.

A reader wrote, “I’ve been told I need to be a better listener. But when I do listen, sometimes people just go on and on. At what point do I get to be the one to talk when the other person doesn’t know when to shut up?”

That’s a fair question. Sometimes people do go on and on once they’ve got the floor. It can feel pretty overwhelming.

It looks like they’re being unaware or, worse, selfish. Maybe it’s tempting to conclude they can’t self-regulate. That’s probably true occasionally, but more often, the gift of good listening just has such a deep impact on people.

I see this in my work all the time. When a person finally feels like someone is really listening, it’s akin to the sluice gates of a dam being opened after a heavy rainfall. The things they’ve been waiting to say, wanting to say, but have not been fully given the chance to say, finally get their due. They come out in a flood after being held back for so long and it can take a while for everything to return to normal levels.

I try not to fault someone for this. Conflict has a way of bottling up people. Deep listening is a gift too few of us receive and when we do get it, we want never to let it go.

I find that assuming the behavior has benign roots and taking harsh diagnosis out of it make me less frustrated by it. It is so much more soothing (not to mention effective) to notice the equal human in front of me than to sit in judgment.

So it’s useful to begin with the internal work of adjusting our thinking about the experience. Then, we turn to the external work — what we will say or do. I’m a big fan of transparency for situations like this.

It might sound something like this: You’re sharing so much that I’m struggling to take it all in. I’m afraid I’m going to miss something important.

Or maybe like this: I’m having a tough time absorbing everything you’re saying. Can we do this in smaller chunks?

Of course, there’s helpful transparency and harmful transparency.

Harmful transparency makes the argument immediately worse by failing to weed out the judgmental noise: Sarcasm, biting words, pointing out their flaws and selfishness, diagnosis of their frailties, and so on. It’s damaging for relationships.

Helpful transparency is the sharing of one’s experience minus all that noise. It’s intention is to convey, Hey, here’s what I’m noticing right now, what do you think about that?

When I’m feeling overwhelmed by a flood of words that shows no sign of abating, I like to use transparency because it communicates that I care and am interested, signals that I need help if I’m going to continue listening, and invites them to play a role in getting their own interests met.

I’ve had good success with it.

Conflict has a way of magnifying our bad listening habits. I frequently see the following listening habits get in the way of constructive and collaborative problem-solving during conflict and thought I’d flag them for attention.

Good communication during conflict relies, to some extent, on our ability to use good communication habits in our everyday conversations. If we fall into bad listening habits in our everyday conversations, it’s going to be harder to be good listeners in times of tension and stress.

I’m as guilty of some of these bad listening habits as the next person and I strive to get better at them.

1. Listening with our answer running

When we listen with our answer running, we’ve stopped listening. It may look like we’re listening, but really, we’re inside our head, preparing what we’ll say the moment they pause. Of course, while we’re doing this, they’re still talking, so we miss some of what they’re saying.

Listening is not just waiting to talk.

Scott Ginsburg

It would be a shame to miss a gem that might have changed the conversation for the better or led to a different outcome.

2. Listening only from our own frame of reference

Stephen Covey described a listening continuum that runs from “ignoring” on the left, to “pretend listening,” then “selective listening,” then “attentive listening,” and finally to “empathic listening” on the right. He proposed that the first four are the types of listening we do most often. They all take place from our own frame of reference.

Of the five types of listening, Covey said that only empathic listening is an attempt to listen from the other person’s frame of reference. Only empathic listening comes from a desire and commitment to listen without agenda.

3. Stealing someone’s story

Enzo, canine narrator of the novel, The Art of Racing in the Rain, describes stealing someone’s story this way:

I cannot speak, so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another’s conversations constantly. It’s like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street.

Stealing someone’s story means to pull the conversation away from what they were talking about before they were done — maybe even before they really got started. Maybe they mention a frustrating lunch with a colleague. That reminds us of the stale croutons at the salad bar at lunch today, so we turn the conversation to croutons. This can be an exasperating experience for the original storyteller, who was in the midst of something else entirely.

In conflict, we may do this more than usual, because we really would like to change the direction they’re heading. They may then steal our story, and the conversation deteriorates into a series of stolen stories, none really heard or attended to by the other.

4. Multi-tasking

I once was introduced to the new owner of a large sporting goods chain while at a business gathering. He asked me a question about my work and as I briefly answered it, I could see he wasn’t listening. He was looking over my shoulder and moving his head slightly from side to side. I finally stopped mid-sentence and looked behind me to see who he was looking at. It was a mirror. He was multitasking with himself.

Multi-tasking is bad for good listening. Our attention is divided by the “switch costs” of multi-tasking and we can’t help but miss part of their message.

Chronic bad listening habits are built on multi-tasking: Checking email or reading texts while in conversation. Continuing to work through the pile of paperwork on our desk while a colleague drops in to voice a concern. Opening today’s mail while our teenager tells us about something that happened at school.

5. Listening to confirm we’re right

Years ago my husband and I visited the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA. When I saw this quote from legendary coach John Wooden, I realized I wasn’t just visiting a mecca for hoops fans, I was visiting a tribute to some of the best coaching in the world:

It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.

John Wooden

Conflict often denies us the desire to learn. We may not listen to learn as much as we listen to confirm we’re right. That we’re right about their wrongness. Right about our interpretation. Right about their frailties and mistakes. We listen with the agenda to hear those hints and use them as weapons of defense and offense.

When we think we know what we need to know about them and the situation, maybe that’s the signal we should start listening more deeply.

Overcoming bad listening habits

All of these bad listening habits share a few characteristics that, in turn, create barriers to conflict resolution:

• They serve our own agenda more than they serve a joint agenda.
• They signal that we aren’t truly interested.
• They’re sloppy ways to listen at a time we need to up our listening game.

Of course, because they’re habits, we may have none of those intentions and just stumble into bad listening because we’re used to it. Maybe most days it doesn’t matter that we listen half-heartedly and not very attentively. When conflict is in the air, though, we need to be able to catch ourselves and listen differently.

Here are four effective ways to break bad listening habits:

1. Enlist help. If we don’t notice right away when we’ve tripped into a bad listening habit, it’s helpful to enlist a trusted colleague, family member, or friend to alert us. We want them to alert us not in a judgmental way, but in a “just giving you a heads up” way. They can do this with a subtle kick under the table, a gesture we agree on ahead of time, or simply by saying, “You asked me to alert you when you stumble into that habit.”

2. Practice in low-stakes moments. It is very hard to listen well under the stress of conflict. To get good at it under pressure, we first need to be good at it when the going is easy. When we practice in everyday conversations, we develop our “muscle memory” for good listening and can build from there.

3. Make a commitment to “get into their movie.” The typical advice about listening well is to “be curious.” That’s good advice but hard to pull off during conflict and tension. It’s helpful to use the “get into their movie” listening device to help us be curious. “Get into their movie” means to temporarily suspend our disbelief in order to hear and learn something we otherwise might miss. It’s an easy phrase to remember.

4. Commit to eye contact. The simple act of making eye contact while someone is talking forces us to stop multi-tasking and pay attention. And it helps them feel attended to. When we practice this for small stretches in everyday conversations, we establish the kind of connection that will serve us well in times of tension.