3 top tips to develop a better listening culture within your team

Bogdan Doroslovac and Eric Fehse help our teams develop and maintain the kind of listening culture.

In this edition of The Right to be Wrong series, we’re offering you insights into their experience so you can put their tips into action. 

Read on to hear their thoughts on: 

• How listening can help your teams co-create better outcomes
• How to empower internal stakeholders to voice their wildest ideas 
• What to prioritise over every project’s outcomes

Learning #1: Listen like it’s the first time

When you work with technical or innovation projects day in and day out, you get good at seeing patterns and similarities between the challenges you’re solving. 

This ‘insider knowledge’ is crucial for efficient problem solving… but it’s a fine balance. Because the specificity and nuance of each problem should dictate the approach to the solution. Assumptions will stop you from developing that nuanced view.

So how can you strike the balance? Our advice: Don’t start with your expertise. Ask well-considered, open-ended questions. Pause. Then listen intently. 

“To know you’re answering the right question, you have to avoid assumptions. Bracket everything you know. Be curious, interested, and willing to ask the questions that might seem stupid. This will lead you forward in the right direction,” Bogdan says. 

Eric agrees. “The goal has to be to create the best possible solution for the real problem they have. Finding that real problem requires great listening.”

Before our teams think about the disciplines, methods, technologies, and offerings they can target at clients’ problems, we spend time understanding (and sometimes obsessing over) the very core of their problems. 

Only then can our teams solve the problem in the most effective and efficient way. “Listening is an art,” Eric adds.

Learning #2: Vary your input methods

It’s not enough to say “we need to listen”. To have a fruitful discussion, technical teams need to create environments where people feel empowered to share their ideas.

This needs to cover the ways you allow team members to contribute their ideas. 

“Some people don’t like to speak up in a group to share an idea so you need to vary your input methods. Using a digital workspace where they can write down their ideas, for example, is a simple fix. Or having sessions in which everyone writes rather than speaks. It’s about listening differently to different people,” says Eric. 

Far from being a purely practical consideration, varying the input methods also helps create a sense of psychological safety. This is vitally important if you want people to feel  empowered to share their most novel ideas without fear of judgement or embarrassment.

Learning #3: Dial into the human-centric side

When the deadline is approaching fast, tensions can run high and cause friction amongst the team. 

At this point it’s vital that you don’t rush to the finish line. That will nearly always lead to worse outcomes. But what can you do to get your teams realigned in the face of this challenge? 

“Stop, listen, realign, move forward. Put the most basic human needs first. Listening, especially here, is about empathy.” Bogdan advises. 

By making space to hear why people feel the project is falling short or performance is slipping, you have the best chance of bringing the project back from the brink. 

This involves more than just identifying technical errors or logistical issues. It's about recognizing the emotional and mental states of team members, acknowledging their frustrations and feedback. 

This human-centric approach helps teams to regroup, but crucially can also lead to unexpected discoveries that actually strengthen the outcomes of the project. It’s vital that you don’t shut yourself off from these learnings, even as the deadline approaches. 

“As you can probably tell, listening is an ongoing process. We have to fight to get it right every day,” Eric says.