Bring Back Good Training

I was recently at a dinner with several colleagues and former colleagues, and I was grousing about the state of training today.  One of them asked, “What are you going to do about it?”  That was the best question I’d been asked in weeks, and I didn’t have a good answer.  So, this is my opening salvo in the quest to bring back good training.

Does the following describe a situation familiar to you?

• You arrive at a training session, and the trainer starts off with some inane, generic icebreaker, even if everyone already knows each other. 
• The trainer then introduces a topic and shows/describes a series of PowerPoint slides, occasionally posing a question to the audience or showing an online video from an acknowledged “expert” in the field. 
• Every so often, the participants are put through some exercise that may be fun and rarely takes them out of their comfort zones.  In most cases, those exercises were first used by someone in another session that had little to do with the topic at hand, but because the trainer had fun doing them, they appear in this training, and the debrief somehow makes them fit.
• The trainer repeats this process, introducing new topics and presenting information, showing slides, asking questions, playing videos, and conducting non-threatening exercises until the training concludes.
• Just before the end, the participants are asked to fill out an “evaluation” that is essentially a smile test, to which they generally record a 4 or 5 on a 5-point scale, seemingly validating how effective the training was.

If you’ve been through training like this, mazel tov…I’m sure you had a good time.  If you’ve purchased this training, to what extent has your company benefitted from your investment?  Depending on the type of training, here are a few questions you might ask:

• If it was sales training, have sales improved significantly?  Are salespeople more effective at developing and describing solutions and/or handling objections?
• If it was leadership training, are your leaders accomplishing more?  Are they helping your organization to improve?  Are they collaborating more effectively with others in the organization?
• If it was management training, are your work groups more readily achieving their goals?  Do people know how to perform their roles, and are they being assigned to tasks that best draw upon their skills and knowledge?
• If it was technical training, are employees more willing and able to perform the specific job functions addressed in the training?

These are all great questions, but you may not have asked them yet, or you may not have put measurements in place that enable you to answer them.  If the answer to any of them is “no,” you’re not getting enough bang for your bucks.  Keep in mind that none of this is intended as a criticism of the trainees or the trainers who lead this type of training.  It’s likely all they’ve seen and all they know how to do, but it is not good training.

The fact is that we can do better.  In fact, we routinely used to do better.  It’s just that as each, new generation moves into the workforce, they are told things like, “people can’t read anymore,” “attention spans are shorter,” “YouTube videos are fine,” and “role-plays make people too uncomfortable.”  So, we keep diminishing our expectations and dummying down our delivery until we’re left with the entertainment equivalent of a cat playing the piano.

All of this flies in the face of several concepts I’ve learned during the last 30 years:

• People rise to the level of expectations.  If we expect people to be incompetent participants, they will be.  But if we build training that challenges them, they will meet the challenge.
• People learn better when they are uncomfortable.  This relates to the first bullet.  If training doesn’t challenge the participants, they will emerge thinking it has validated what they are already doing, rather than forcing them to improve.  Many trainers have trouble with this, for fear of being unpopular or getting low scores on their “evaluations,” so the training occurs and nothing changes.
• There has to be an overarching story and an expressed need for change.  Simply introducing one topic after another does not provide participants with a reason to be there.  That reason needs to be “sold” up front and then reinforced throughout the training by an overarching story describing what they have learned and will learn.
• Training ≠ learning.  Just because the trainer says it does not mean the trainees learn it.  That’s why I prefer the terms “facilitator” and “participant,” because during effective training, the goal is to facilitate the participant’s learning process.  The facilitator should talk for less than 25% of the training, and what he or she says needs to be directly related to what the participants can do to achieve the desired performance. 
• One size does not fit all.  Presentations, slides, videos, exercises, and debriefs need to be focused on the topics at hand and specific to each topic, rather than generic activities that can be force-fit to the topic.  This doesn’t mean that off-the-shelf content can’t work; you just need to be sure it is intended for the purpose for which you are using it, rather than making it fit because you want to use it.
• Learners have different profiles.  Most training tends to focus on the participants hearing a presentation and reading a slide.  But that ignores the notion of learning profiles, in which each person learns through a specific combination of hearing (aural), seeing (visual), reading (literary), and doing (kinesthetic).  This concept is still being validated, but one thing is known for sure…training is most effective when the activities are varied, thus reaching the entire audience and keeping them interested and involved.
• Pay attention to bio-rhythms.  Learners are not robots; they can’t learn the same way at different times of the day.  If you have a long lecture after lunch, they may doze off, and if you introduce a complex topic at 4:00, they will not likely retain it.  You need to build a session that considers these factors and others, rather than merely introducing topics with little regard to the time of day or the level of brain fatigue.
• Design for the actual participants.  I was once in a design meeting in which the client representative kept saying, “If I was in the course, I’d want ________.”  I eventually pointed out, to this person’s displeasure, that he was not a participant and, in fact, he had a completely different view of the world from the actual participants.  Contrary to this person’s belief, the most effective training pays attention to the experiences, demographics, and job descriptions of the people who will go through the training.  The best way to accomplish this is by constantly asking yourself, “If we do _________, what will people from the actual audience say or do?  How will they react?”
• Effective training is a complete, rewarding experience.  The difference between what I described earlier and a well-designed training experience is like the difference between a Broadway revue and a Pulitzer- or Tony-winning play or musical.  The revue is a series of unrelated performances that may or may not be entertaining, but the award-winning play is developed as a complete entity that pulls you in, carries you through, and leaves you with something you never had before.  Good training does that.
• You get what you measure.  Every training effort should begin by determining what the participants need to be able to do afterward.  These are often referred to as “objectives,” but even that word has been twisted and misused.  All the training content should be geared toward meeting those objectives, and at some point after the training (six months or so), the organization needs to measure the extent to which the participants are meeting those objectives.

So, let me get off my soap box for a minute and point out that these concepts can indeed be effectively applied, despite the changes in the modern workforce.  They also don’t have to occur in an extended classroom setting, but can be used virtually or in short bursts as needed.  The process is simple:

1. Determine the performance change.  This used to be referred to as “needs analysis, but that term has been coopted.  What it means is that you should interview the top of the house to find out what they want people to do better or differently.  Then, you should interview people performing the job to find out what they are currently doing and how they learned to do it.  The difference between what people are currently doing and what they should be doing is the performance change, and you will likely find that some employees are already achieving the desired results; you can use their experiences to help develop your activities.
2. Establish training content.  Simply put, you need to develop a series of statements (also known as objectives), based on what you learned in Step 1 (above), that read like this, “By the end of this training effort, participants will be able to _____________.”  These statements are then expanded into the training content, and anything that does not directly relate to them should not be included in the training.
3. Develop the story.  As I wrote earlier, there needs to be an overarching story, and that story should begin by answering the participants’ question, “Why do I need to be here?”  After that, the design should support the story, which can be used to occasionally point out where you are in the training.
4. Build a design to fit the content.  It’s easy to string together a series of online videos and exercises from other programs, but they are unlikely to affect real performance change.  Rather you need to build a design that is specific to the content and the story.  I’m often surprised at how many people in the training field have never actually seen a course design.  Without one, it’s like building a house without a blueprint.  Of course, the design also needs to pay attention to the aforementioned learning profiles, bio-rhythms, and audience experiences.
5. Make the materials real.  Generic exercises can be fun to introduce a topic, but at some point, the participants need a professional connection to the examples and exercises in order to drive home how the content relates to their jobs.  Role-plays (you can call them simulations if you want) and other activities, in which the participants try on the learning as it relates to their jobs, should be written or tailored to feel like what the participants actually experience on a daily basis.
6. Measure long-term performance.  Throughout this article, you’ve seen me put quotation marks around the end-of-training “evaluations” that people often use to assess the effectiveness of the training.  These are nice, but they relate as much to the participants’ beliefs as they do to actual performance change.  The only way to really determine if training works is to develop some way to assess, long-term, the extent to which the participants are using the content and achieving the desired performance change.

So, now we come to the call for action.  If you think your training is ineffective, or you just don’t know, we (Connective Strategies, Inc.) can help by reviewing that training and reporting back to you about what can be done to improve it.  We can also develop training for you, from scratch and completely custom.  Then we can either deliver it or train your people to deliver it.  We draw upon some of the top resources in their fields, and we only use senior resources who know how to assess, design, develop, and deliver good training.

If you’re interested in pursuing this further, please contact me (Reid Fishman) at Connective@aol.com or by phoning 508-877-9987.

Effective Onboarding

Onboarding is the term used in business for bringing on new employees and getting them up-to-speed.  Throughout my career, I've developed a variety of onboarding activities--everything from 1- to 2-week immersion workshops to simple, pre-employment checklists.

However, over the last few years, these activities have become more formal, depending on the specific needs of my clients, most of whom are no longer satisfied hiring people and letting them learn on-the-job without any structure.  Some of my experiences were:

• Archstone-Smith, where I worked with Joe Durzo and his staff at to establish and formalize "Training Communities" where new employees hired to work in apartment communities would first be sent to learn the key aspects of their jobs through supervised activities and videos.
• CertainTeed, where I implemented a process described by Steve Rosenbaum and Jim Williams in their book, Learning Paths.  Steve and I later led a seminar about that process at the ISPI Annual Conference.
• Monster, where, working with Linda Duchaine, we developed several activities related to onboarding an entire sales staff that was added with the acquisition of HotJobs.
• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, where I worked again with Linda Duchaine, as well as Nicole Fromm and Susan Ryan, to develop some self-paced activities and immersion training for new account executives.

In each of these cases, the goals were simple:

• Reduce the time it takes new employees to achieve the desired level of performance.
• Quickly weed out those new employees who, for whatever reason, are not bound to be effective at their jobs.

Of course, the resultant self-paced activities and formal training provide the added benefit of being used by managers as "prescriptive" remedies for those existing employees who may be falling behind in a specific skill or knowledge area.  I should also note that how a company approaches onboarding has a direct impact on the long-term success of that company.

Which leads me to the lessons I've learned with regard to onboarding processes.  Overall they are too numerous to describe here, but below are five, key points that should be considered when developing any onboarding process:

1. The process needs to work for the organization.  I believe that the formal, Learning Paths process outlined in Rosenbaum and Williams's book is probably the most effective, but it also involves a greater commitment of time, energy, and involvement than most organizations want to provide.  In many cases, my clients have asked me to simply interview key people and develop an approach and materials based on those interviews.
2. Management involvement, at all levels, is key to success.  For any onboarding process to work, there need to be activities completed by each employee, as well as corresponding activities performed by a manager or mentor.  In addition, the approach must be actively endorsed and supported by the top of the house, or it is doomed to failure.
3. Identify and utilize best practices.  With regard to any activity a company wants its employees to perform, there are usually several ways it is already being performed in the field.  The key is to work with the company to determine which are the "best practices," and implement them on a company-wide basis.
4. The logical learning order is not always chronological.  Even though an activity is something an employee needs to know as soon as possible, learning it may rely on his or her knowing other things first.  Therefore, the onboarding process should first focus on the skills, knowledge, and attitude an employee needs in order to perform the higher-level skill or behavioral sets they are being asked to demonstrate.
5. Listen, test, and modify.  An effective onboarding process is never finalized; it is constantly in flux based on changing needs, conditions, and personnel.  If you want to be effective at onboarding, keep listening to what the organization is telling you, repeatedly test to ensure that the activities are right and relevant, and make modifications as needed.

The Consultant Rap

I first delivered the "Consultant Rap" in person at an NSPI conference in Toronto. Several people have requested it since, so here it is:

Well I think I'm gonna tell you what it’s like to be
a performance and management consultant like me.
Well you travel in airplanes all around.
Yeah, you’re flying so much you barely touch the ground.
Then you’re running for meetings and you get there late,
but the clients they just make you sit and wait, wait, wait.
Then you finally go in so you can meet with them,
and by the time you’re done you’re running for a valium

Because they’re clients…they’re clients,
and if you don’t know what that means, I’ll be telling you now.

Because they come in and they tell you everything has changed
since you met with them the last time, and you wanna say, “That’s strange.
When we met the last time, you seemed so sure of it all.
You should have let me know. You should have given me a call.
So I wouldn’t have had to finish all this time-consuming work
and come into this meeting looking like a real jerk.”
But what you really say is, “Oh please, tell me more,”
While you’re feeling like a wimp, you’re feeling like a real whore.

And then they say…the clients say
that the new VP, he wants to change it all around.

So you go back to your Mac, but you’ve had enough, Jack.
You want to hang it up, you want to just lay back.
Then you remember that it’s time to meet with all your friends
and go out and party when the meeting ends.
Then suddenly the whole thing doesn’t seem so bad
when you think of all the rockin’ good times you’ve had
going here and there and stopping off for a beer
and having lots of people to exchange good cheer.

And then you say…you wanna say
that being a consultant isn’t such a bad way.

Training Via Video Conference

I remember years ago, meeting with my instructional design and development colleagues and discussing the future, in which our trainees could sit in their homes or offices and be full participants in face-to-face training experiences. We talked about how the trainer would be able to see all of the participants in small windows on their screen while they could see the trainer and the other participants. “Wouldn’t it be great,” we thought, “if we could do that while showing a PowerPoint or video in another window or an another screen?”

But that was years away. We could hardly get our conference calls to work correctly, even with those modern, Polycom “starfish” phones sitting in the middle of the tables.

Well folks, I’m here to report that the future is now, and it couldn’t come at a better time—with post-9/11 travel restrictions, an increased focus on “teleworkers,” and companies hungry to trim travel costs. The technology is here, and I’ve been using it to deliver training for the past six months.

No longer is it necessary to use clunky Webex or GoToMeeting presentations supported by conference calls. And I’m also not talking about Skype, with its grainy, pixilated picture (known as “packet loss” in the industry).

I’ve been working with Polycom to train its own employees, using a wide range of technological options from multi-flatscreen monitors to my laptop computer, delivering HD video and audio to participants around the world. I won’t bore you with the technical details (it’s not like I understand them), but through partnerships with Microsoft, HP, and many other companies, Polycom has been able to deliver high-quality audio and video that is ideally suited to training applications. They compete directly with Cisco/Tandberg, whose equipment, I am told, is also quite good, but does not use the open standards architecture that Polycom uses. There are other competitors on the market as well, and I’m not here to push Polycom (although I can vouch for their products), but one advantage they do have is called Lost Packet Recovery (LPR) which significantly reduces the packet loss problem I referenced earlier. LPR removes the final hurtle to using video conferencing for effective training delivery.

How it Works:

It works best if you are in a meeting room with two monitors and good speakers. You may have other participants (or trainers) in the room with you, or you could be standing in the room alone, talking to participants (and other trainers) in locations around the globe. They may be in meeting rooms together, or participating from their homes or offices. Most of the time, I set it up so that the person talking is in a larger window (yes, the technology will do that). If you have two screens, you see the participants in separate windows on one screen and yourself on the other. If you want, you can “push content,” showing your desktop or content from another source on the second screen.

In addition, the camera moves, so you can set “presets” in advance. I usually preset myself in a sitting position, myself standing from a slight distance (so I can move around and stay in the picture), myself standing with a close-up (for when I really want to make a point), and other presets (from up to 10 available) of the flipchart and/or whiteboard and of the other people in the room (if applicable). Once they are set, you just have to press the number on the remote control for the camera to go where you want it. Polycom even has a product called Eagle Eye Director that can track the camera instantly to whoever is speaking.

From there, you can conduct a training session just as though the people were in the room with you. If you want to do a breakout exercise, you can just send people to different rooms (known as bridges), have them perform the exercise, then come back to the main room. If you want to monitor their progress during these exercises, you can go to the different rooms, just as you would if they were in a breakout room down the hall.

In the past, when using Webex and audio, I always thought it was difficult to do interpersonal skills-based training (sales, management, etc.), but now, if you know what you are doing, it is as effective and seamless as having everyone in the room with you. I’m sure the technology will continue to improve, but I have used it quite a bit, and I will tell you that it is ready to use now.

The Benefits:

Where do I start when discussing the benefits of video conference training? Here are a few:

• There’s no longer a need to address the logistics (and costs) of getting everyone to the same location to conduct the training. They can meet in regional locations or even participate from their homes or remote offices.
• People get to go home every night—no more sleeping in hotels with the costs (and possibly bedbugs) associated with doing so.
• If you have disabled employees or trainers, they can participate equally, without facing the physical hurdles often associated with travel and training.
• With the touch of a button, you can record the entire training experience, so future new employees can review it.
• If executives want to welcome the participants or monitor the proceedings, they can do so with little disruption to their time and schedule.
• If there is an expert in one location, and you want everyone to learn from that expert, it is easily accomplished.

The Drawbacks:

As with every training methodology, there are a few drawbacks, including:

• There is a minor lag, so that once you’ve asked a question, you need to wait a few seconds for the participants to hear it, for them to unmute, and for everyone to hear the responses. It takes a little getting used to, but once you do, it is easy to address.
• You miss the camaraderie of talking to people off line or sharing lunch, dinner, or drinks together. However, you can easily build icebreakers or other activities into the course to compensate for the loss in actual face-to-face time.
• Exercises involving labs or hands-on experiences are hard to implement. You need contingency plans if such exercises are required.
• Time zones become an issue, especially if you are training people in diverse locations and you are trying to build in time for breaks or lunches. This can often be solved by including more frequent, shorter breaks, but you need to deal with each situation depending on where your participants and trainers are located.

Overall, training via video conference works best if you design it and plan it out in advance, and generally stick to the schedule. If you can do so, and you have access to (or the budget to purchase) high quality video conferencing technology, I highly recommended it as a medium for a wide range of training applications.

For more information, feel free to contact me at Connective@aol.com.

In Search of Mediocrity

It’s been 30 years since Tom Peters and Robert Waterman researched the corporate world, resulting in their groundbreaking book, In Search of Excellence. An awful lot has changed since then, as the worldwide economy suffered through two recessions with boom periods in between. Stocks and fortunes have risen due to growth in some industries, and fallen with the likes of Lehman Brothers and Bernie Madoff.

Throughout all of this, generations have grown up with mobile phones and MP3 players rather than landlines and stereo systems; with PDAs and the Internet rather than pens and letters; with email, Facebook, and YouTube rather than verbal communication and media acuity. Many among them don’t realize that generations past placed a premium on quality and excellence over speed and convenience and on long-term relationships rather than instant messaging.

Don’t get me wrong…I love technology, and I am often what the industry calls an “early adopter.” But as these changes have become more common in the business world and members of those generations have started to move into positions of power, are we beginning to lose what we used to pride most?

I think it’s humorous that in the last few years, the word “artisanal” has started to pop up in retail applications, such as bakeries, restaurants, cheese shops, and handmade soaps and candles. It has become almost quaint to think of yourself as an artisan, as though it hearkens back to an earlier age of horses and buggies.

I’m 57 now, and as I was growing up in the business world, it seemed like there were lots of artisans—people who took pride in working to develop high-quality products, videos, drawings, blueprints, support materials, manuals, and training materials—there was even an art to writing an effective memorandum. Those artisans took pride in their accomplishments and in the knowledge that what they produced was truly effective in communicating and accomplishing the stated business goals. Now, I receive hundreds of emails per week, most of which are written with botched grammar, poor spelling, and incomplete words…like it’s so difficult to type “you” instead of “u.” And some of the work I see, produced by seemingly intelligent and educated people, is downright embarrassing.

I was having lunch with a friend the other day—someone who is one of those business artisans—and he was lamenting the fact that many corporate customers would rather pay a few pennies less for products made from cheap, Chinese parts, even though they know that those products will fail much sooner than if they had been made from better quality materials. In my own experience as an instructional designer/developer, I have seen training vendors eschew proven learning principles in favor of quick fixes that offer little hope of long-term behavioral change. I have tried to avoid working with these vendors, but they seem to pop up on a daily basis, as is evidenced by typing the word “training” into your browser. (I just tried it, and Google reported “about 596,000,000 results.”)

As a business writer, I have taken pride in developing cases that not only made the key points, but felt real, as though you were in the room with the characters and could sense their humanity in dealing with difficult, complicated, business situations. Now, I’m often asked to develop cases as though I’m in an old episode of “Dragnet”—just the facts.

Many companies seem to evaluate contractors’ success by the number and level of educational degrees rather than any proven track record. Other companies view us all as commodities, as though a recent graduate of architecture school will have the same insights and instincts as someone who has designed hundreds of successful buildings.

I know I may sound like a curmudgeon, wallowing in a past era that is no longer relevant. But in truth, I appreciate the changes that have occurred: I like having a smartphone, a small, powerful notebook computer, and an iPod, and I enjoy being able to post something like this on a blog that anyone in the world can read instantly. But I don’t want to be asked to do mediocre work that will not result in long-term, positive results for my clients or for me. I will hang on to the notion that at least one person in every training session will read my cases and think, “This is really well-written…I can understand and feel the dilemma that these characters are facing.”

When the time comes that I believe such quality and excellence are no longer valued, I’ll drop out of the corporate world and make pizza. Of course, it will be really good pizza.

Helping Sales Employees After Acquisitions

In this economy, companies have been acquiring other entities at an historic rate. I have had the opportunity to help work with three clients as they acquired other companies:

• In 2001, Archstone Communities acquisition of Charles E. Smith Residential Realty, leading to the creation of Archstone-Smith.
• In 2007, CertainTeed’s acquisition of Vytec.
• Monster’s recent (2010) acquisition of HotJobs from Yahoo.

In each of these cases, the acquiring company handled the transition with class and dignity, with the sales forces being successfully integrated into the new, larger entities. While confidentiality agreements prohibit me from providing specific information related to any of these acquisitions, there are a few key points that I can offer for how to make such transitions as painless as possible for sales employees:

1. Do the research. Learn as much as you can, within the legal parameters, about each company, its culture, and how it operates. This, of course, depends on what you are legally allowed to learn, which can often be very little with regard to the acquired entity until after the acquisition has been formally completed. When you are restricted from obtaining information, focus on the acquiring company and its culture, so you can pass on that information to employees of the acquired entity as soon as you are allowed to do so.
   
2. Know which questions to defer and to whom. Often, key information is not immediately available related to the internal processes of the newly combined company. The key in those situations is to have a list of contacts to whom you can refer questions about such issues. It’s always best to say, “I don’t know,” and refer the question to someone in the appropriate position, rather than bluffing a response.
   
3. Treat the incoming employees with respect. This is the most important thing you can do. Rather than treating the acquired entity’s employees like conquered partisans, you should make them feel as welcome as possible in the new environment. Ask for and listen to their suggestions, and help them to feel like part of the team, right from the start.
   
4. Recognize former competitive instincts. Salespeople are competitive by nature, and often, the acquiring company formerly competed directly against the acquired entity, with different product sets and value propositions. To ignore this competitiveness would be folly. Instead, you should embrace it and learn from it ways to better the newly combined company’s competitive edge against the remaining competitors within the market.
   
5. Make the customers the key focus. In each of the situations in which I have been involved, I was fortunate to be working with a company whose primary focus was the customer. By doing so, those companies were able to encourage their salespeople, both old and new, to make every decision through the lens of how it affects the customer. As a result, the appropriate course of action was often readily apparent, and potential conflicts were avoided.
   
6. Train both sales forces. It’s not enough to just train the incoming sales force from the acquired entity about their new situation. The existing sales force from the acquiring company must also be prepared to work with their new counterparts, so as to create the best possible environment for the customers.
   
7. Reward teamwork. For these types of situations to work, members of both sales forces have to know and acknowledge that they are part of a team whose primary purpose is to service the customers. This mindset can best be accomplished by rewarding salespeople for teaming, either through compensation, contests, or some other reward structure.

These are a few suggestions to follow when helping sales employees after acquisitions. If you or any of your clients are about to work through an acquisition or a merger, feel free to contact me for assistance in training the employees.

The Skill that Drives All Effective Communication

The following is from the script of the film, “Thirteen Days,” written by David Self about the Cuban Missile Crisis. The interchange is between Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (played by Dylan Baker) and Admiral George Whelan Anderson, Jr., the Chief of Naval Operations (played by Madison Mason).

McNamara

I believe the President made it clear that there would be no firing on ships without his expressed permission.

Anderson

With all due respect, Mr. Secretary, we were not firing on the ship. Firing on a ship means attacking the ship. We were not attacking the ship. We were firing over it.

McNamara

This was not the President's intention when he gave that order. What if the Soviets don't see the distinction? What if they make the same mistake I just did? There will be no firing anything near ANY Soviet ships without my expressed permission. Is that understood, Admiral?

Anderson

Yes, sir.

McNamara

And I will only issue such instructions when ordered to by the President.

You don't understand a thing, do you, Admiral? This isn't a blockade. This, all this, is language—a new vocabulary the likes of which the world has never seen. This is President Kennedy communicating with Secretary Khrushchev.


I use this interchange to represent my point that there is one skill that drives all effective communication, and that skill is Listening. I’m not talking about some easy-to-understand model for active listening that purports that the key is repeating back what you hear. I’m talking about truly forcing yourself to listen to what the other person is saying, showing, and feeling.

In the above example, Admiral Anderson had listened to and obeyed the President’s order to avoid firing on ships, but he had missed the message. Likewise, President Kennedy was hoping that Soviet Secretary Khrushchev would listen to his message that by not firing on the ship, Kennedy was looking for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Fortunately, Khrushchev got the message.

This drives home the point that effective listening is not about just the words—it’s about understanding everything the speaker is conveying through his or her words, body language, tone of voice, and overall demeanor. In order to do this effectively, you need to shut yourself off and focus only on the other person. This sounds easy, but it is the hardest thing for any of us to do, and it runs completely counterintuitive to everything we generally know and/or have been taught.

To test out this idea, find a young child and ask him or her to explain something in which he or she is interested. As the child is talking, you can actually hear your brain processing the information and trying to make sense of it, rather than just listening to what the child is saying.

In our desire to put things into compartments, we process information as we hear it, inadvertently throwing away those elements we believe to be nonsensical. However, by doing so, we are forming the message to fit into our way of thinking and what we expect the speaker to say. Once we start doing that, we are no longer truly listening.

So, how do you listen effectively? It involves training yourself to:

• Shut off the “processing” aspect of your brain.
• Block out all distractions, internal or external.
• Suspend disbelief—don’t evaluate.
• Use all of your senses to absorb the entire message.
• Take notes.

Taking notes is essential, because it allows you to keep your brain clear for more content. Trying to hold the message in your head can block further information from getting in. Write it down, clear your brain, and refer to your notes later.

So why is Listening the skill that drives all effective communication? Let’s examine the other basic communication skills—Building Rapport, Questioning, and Providing Information:

• Listening enables Building Rapport by providing you with information about the speaker’s experiences, views, values, and personal situation around which that rapport can be built.
• With regard to Questioning, the best questions involve asking the speaker to expand on basic information he or she has already provided to find out what’s really on his or her mind. You can only ask these types of questions if you have truly listened to the speaker’s message.
• Providing Information to another person is only effective if that information is perceived as relevant by that person. The only way to ascertain that relevance is by listening.

It’s pretty straightforward. The more effectively you can listen, the more successful your overall communication will be.