listening-deeply

Demo Listening Sessions Demo Listening Session Audio: Participant DDS06 Participant DDS15 Participant DDS62 Transcript with Indi’s markup of what the Listener is doing: Transcript DDS06 Transcript DDS15 Transcript DDS62

Hand Outs Technique: Three ways to commit to this work (accessible PDF) Resource: Complex systems thinking quotes (PDF) Resource: Complex systems resources (PDF) Example: Example opportunity map (accessible PDF) Example: Example tracking of support (accessible PDF)

Hand Outs Technique: Summary format (accessible PDF) Technique: Cultivating patterns (accessible PDF) Example: Example summaries (accessible PDF)

Practice & Reflections Practice Plan out how you can begin developing trust relationships with your stakeholders. Talk to others in your team, and across other companies, to get ideas on how people are facing certain contexts or certain types of stakeholder mindsets. Hand Outs Technique: Find out who to develop relationships with, and begin that […]

Practice & Reflections Practice Make a habit, across your team, of communicating before the session with the participant about what to do in case of technical difficulties. Practice Update the way your team can schedule each other for listening sessions, taking into account different time zones and personal preferences. Practice Discuss with your team (or […]

Practice & Reflections Practice Begin to recognize how well you and the person can recover from fumbles during a session. Reassure yourself that a fumble does not always result in the end of a session, but that together, like musicians playing together, you can get back on course. Practice Start noticing your own energy level […]

Practice & Reflections Practice Discuss and plan how to make sure, in the information session, that you avoid candidates that have a strong habit of speaking in generalizations. Hand Outs Diagram: Types of generalizations at the Almost Cognition layer (accessible PDF) Technique: Pinning generalizations that might hold more interior cognition (accessible PDF) Technique: Two branches […]

Practice & Reflections Reflection Find out if anyone on your team, or your peers, if they have encountered complaints or objections in an interview. How did people handle it? Discuss (or consider) the different approaches. Hand Outs Technique: Complaints and objections technique (accessible PDF) Technique: Do not offer tips, explanations, advice (accessible PDF)

Practice & Reflections Reflection It might be interesting to chat with your team or your peers, to see if anyone has encountered lies in an interview, and how they handled it. Discuss (or consider) the different approaches. Hand Outs Resources: Cordy’s War Story: A Crisis of Credibility, by Steve Portigal

Practice & Reflections Reflection Do you know an organization that supports people facing abuse, death, or other strongly emotional contexts? What do you know about how they handle interviews or listening sessions with individuals? Would any of it help your own organization? Reflection Have you ever felt an insider connection with a person in an […]

Practice & Reflections Practice Prepare yourself: Consider what responses you are comfortable making to being triggered, on each side of the threshold. Consider your own experiences. Also list some contexts that may trigger you strongly, and let your manager and team know that you won’t take a listening session where such a context may come […]

Practice & Reflections Practice Build a framework for yourself, and for your team, to work through topics & concepts you learn about from people in research. (Or review and extend an existing framework.) Make sure everyone on the team understands the availability of this framework. Offer the framework as an example to other groups in […]

Test Yourself Quiz: Reasons for ending a session early, and how to say it (accessible PDF) Practice & Reflections Practice Create a plan for exiting unsafe sessions, in a number of contexts. Discuss with team members and managers the variables you need to be prepared for. Practice Chat with your manager and your team to […]

Practice & Reflections Reflection To what degree at your organization (or in your own experience) is the relationship between researcher and person made too formal, too distant, pushed too much toward “authority and subject?” How is this relationship different than the formality and politeness of the culture you live in?

Practice & Reflections Practice Judging a person is common in everyday conversation. Begin to recognize when you are doing it. In those moments, begin to make space for the valid possibilities for why that person is communicating or acting that way. As you get better at recognizing these moments and making space, you can then […]

Practice & Reflections Practice What are the ways you already indicate to a person that you are listening? You may already be doing a good job of it. Do you want to add to or shift those approaches?

Practice & Reflections Practice Chat with your manager about allowing people to reschedule a session if they have “something going on” (mood, energy level) that will affect their ability to take time with you. Reflection Have you ever noticed hesitation at the beginning of an interview? How did you handle it? Did you and the […]

Practice & Reflections Reflection Have you experienced a session or interview where it seemed to end with a bad feeling? Think back to that memory and see if you can tell if there was loss of trust, and why. Handouts Definition: What is a safe space (accessible PDF) Technique: Create a safe space for the […]

Practice & Reflections Reflection Think about times when you might choose to do deep listening, and whether you might apply it in the solutions space (evaluative or generative research regarding ideas or solutions) or in the problem space (to inform the strategy space). Reflection If you are at an organization with a seemingly rigid process, […]

Practice & Reflections Reflection Are there additional things you like to (or need to) add to the way you end a session? Hand Outs Technique: The process of ending a session (accessible PDF) Phrases: How much we have covered together (accessible PDF) Phrases: The closing question (accessible PDF)

Practice & Reflections Reflection How many studies have you encountered that could have covered several instances of the same purpose? Hand Outs Phrases: Asking for another instance of the purpose (accessible PDF)

Practice & Reflections Practice In your everyday conversations, see if you can begin shifting to a pull-tab when a person seems finished chatting about something. Hand Outs Technique: When a Person has Finished a Topic (accessible PDF) Phrases: Shifting a topic to pursue pull tabs (accessible PDF)

Hand Outs Technique: Avoid These Universally (accessible PDF) Technique: Avoid These for Deep Listening (accessible PDF)

Hand Outs Phrases: Turn Passive into Active (accessible PDF)

Practice & Reflections Practice When you have a good grasp of pinning to a place & time, then look for places where you can go back and find the roots of someone’s explanation, opinion, or preference. Hand Outs Technique: Jawbreaker Visualization of Find the Roots (accessible PDF) Technique: Memory Visualization of When a Preference or […]

Practice & Reflections Practice Focus here first, helping people go back in memory to a particular place & time, to make it easier to remember their interior cognition then. Hand Outs Technique: Three Techniques for Encouraging Clarity (accessible PDF) Phrases: Pin to a Place & Time Phrases (accessible PDF)

Practice & Reflections Reflection In the interviews you have transcripts for, take a look at how the word “why” is used, and at what candy layer it is answered. Hand Outs Technique: Because Statements (accessible PDF, two pages)

Practice & Reflections Practice After practicing “what went through your mind” first, then begin using micro-reflections and simple-reflections. Hand Outs Definition: Three Types of Reflection (accessible PDF)

Practice & Reflections Practice Allow yourself to leave more space in conversation, in listening. Hand Outs Technique: Silence Is Okay (accessible PDF) Phrases: Fill in the Blank Phrases (accessible PDF)

Practice & Reflections Reflection You may have used “tell me more about that” in your work. How has that differed, or how is it similar, to asking for interior cognition? Hand Outs Phrases: While the Person Is in Memory Mode (accessible PDF) Phrases: Encourage the Person to Unfold Interior Cognition (accessible PDF)

Practice & Reflections Practice Focus here first, asking people what went through their mind. Hand Outs Technique: Jawbreaker Visualization of Five Techniques for Asking for Interior Cognition (accessible PDF) Phrases: Asking to Get to Inner Thinking (accessible PDF) Phrases: Asking to Get to Emotional Reactions (accessible PDF) Phrases: Asking to Get to Guiding Principles (accessible […]

Test Yourself Quiz: Finding Pull Tabs (accessible PDF with answers) Practice & Reflections Practice Slowly start noticing pull tabs, where there is possibly more interior cognition, as a background process. Hand Outs Technique: A Listener’s Three Cognitive Activities (PDF, the palm tree slide) Technique: Sensing Pull Tabs (accessible PDF)

Practice & Reflections Practice Begin to notice how a person might bring up topics that seem outside of the purpose for a listening session, and how they are actually connected to the purpose to them. At the same time, in everyday conversation notice how the topics sometimes veer off in a whole new direction. Hand […]

Practice & Reflections Reflection How have you begun interviews in the past? How has it varied between types of research in the solution space (evaluative and generative)? How might you shift even those types of interviews toward a germinal question? Reflection Go through an interview from your org’s repository. What is the scope/frame for the […]

Practice & Reflections Reflection What methods does your org use for recruiting? What methods have you used? Reflection Consider projects where you can include the information session step. Get that set up, and find out whether it adds value to the participants or to your team. Hand Outs Technique: Steps for Starting a Session (accessible […]

Practice & Reflections Practice Notice when you (or other people) say “I feel like” or “I feel that.” See if you can recognize that what follows that phrase is an opinion. Reflection Recall a conversation when you were collaborating with another person on a project. What you remember saying and hearing–what layers were those at? […]

Practice & Reflections Practice It will take weeks of practice to comfortably become aware of where a person is in the layers of the candy jawbreaker. Notice when you start to easily recognize a person’s interior cognition. At that point your mental skill will be strong enough to get started with real listening session.

Practice & Reflections Practice Train your attention on whether the concepts a person brings up are at the exterior layers or the interior layers. Hand Outs Diagram: Jawbreaker Candy: Concept Layers of a Topic (accessible PDF) Definition: Layer Definitions: Description, Expression, Almost Cognition, Interior Cognition (accessible PDF, 4 pages)

Practice & Reflections Practice Notice when you are on auto-pilot, and when you are able to pay rapt attention to someone. Does it correlate to your energy level? To the person? To the subject/topic? What factors influence whether you can pay rapt attention? Hand Outs Technique: A Listener’s Three Cognitive Activities (accessible PDF, the palm […]

Practice & Reflections Reflection If you live in a language besides English, and there are similar or different ways people use “listen” that you’ve had a personal encounter with, we’d love to hear your story if you’d like to share. Please use the Slack channel #chats-language-culture-differences. Reflection Take a peek at resources within your country […]

Practice & Reflections Reflection What is your emotional reaction to skipping a list of questions for a listening session? Reflection What is your emotional reaction to not taking notes during a listening session? Reflection What is your emotional reaction to scheduling one listening session a day?

Practice & Reflections Practice Notice when you are hiding that you don’t understand what someone communicated. It’s okay. Admitting it to yourself is the first step. Practice When you are more comfortable recognizing times when you don’t understand what someone is communicating, make yourself ask them what they meant. See what emotions come up for […]

Practice & Reflections Practice Begin to notice your own thinking and reactions as you listen in everyday life. Reflection Check out some professional listeners like podcast and radio show hosts and notice more closely what they are doing. If you don’t normally experience these kinds of professional listeners, try finding some other ways you come […]

Practice & Reflections Reflection In your own encounters with personas or archetypes, were they written in relationship to a solution? Have you encountered sets of personas or mindsets that represented only demographic differences, not differences in approach? How many sets have been defined by role? In what ways do these embed assumptions about the person’s […]

Practice & Reflections Reflection List a few solutions you have worked on. Write as many people’s purposes they serve. Look at each purpose and list at least one way to expand it in a different direction. (e.g. laundry to stains to stains in other things you can’t throw in the washer) Hand Outs Definition: Purpose […]

Practice & Reflections Practice Begin noticing when “user” (or one of the nouns) is used, and who it indicates; is it a substitute for “person” in a specific scenario, or a persona, or is it a mono-culture reference? Just notice how people are using it, or ask people if it’s not obvious. Reflection If you […]