A Tale of Two Energies
How to keep listening, when you don’t understand the other person and that’s getting in the way of the work.
The Prologue
The small team of individual experts, led by Jay, were delivering on a series of cutting-edge projects with big budgets, high expectations, and industry wide reputations. But things were very precarious. One talented team member, Rikki, just wasn’t delivering, attempts to bring him on board had faulted, an appraisal contested, and the exit arrow was beginning to flash.
The Journey
Act One
When a situation has got this bad, and it’s very easy for this to happen, the need is to establish a listening space, informal, low key and entirely confidential. Slowing down energies at this point, pays dividends for the individuals directly involved and for the wider community, in the future.
In listening to two very different narratives, it became clear that Rikki lacked emotional engagement. While he was focused and eager to communicate his take on the situation, he appeared detached and seemed to have little or no awareness of his effect on others.
Jay on the other hand, was emotionally fully engaged, with his frustration over Rikki’s seeming inability to understand what wasn’t working, why it wasn’t working and how he could put it right.
If the exit arrow was to stop flashing for Rikki, he and Jay needed to develop tools and a new way of communicating, one that worked for them both and allowed their collaboration and the work to flourish.
Act Two
These interventions are often time sensitive. However, in rushing to some pre-charted outcome you risk short term disengagement and long-term failure. Therefore, this process took four months with roughly a session each month. The work and practice that happened between each of these sessions lay individually and collectively with Jay and Rikki.
A simple structure was introduced from the outset of the project and followed within each session establishing both clear boundaries and a sense of security. As both men were unused to examining how they communicated, creating space for them to talk about their individual experience of the same interaction, unjudged and uninterrupted was key. This skill of listening to the end of someone’s narrative was vital if Jay and Rikki were to develop a ‘listening’ relationship going forward. From this point on and with careful and probing questions, each of the men began to appreciate the other’s very different, but equally legitimate way of approaching a situation.
From that appreciation Rikki and Jay were able to start building a mutually supportive framework. This entailed adopting tools and creating strategies to create a communication style that met both their needs. It also equipped them to spot ‘communication potholes’ and navigate around them.
The Epilogue
What of Rikki and Jay? While there is no filmic ending of Rikki and Jay walking into the sunset an arm slung casually across each other’s shoulder, the exit arrow did stop flashing for Rikki. He now understands more about his actions, their effect on others, and what he can do about it. For Jay, in being able to speak openly about his responsibilities and the various challenges of delivering on multiple projects, he was able to recognise and handle his frustration with Jay. He also became more aware of how he fed his own stress to the point at which he couldn’t hear let alone handle difficult encounters.
These sessions had one final thing to offer that in finding a way to communicate Rikki and Jay were again able to fully appreciate the other’s expertise and professional standing.
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