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Listening, Big Brothers, Logic, and Believing What You Hear

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What Did He Say?

Loan me ten dollars, but only give me five. That way you’ll owe me five. I’ll owe you five, and we’ll be even.

My younger, older brother is a clever guy — always has been. He could talk a fish out of water. He could get the neighborhood to wash the car for him. Everything he did seemed to be a game or a show of some kind.

“I can read your mind.”
“No, you can’t.
“Sure I can. You’re thinking I can’t read your mind.”

He’d send a whistle through his teeth and I’d be there. He had a junk drawer filled with exciting objects and a mind of exciting ideas.

“Kid, let me tell you about that picture. See, the princess — that’s you — She has two kings beside her and she has to do everything they tell her except on St. Patrick’s Day. On St. Patrick’s Day, she gets to be the queen.”

I’m his younger sister by more than 8 years. If he wanted company, I was there. I saw magic in him. He saw an eager audience in me.

“Want to split a coke?”
A few minutes later, I’d get an empty bottle.
“Sorry, kid, my half was on the bottom. I had to drink your half to get to it.”

He wasn’t a teacher in any traditional form, but I learned a lot by growing up with him.

“How does that work?”
“If you don’t know, I can’t tell you. If you do, then I don’t need to.”

I learned to listen for the meaning under the words.

Most folks don’t play quick and clever like my younger, older brother used to play with me. Still we all get caught using convoluted and circular logic — even when we talk to ourselves. Be on the lookout for it, especially today.

Happy April 1 … “Don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.”

Ever bump into someone like my younger, older brother?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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Who's Worth Listening to?

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Listening

Listening is the critical start of an effective social media plan.

Whether you’re a big brand or a solo blogger gathering up the conversation about your work helps develop perspective, adjust perceptions, and make plans to serve the people who love what you do. Listening has been called the new marketing. We’re learning to sort through the chatter for:

  • people who are talking
  • volume and location of conversations
  • tone and sentiment — content and context
  • advice, complaints, ideas
  • direction, timing, and growth

We’re learning to sort to the relevant:

Congratulations. People are talking about you and your industry so much that you need a more robust tool for making sense of it all. Several good monitoring services can help, including Radian6 and Nielson’s BuzzMetrics. –NTEN, Got Your Ears On? How to Listen to Your Audience Using Social Media

We’re even beginning sort the signal from the noise to see:

  • the positive and negative
  • the patterns and trends
  • the random and the regular

The information we gather can be overwhelming and contradictory. How we decide when it should move us to change what we do?

Who’s Worth Listening to?

People online are talking all of the time. Sometimes what we say is influenced by the moment or by the group. Sometimes our opinions are uninformed, missing bits of the big picture, bits that would change what we thought or what we would suggest someone might do.

Beyond all that it’s important to remember that we’re a self-sorted group. Everyone online has access to a computer and is literate. Not everyone who has an opinion offers it. Some who offer their opinion have agendas other than helping us improve. And those opinions and the wisdom we offer can fall woefully short of the depth of our feelings. Those opinions and that wisdom also can be far from what we’d actually do.

Even when we listen in the best of faith, we’re still we’re likely to be confused by whom to listen to.

How do you know when a complaint is worth changing a feature or strategy?
Do you listen to the critics?
Do you listen to the fans?
Do you listen to the people who don’t care all that much about you?
Do you try to get the folks who usually don’t talk to weigh in with an opinion?

Seth was brilliant on just this point this weekend.

… the critics won’t be placated. Changing your act to make them happy is a fool’s game.

Here’s a surprising thought, though. You should ignore your fans as well.

Seth suggests that the most important feedback comes from the folks who thrive on sharing what you do. Those “sneezers” are the people who will help you grow.

How do you recognize your “sneezers.” How do you listen for the folks who thrive when you do?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

How Do You Give Back a Conversation to Someone Who's Checked Out?

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Thoughtful – Huh?

Ever patiently listened while another person talked? Ever planned a mental vacation while someone, so completely wrapped up in expressing the details of a thought, didn’t notice you had checked out?

Yeah, I’ve been in there, too.

But yesterday, at least once, I was the one who forgot that I was supposed to let someone else talk. I wandered through my head while I lost the chance to hear another person’s thoughts. He was miles away before I realized he was gone. By that time, the conversation had gone woefully, off course. I wish that guy would have found a way to turn me “off.”

He was generous when I apologized, but by then, he was done. Hope he, at least, had found a mental vacation spot more intriguing than the subject I’d been endlessly exploring without him.

How do you give back a conversation to someone who’s checked out?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Are You Listening? Influence and Participation Above the Noise

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Listening Is Essential to Communication

“To listen well, is as powerful a means of influence as to talk well, and is as essential to all true conversation” –Chinese Proverb

Last week, I got a chance to talk with Patrick Rooney, of the Zócalo Group in Chicago. As we discussed social media, Patrick discussed the perspective of corporate clients moving into the social media space now. He made a powerful point about how some corporate clients are slow to enter social media because they perceive bloggers as having no forgiveness for mistakes they might make. [not a direct quote]

Patrick and I talked about the digital divide that needs closing. the stereotypes in both directions: a bunch of undisciplined bloggers and social media rockstars who don’t like companies and a bunch of uptight, uppity corporate folks who think they know more than everything. We discussed opportunities to get some conversations started. I told him about the barns and bridges project. We made some plans to move things forward.

It seems so easy. All we had to was introduce them and get them talking and listening. Listening is the crucial part.

Influence and Participation Above the Noise

If you want to make a deal or a partnership, build a bridge, or solve a conflict, listening is the way in. If we don’t listen to what people believe, what they need, or what their goals are, how could we have their best interests in mind?

Listening is influence. A good listener has the power to change conduct, thought, or decisions, by encouraging discussions to go deeper, thoughts to get bigger, and people to raise their ideas above the noise.

Listening is participation. Great listeners are involved and thinking. That’s how we connect with other people’s ideas and values. Active listening helps us find the places where our minds meet and understand the places where our ideas separate. Here are just a few ways that listening enhances influence through participation.
Listening:

  • is learning
  • demonstrates respect which builds reputation
  • allows us to learn about and improve ourselves and our ability to connect with others
  • gathers information about how people perceive things, making their actions more predictable and increasing our ability to communicate in “their language.”
  • offers attention which opens channels to more information
  • collects data on which to test and build goals and strategy
  • uncovers issues and opportunities
  • invites new ideas which influence future actions
  • sparks new dialogues which lead to deeper relationships
  • allows people to get to know, like, and trust us at their own speed
  • allows us to find places where our goals align with possible partners

We talk, teach, tell people what we think and walk away feeling we’ve had an influence. Have we really? The folks we’re addressing could be ignoring every word we say and smiling while they do so.

If we want to form effective partnerships — raise barns and build bridges — we have to understand what the other guy cares about, where he or she is going and which of our goals match well alongside those. Listening tunes us in to potential partners.

Listen gives us direction and purpose in any collaboration. When we listen first, we make better choices about what we say and how we say it. Our voices become more powerful.

. . . it’s the listening that separates Social Media experts from Social Media theorists. said Brian Solis

Has social media changed the way you listen? How would you explain listening online to someone who’s new here?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Some Listening Resources:
Chris Brogan offers a slew of advice on how to listen.
Conversations are happening online in all kinds of places. It’s important to understand how to get in there, and how to listen where the conversations are happening. Here’s a very impartial list of places to listen and how.

Once you’re through Chris’ list, here’s a Starter List of a few more Web 2.0 Social Tools.

Some new new tools that help us tune in include:
monitter, which allows you to follow conversations by keywordyacktrack which allows you to track a single term or a url, social mention which searches across 8 web media formats

Keep Listening

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I've been thinking . . .

about talking and listening.

Ostrich_from_Geek_Philosopher

I like to watch people talking — people networking, people starting meetings, people in conversation. Last night, I was with a group of people who didn’t know each other, or who didn’t know each other well. I got to see how people said “hello,” and how they responded when that “hello” was answered. Some people seem to hear the response. Some people don’t.

During the evening a project was discussed with the group. Questions were asked. Some were answered. Some were not. Conversation continued in twos, threes, and fours. I was fascinated by who was listening and who was only pretending to keep track.

I was part of several conversations myself. Most were exciting exchanges. Passionate ideas were shared and possible plans were drawn.

But one man and I just couldn’t find conversational common ground. Whenever I tried to add to what he was saying, he came back with something that, to me, made my words sound out of place and wrong. I started focusing on my ideas and explaining more — losing track of him and myself.

Pushing my words didn’t inspire him to listen. Did I think it would? Had I been thinking about such things at all? It was 10 minutes gone wrong. This kind of miscommunication doesn’t happen often, but it’s same every time it does.

I can’t force someone to hear me, . . . especially if I stop listening myself.

Does this happen in your life too?

Liz's Signature

Image: GeekPhilosopher

Listening

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Still Yourself and Hear the World

Yesterday morning, when I got to my computer, I could hear the rain outside.
I stopped to listen. I could hear the white noise around the air moving.
The sound was soothing, clear, and refreshing.
Outside and below, cars were rushing toward the city.
It was a whooshing sound of tires on the pavement. I didn’t have to look to know it.

In the kitchen, the coffeemaker began telling me that it was working.
I listened, then, to the quiet hummmmmm of the air conditioning.

I settled back in my desk chair just to listen.

Quiet, silence filled with sounds I don’t usually hear.
Raindrops sliding down a window, my heart beating, my eye blinking as I look at the harbor.

RainyMorning_by_Liz_Strauss

And last night a fabulous thunderstorm returned me to that peaceful, listening feeling.

What if we listened to each other like we listen to the rain?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!