The Power of Questions

Success or failure hangs on the questions managers and technical people ask when planning releases, making decisions, considering strategy alternatives or looking for improvements.

Yet we don't often stop to consider the questions we ask. Every question contains assumptions and while the question opens one avenue of inquiry, it closes others.

The question you ask determines the answers you will receive. The assumptions that are implicit in the question constrain the inquiry. So let's look at some of the questions I've heard managers ask when things aren't going as they'd like and make the assumptions explicit.

In one large corporation, the executives weren't satisfied with the service or speed with which the IT department delivered projects. The sacked the VP of the IT department and brought in a new one with a reputation for a no-nonsense approach to management.

Here are some of the questions she asked:

Where is the dead wood?

How can we get them to work harder?

Who are A/B/C players?

How can we trim the fat?

How can we make them (the developers and testers) go faster?

How can we cut costs?

I suspect this is a fairly typical set of questions for someone brought into turn around a struggling organization.

And there's an interesting set of assumptions.

Where is the dead wood?

Presumably, all the employees in this department are still alive, and had been live wood when they were hired. The assumption is that there are people in the organization who are not doing anything the contributes to the vitality and productivity of the department.

The unspoken part of the sentence relates to what gardeners do with dead wood--they don't revive it but coaxing in nutrients and restoring productivity, they cut it out. The implication is that, once the deadwood people were found, they'd be fired. Because obviously, becoming deadwood is the fault of the individual. The question doesn't allow for the fact that sometimes--perhaps most of the time--when employees disengage from the work it's a result of the nature of the work and their attachment to the company, which is nurtured through relationships with managers.


How can we get them (developers and testers) to work harder?

The obvious assumption here is that people are not working hard now. The secondary assumption is that inducing other people to work harder is the way to improve results.

Who are our A/B/C players?

This is a ranking question, and assumes that people can be sorted into buckets based on some criteria. The next step of this question is the assumption that eliminating C players will improve results. The meta assumption is that individual effort is the main source of department results and that work isn't interdependent or accomplished through social networks.

How can we make them (developers and testers) go faster?

Like the question about working harder, this assume that developers and testers are not going as fast as they can now. It assumes that speed is a matter of will, and the terrain has no impact on speed. It also assumes that the role of management is to whip other people to go faster.

How can we cut costs?

The assumption is that spending less will improve the economic equation.

The VPs questions led to predictable actions.

Managers applied more pressure to the technical staff. People cut corners to go faster (now, and slower later).

People who were confident in finding new jobs left. The people who were afraid they didn't have the skills to face the job market hung tight. There were rumors of layoffs. Fear lead to people to choose CYA over do the right work the right way. Competition undercut cooperation and collaboration.

The VP to an ax to department budgets. The balance sheet looked better (in the short term), but costs went up.

If the VP had questioned her assumptions, she might have asked different questions. And with different questions, she would have seen different possibilities for action.

Why Group Dynamics and Interpersonal Skills Matter

You think group dynamics and interpersonal skills are just fluffy stuff?

Wrong-o. They are an essential element of competitive advantage.

High-tech companies succeed by out learning and out innovating the competition. Group dynamics directly the affect the ability of a team to think, learn, and innovate together.

Groups that avoid conflict won't be able to face tough issues or handle the creative conflict that generates new ideas.

Groups that are highly competitive won't share ideas and build on other's ideas. People won't share the credit for success, further decreasing the chance for creative collaboration.

Groups that defer to a person of higher status will miss many good ideas, and fail to tap and develop the talents of the entire group.

Groups that haven't learned to work well together will take the first workable solution to avoid unsatisfying and uncomfortable interactions.

It takes more than smart people to succeed. It takes smart people who have the interpersonal skills for creative collaboration.

(If you want to learn and practice collaboration skills, come to Secrets of Agile Teamwork July 21-23, 2009 in Redmond, WA.)

Praise Sandwich Tastes Icky, II

Art Petty posted Why I Hate the Praise Sandwich.

Praise sandwich, as you recall, involves buttering someone up with a compliment or praise, stating a criticism, and then fluffing them back up with another bit of praise.

Sounds icky, too, doesn't it?

Art offers:

5 Reasons Why the Sandwich Technique is a Truly Bad Practice:

It is a crutch that is solely for the benefit of the giver, not the receiver.

It obfuscates the real message.

It confuses the receiver by watering down the key message.

It destroys the value of positive feedback by linking it with the negative. Don't forget that positive feedback is a powerful tool for reinforcing the right behaviors and the sandwich technique devalues this tool.

It is insulting to the receiver and borderline deceitful. "Bob, you did a great job on XYZ, but… ." It's like a pat on the back followed by a sucker punch followed by another pat on the back.

I agree. Been sayin' so for years.

I commented on Art's post:

I find that many people (including managers) don't know how to offer feedback in a direct and respectful way. I teach people to use this framework:

Create an opening so you are sure it's a good time for the person to hear you… not when he's getting ready for a big meeting or rushing to pick up his kid.

Describe behavior or results. Use neutral language and examples. If the person doesn't recognize himself in the description or agree with the data, the conversation is over. Labels, comparatives, and absolutes raise defenses.

Describe the impact. If there's no impact, why are you having the conversation?

Make a request. You may have a specific behavior in mind, or you may want to engage in problem solving. It depends on the situation.

Finally, don't sell past the close. If the person gets the point after you describe the behavior, zip it. Otherwise, it feels like you are beating a dead horse.

My experience is that people are likely to accept critical feedback when:

1) the giver or source is believed to be reliable

2) the receiver trusts the intentions of the giver

3) the receiver has a chance provide clarifications

4) the process is fair--both the way the feedback was developed and the way the feedback was communicated

Praise sandwich tends to erode trust in the feedback givers intentions, and once that's gone, there's not much chance any useful information will get through.

The Benefits of Peer Feedback

Peer feedback is a core skill for collaboration. It's impossible to work closely with out running into some bumps: differences, disappointments, and disagreements. Peer to peer feedback can help keep working relationships on track and improve results (and it keeps the manager out of the transaction so it doesn't be come a *big deal*).

I teach about feedback in both my team collaboration workshop and management workshops. "But does it work in the real world?" some ask. Ola Ellnestam blogs How I Learned about Feedback.

Five Ways that Team Members Build Trust with Each Other

Building trust may seem mysterious... something that just happens, or grows through some unknowable process. Like many things, there are concrete actions that tend to build trust (and concrete actions that are almost guaranteed to break trust down).

First, a definition of trust in the workplace. We all know that trust is the foundation for teamwork. But to hear some people talk about it, you'd think team members were getting married, not creating software together. What we need in the workplace is professional trust. Professional trust says, I trust that you are competent to do the work, that you'll share relevant information, and that you have good intentions towards the team. Taken broadly, that's trust about communication, commitment, and competence.

1. Address issues directly

It's inevitable that some person on the team will rub another person on the team the wrong way. Maybe it's they way he cracks his gum, or listens to voice mail on speaker phone. Maybe it's using your laptop and changing all the preferences. Maybe it's breaking the build and then leaving for lunch.

These frictions are inevitable. When a team member speaks directly to the person who is bugging him, he builds trust. Raising an issue says, "I value our working relationship, and I'm willing to have an uncomfortable conversation to make it better." It says, "You'll know where you stand with me; I won't be talking behind your back."

These conversations aren't always easy. Sometimes people delay the uncomfortable discussion until the situation becomes intolerable, letting anger and resentment build.

Sometimes people try to avoid the difficult conversation by telling their manger about the problem. And sometimes the manager falls into the trap of carrying the message. Seth had just started a new job and hadn't really made friends with anyone on the team yet, so he spent is lunch hour alone. On his second week on the job, his new manager called him in to inform him that another team member resented the amount of time he was taking for lunch, since 45 minutes was the unspoken rule.

(I do wonder why no one bothered to tell Seth this, and why no one invited him for lunch in his first week on the job, but that's another issue.)

When his coworker talked to the manager instead of talking directly to Seth, he broke
trust. When I talked to Seth, he'd been at that job for over a year, and still didn't fully trust his coworker. No one likes a tattle tale.

When people don't know how to have difficult conversations...or think it's not their job to navigate working relationship, trust erodes. And that's why people need a framework to talk about interpersonal feedback.

2. Share Relevant Information

If you don't support an idea or approach, say so. (Of course, there are more effective and less effective ways to do this.)

When someone on the team withholds and opinion or concern when a topic is under discussion and then comes back later to say "I thought it was a bad idea from the start," other team members feel blindsided. That breaks trust.

Relevant information is about the task, but it's also about you. People tend to trust people they know as individuals and can identify with. Shared experience, shared interests and identification form solid ground that people can land on when there is friction and conflict. You don't have to share your deepest secrets, but letting other people on the team know something about life outside work makes people "real." It's hard to trust a cipher; much easier to trust and be generous with someone who shares some of the same challenges and interests that you do.

In order for teams to function, team members need to believe that their co-workers are reliable. Without the confidence that others are reliable and will carry their share of the load, few will commit to a shared goal.

3. Follow Through on Commitments or Give Early Notice When You Can't

No reasonable person expects that every person can meet every commitment all the time. We know that sometimes a piece of code turns out to be more complex than anticipated or we discover we didn't fully understand the task when we made our estimate. But when you wait until the moment the task was due to let people know it's going to be late, it breaks trust. So let people know as soon as you know, and renegotiate.

4. Say No When You Mean No

Sometimes you just can't take on another task, or do a favor that someone asks for.
But most of us are programmed from an early age to please other people. If we say no, we're called selfish or "not a team player." But if you really can't do what's asked, it's more respectful to say No and let the other person get on with getting his need met elsewhere.

Saying Yes without follow-through leads others to doubt your word. If you can't say No, your Yes won't mean anything.

It may seem paradoxical, but building competence trust sometimes means admitting that you don't have all the answers.

5. Show What You Know and What You Don't Know.

Be generous in sharing your knowledge (without inflicting help). But also be willing to hear other peoples ideas, build on them, and help others shine. Admit when you don't know the answers; there's nothing worse than a know-it-all who is wrong. Ask for help. That helps other see you as a real person, and people generally like to be helpful.

Visibly Valuable

In these unsettled times, you can spend time worrying about things you can't control, or you can take action on things that are within your control.

Here are 10 things you can do as a developer to make yourself more visibly valuable, which may keep you off the RIF list.

1. Understand what is most important to work on. List those items in rank order. Work on the most important thing until it is done, or until you are stuck. Move to item two. Repeat.

How will you know what is most important? Ask your manager. Do not accept “everything is important” or “they are all number one priorities” as an answer. Those are not answers, they are signs that your manager is pressured, stressed, and isn’t taking time to think clearly.

Ask your boss some questions that will help him think.

• If you were doing this work, which would you work on first?

• Which has to be done soonest?

• Which one will bring in/save the most money?

• Which one will help you most?

2. Get more done by doing fewer things at once. Finish one task or project before you start the next (in priority order, of course). I currently have 4 handcraft projects in progress. I work on the green sweater for awhile, then I switch to the gold quilt, until I want to work on the blue hat, and then I skitter off to the purple quilt. I’m having a great time, I’m busy, and ain’t none of my projects getting done.

It’s quite clear to most people (including me) that I could get one of these project finished faster if I concentrated my effort on that project rather than switching back and forth. Some how, many managers forget this when they go to work and hope that multitasking will actually work. But it doesn't, so don’t even try to do everything at once. It doesn’t work, and actually slows down progress.

3. Understand your own capacity before you commit. Track where your time goes for a couple of weeks. How much time do you spend checking email, answering questions, going to meetings? Look for ways to reduce interruptions and reduce the biggest unproductive use of your time. (Taking breaks is not an unnecessary use of your time. We all know that we do better if we take a little breather from time to time.)

4. Review all the meeting you attend on a regular basis. Notice which meetings have stated goals (that match what actually happens) and which have a published agenda (that’s actually followed). Decline to attend meetings that don’t have a real purpose and a plausible agenda. They will waste your time.

5. Make commitments based on your known capacity, rather than on an ideal 40 hour week. You will become known as some one who meets her commitments, rather than some one who is always late or overly optimistic in her estimates.

6. Work in inch pebbles. Break down projects into tasks that you can complete in a day or two. When you do this, you can report tangible progress at least twice every week. You will become known as someone who gets work done.

7. Test as you go. Check in code at the very least once a day, and run all your tests for that piece of code each time you check in. That way, you will avoid having a false assessment of progress by deferring knowledge of problems until the (false) end of the task.

8. Peer review all fixes. A defect is a clue that the code is difficult to understand or poorly written. So you will avoid breaking something else by having another set of eyes look at the fix.

9. Write tests for the defect fix, and then write a half-dozen tests (at least) in the code around the defect. Defects tend to cluster, so you will be strengthening your code and your feedback system by writing additional tests.

10. Work at a sustainable pace. Tired people make mistakes and write or miss defects. You don’t want to be known as someone who makes mistakes. For most people, a sustainable pace is somewhere between 40-50 hours a week.

I'll write a list for managers, perhaps next week.

Meeting Madness

Seth Godin blogs about Three Kinds of Meetings:

There are only three kinds of classic meetings:

Information. This is a meeting where attendees are informed about what is happening (with or without their blessing). While there may be a facade of conversation, it's primarily designed to inform.

Discussion. This is a meeting where the leader actually wants feedback or direction or connections. You can use this meeting to come up with an action plan, or develop a new idea, for example.

Permission. This is a meeting where the other side is supposed to say yes but has the power to say no.

PLEASE don't confuse them. Confused meeting types are the number one source of meeting ennui. One source of confusion is that a meeting starts as one sort of meeting and then magically morphs into another kind. The reason this is frightening is that one side or the other might not realize that's actually occurring.

Indeed.

People waste countless hours in meetings with murky goals. Worse, each person may come out of such a meeting with different conclusions, spreading the confusion further in the organization.

Even when a meeting has a clear purpose, if there's no clear way to achieve that purpose, the meeting will not be as effective (or short) as it could be. Another waste of time.

People, people, people.

Improving the quality of meetings is a small intervention that can bring significant improvements to an organization. So don't overlook it even if improving meetings isn't shiny or sexy. Be a master of the obvious. Get the basics right, and you'll have a stronger foundation for the fancy stuff.

More ideas on how to improve meetings:

How to Improve Meetings When You are Not in Charge

The ROTI Method of Gauging Meeting Effectiveness

15 Things Bob Sutton Believes

From Bob Sutton's Work Matters blog:

15 THINGS I (Bob Sutton) BELIEVE

1. Sometimes the best management is no management at all -- first do no harm!

2. Indifference is as important as passion.

3. In organizational life, you can have influence over others or you can have freedom from others, but you can't have both at the same time.

4. Saying smart things and giving smart answers are important. Learning to listen to others and to ask smart questions is more important.

5. Learn how to fight as if you are right and listen as if you are wrong: It helps you develop strong opinions that are weakly held.

6. You get what you expect from people. This is especially true when it comes to selfish behavior; unvarnished self-interest is a learned social norm, not an unwavering feature of human behavior.

7. Getting a little power can turn you into an insensitive self-centered jerk.

8. Avoid pompous jerks whenever possible. They not only can make you feel bad about yourself, chances are that you will eventually start acting like them.

9. The best test of a person's character is how he or she treats those with less power.

10. The best single question for testing an organization’s character is: What happens when people make mistakes?

11. The best people and organizations have the attitude of wisdom: The courage to act on what they know right now and the humility to change course when they find better evidence.

12. The quest for management magic and breakthrough ideas is overrated; being a master of the obvious is underrated.

13. Err on the side of optimism and positive energy in all things.

14. It is good to ask yourself, do I have enough? Do you really need more money, power, prestige, or stuff?

15. Jim Maloney is right: Work is an overrated activity

A fine list. What do you believe?

intake->meaning->feeling->response

Mike Cottmeyer writes about Feelings, Thoughts, and Actions.

When people have a strong response, Mike describes thoughts as the point of leverage to change behavior.

How we think can be influenced more directly... it is somehow less personal. We can learn about our environment and the people that are a part of our lives. We can gather more information about what motivates those around us and learn something about their intentions and circumstances. With new information, we can learn to think differently about what is happening to us.....By guiding thinking, we are able to broaden the perspective of our team and create the opportunity to coach behavior.

This lines up nicely with a model I use, Ingredients of an Interaction, from the work of Virginia Satir.

Intake: We take in data from the environment (filtered by our preferences, education, stress level...)

Meaning: We make an interpretation of the data (influenced by past experiences, education, stress level...)

Significance: We have a feeling, based not on the observed data, but on our interpretation of the data.

Response: We act out of our interpretation and feelings.

(Don Gray describes the Satir interaction model in more detail here.

When Mike coaches about thoughts, he's working on the level of Meaning, expanding the possible interpretations. When he talks about bringing in more information, he's working on the level of Intake.

I find this is a powerful model for untangling communication that's gone awry, and for understanding and shifting my own reactions.


***

On a related note, Mike talks about telling people their behavior is "unacceptable."

Rather than start out by telling some one his behavior is unacceptable, I find it usually works better to get agreement that the behavior happened. That usually requires neutral language...rather than "you were pounding the table in our meeting today" I might say "In our meeting, I saw you raise your fist and bring it down on the table." It's too easy for people to get into a Yes-you-did/No-I-didn't argument when there's any hint of judgment in the description. If people don't agree with the data, they aren't likely to listen to anything else you say.

Once I've got agreement on the data, I talk about the impact of the behavior. "I was startled. I noticed that Jen and Josh both pulled back from the table, and didn't say anything else for the rest of the meeting." Depending on how the other person response, I might go further. "When you hit the table, its hard for me to continue participating in the meeting. What I see is that when you bring your fist down on the table, it gets in the way of people listening to your ideas" (or something like that).

I'd rather let the person conclude that the behavior is ineffective and counter-productive and make a different choice. I find that works better with adults than having me say "That behavior is unacceptable"....especially since it may have been accepted in the person's family, or some previous context (where they learned it, and where it might have worked--on some level).

There are times when I do say "that behavior is unacceptable here," but I usually don't need to do that with reasonably well-adjusted adults.

Remember This for New Years Resolutions: Good Work Habits

From a CNN article:

We've all heard the conventional wisdom about good work habits. Many of us have attended time management classes, participated in workshops and have been advised to "work smarter, not harder."


Work habits that might seem less productive will make you more effective, say experts.

Some ideas, however, appear at first glance to be unusual or even counterintuitive.

Goof off at work, read a book, ignore e-mail. (Read the article.)

Feedback Doesn't Just Roll Down Hill

Many organizations have a model that feedback rolls down hill. The VPs give feedback to the Directors that report to them. Directors give feedback to the Managers. Managers give feedback to developers. It all cascades downward.

A manager's job is to create an environment where the people who report to him/her can succeed. While it's useful to hear how the people above you in the hierarchy view your work, it's not sufficient. It's also important for managers to understand how well they are doing in supporting others to do their work.

Unfortunately, it's not that easy for managers to obtain open feedback. People aren't accustomed to giving feedback. They may fear they'll be punished if they don't stroke the bosses ego.

360 Feedback Processes are an attempt to get feedback from different points of view. In my experience, these programs don't provide much actionable information. Its too easy to lob softballs or zingers, with no way for people to follow up.

I find that it's more useful to find out what's important to people and start a conversation. I've outlined a process to do that here.

What trust means for teams

It’s a truism that trust is the foundation of teamwork.

But trust is a big word. What do we really mean when we talk about trust?

First, trust exists within a context. The sort of trust that you need for a productive working relationship is different from the trust you need for a healthy marriage. And it’s certainly different from the trust you need on a ropes course (which is why that sort of team building activity seldom has much effect).

What you need for productive working relationships is trust that says:

I believe you are competent to do the work

I believe that if you have an issue with me, you’ll bring it up directly

with me, not talk behind my back.

I believe will follow through on commitments—or let me know when you need

to renegotiate.

I believe you have good intentions towards me and the team.

And there’s a prerequisite for trust: a person needs to have a capacity for trust.

Promises Involve Self, Other, and Context

I talked to an middle manager recently who promised his VP that his group would deliver a special project for the VP.

Unfortunately, he made a promise on the basis of incomplete information. Once he talked to his group and ran the numbers, it turned out the work he promised will have a negative return on investment. And it's a double whammy: doing the low value work will delay doing higher value work, and cause the group to miss other targets.

But the middle manager refuses to even consider going back to his boss to explain the situation and renegotiate. He gave his word, and he feels his integrity is at stake.

I think he's leaving something out. In standing on "integrity," he's considering self, but not the context or the other people involved. What about the financial integrity of the company? What about the people who have to do the work, and will work overtime to meet other commitments, or experience consequences when they miss other dates?

There's another part of integrity that involves cleaning up your own messes.

Pesky co-workers

I wrote a little article on dealing with co-workers who annoy you. (Not surprisingly, the solution starts not with the co-worker, but with you.)

Flow

Via Frank Patrick, Mihaly Csiksczentmihalyi on the componenets of enjoyment and flow:

Eight Components of Enjoyment

1. Confronting tasks that we have a chance of completing.

2. Concentration.

3. Concentration is possible because the task has clear goals.

4. Task provides immediate feedback.

5. A deep, effortless involvement removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life.

6. Enjoyable experiences allow one to exercise a sense of control over one’s actions.

7. Concern for self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over.

8. Sense of time is altered - hours pass by in minutes.

Office Romance

Via Johanna: The Rules of Office Romance, on Information Technology Dark Side.

Most advice regarding office romance will tell you to be discreet, steer clear of your managers and subordinates and review the HR policies. That advice assumes you are going to stay with a company and can successfully navigate the political hailstorm you will fall into. The better advice – advice that is both easy and foolproof – is just don’t do it.

And if you fail to follow this clear cut advice...

In the mean time, you will have to deal with increased HR scrutiny, jealous coworkers, office rumors, productivity losses, suspicion of favoritism, potential career damage, loss of power and the threat of sexual harassment lawsuits.

That's while you are dating. When you break up, it gets really ugly.

The original post also includes a handy chart to help you determine when to pursue an office romance.

Are you doing your best?

Every so often, the Prime Directive comes up on one of the lists I follow. And inevitably someone says something like "I don't believe everyone is doing the best s/he could. I know I don't always do the best job I could."

There are a couple of assumptions behind this statement.

1) I suspect that when people say this they expect that they can always perform at their peak level. And of course, they don't always perform up to their own (high) expectations. We aren't machines. Human performance is variable.

Here are some of the reasons a well-intentioned person may not reach their peak performance on any given day.

Physical state: a cold, headache, lack of sleep all affect performance.

Emotional state: when people are off even keel (high or low) it can affect performance.

Preoccupation: events outside the task can effect our work. It could be worry about a family illness, or excitement about an upcoming concert, or apprehension about a conversation with the boss schedule for later in the week.

Motivation: how motivated is the person to do the work

That's the stuff people bring with.

The task itself influences whether someone does "his best:"

Is the task interesting to the person doing the task?

Is it challenging?

Does the person believe it's achievable?

Does the person believe its the right thing to do?

Is the person performing the task in a way that makes sense to him or following another's process?

What is the perceived priority of the task?

What other tasks are on the list?

Physical surroundings affect our performance, too.

Is the workstation is ergonomically correct?

Is there sufficient light?

Is there natural light?

The noise level

Interior air quality

And there's stuff about the working environment and the organizational system:

Relationships with co-workers

Relationship with manager

Access to resources

Reward systems

Procedures and processes

Corporate culture

And skills:

Does the person have the skills and abilities necessary to do the task?

This is the soup we're all in every day, and it affects the way we perform. My best will look different on a day when I didn't get enough sleep, I'm coming down with a cold, I'm not that interested in the task or my office is a little chilly, than on a day when I feel great, I like what I'm doing and the thermostat is adjusted correctly.

2) I suspect that when some people balk at the Prime Directive, they have someone in mind who isn't doing a very good job.

What might cause a person to not do a very good job?

He may not have the skills.

He may not care about the job.

He may be burnt out.

He may be mentally ill.

He may be drunk.

He may be biding his time until he quits for a better job.

Lots of reasons. And he's still doing the best he could given those circumstances.

The Prime Directive doesn't mean that every person's best is good enough for the job at hand. It doesn't mean that people who aren't doing an adequate job should have a job for life. It doesn't mean that people don't need feedback, and they don't need to improve their performance if they want to remain employed.

The Prime Directive says make a generous interpretation. Recognize that people are fallible, and their performance is variable. Don't blame them. But don't placate them either. It's about treating people with respect.

BTW, if you're not familiar with it, here's the text for Norm Kerth's Prime Directive:

Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.

Barriers to hearing

Earlier this week, I posted a bit about barriers to effective listening.

Two days later (conincidentally) I received an email from my friend Janis Aaron Moore. Janis was a programmer for years, and has recently gone back to college, where she's doing the college thing and writing essays. The one she sent me was about her experiences as a student with hearing loss. In spite of her intention and effort to listen and understand, some times she can't.

Here are some excerpts from her essay:

Those of us with hearing loss lose many nuances and subtlety of human communication. We miss visual nuances because we focus on a speakers lips, not their face. We miss audible nuances because a portion of the incoming sound is muted or distorted. For example, we frequently "dont get the joke". When telling a joke, people frequently lower their voice at the punchline, leaving people with hearing loss "in the dark".

...

Some vocalized subject material might have a lot of words which are familiar and easy to lip / speech read. Other material might have a lot of words which are not lip readable. In certain environments I can hear many sounds, but my brain is unable to process {the sounds} so I can understand human speech. "Sound" does not equate with human speech.

...

There is a variety of things a speaker can do to help ensure that hard-of-hearing people in the classroom or audience can both hear and understand. They range from selecting the hearing environment to controlling speech patterns and personal actions. For example, select rooms with good acoustics. Cement or plaster walls, high ceilings, and wooden or tiled floors make sounds reverberate, creating excessive ambient noise. Close windows and doors if theres a lot of noise outside the room. Make sure theres adequate lighting on your face for people to read your lips.

Make sure you have everyones attention before you begin speaking. Face the audience when you speak. Dont hide your mouth, chew food, gum or smoke while talking. Speak for a few moments, and ask the audience if they can hear you. If someone cant hear you, ask how you can accommodate them. Do they need to move closer to the podium? Can some of the other things, like lighting, ambient noise, be adjusted to facilitate hearing?

Speak clearly, at a moderate pace. Use facial expressions, gestures. Give clues when changing the subject. Repeat or paraphrase comments from participants who might not be able to hear. Encourage others to be sure their comments are spoken clearly and with volume.

None of these things requires expensive technology or extraordinary effort.

Good advice. You can read some of Janis' writings at her website. Perhaps she'll post the final version of her essay, Understanding / Hearing.

Barriers to effective listening

My teachers in school and at university spent lots of time and effort teaching me how to speak and write effectively. I didn't get much instruction during my school years on how to listen effectively--mostly my teachers told me to "sit still and listen." Yep, if I just sat still, I'd be a better listener. That might work, except for people who can hear better when they are moving.

At any rate, I came across this fine article by Michael Webb, Eight Barriers to Effective Listening again this morning.

Most attention is paid to making people better speakers or writers (the "supply side" of the communication chain) rather than on making them better listeners or readers (the "demand side").

Diana and I sometimes run an activity in workshops that asks people to identify their barriers to effective listening. Some of the barriers that come up over and over are (and aren't on Michael's list):

Distractions, whether external like noise and activity or internal, such as preoccupation with other matters.

Physical discomforts such as being tired, hungry, ill, or other wise uncomfortable

Judgements about the person speaking.