Listening Impact

Robin Miller, a journalist, posed a thought-provoking question:  What skills will IT professionals need in the next decade?

My initial response was to examine task-related skills, but that’s not my field, I’m an executive coach and trainer, so I looked inside my knowledge-base.  Two clients immediately came to mind to help form my answer:

Let’s call them Matt and Stephanie.  Matt is the CIO of a non-tech company, and Stephanie is a project manager in a hi-tech company.

When Matt and I were setting his objectives for coaching he listed:

• Get senior leaders on board with his recommendations
• Switch employees from old programs to new ones without a lot of hand-holding

Stephanie’s first objective was exactly the same as Matt’s.  Her second one was:

• Win support for her projects when there were so many initiatives competing for the same resources

They both talked about the importance of their work, how what they were doing would make everything easier for employees, and the details of their program(s).  I asked for a profile of their customers.  They said there were various customers, each as having different degrees of technical intelligence, with management possessing the least.  Matt even said, “The top two executives basically tell me what they want done and send me on my way.  The problem is they have no idea how complex their requests are.  Then they ask every day if we’re done.”

Rather than diving into answers, I took a side road and  compared their situations with getting healthy.  Stephanie was overweight, inactive and high-strung (she talked very fast and her eyes darted during conversations).  Matt was skinny, always with a diet soda in hand, and a weekend, athletic warrior (not all weekends though).  They both, in their own ways, wanted to be healthy without doing anything to make themselves that way. They didn’t really know much about nutrition, and under-estimated the amount of time and discipline it would take to get to their health goals. I assigned them to talk to a health professional within the week, and note what the person did that was effective.

Matt and Stephanie reported back with a comprehensive list of what the health professional did that was effective.  But, what was most impressive is that they both realized they held similar roles in the jobs.  Stephanie said, “We’re translators.  It’s our job to help people understand technical information and adapt it to fit their needs.

We set about creating a the list of behaviors for IT professionals as Translators:

• Speak in the language of the client, not the techies.  Technical language is offputting and separates us from our users.  But, we’ve got to know the IT code to be credible with colleagues.
• And related: Watch for the intimidation factor.  The world of hi-tech can cause people not in it to feel dumb.
• Senior management holds the key to resources, so they need to know exactly what resources we need, how long and to what end.  In other words, what bang will their proverbial buck provide?
• Know our clients’ thinking and listening styles to talk to them in a way that fits with their preferences.
• Inquire more than we advocate. The goal is to consult and educate, not tell or sell.
• Learn how to be an arbitrator who listens to one entity, checks for understanding, and interprets the information for another entity.  Continue that process until both sides are on the same page.
• Model patience and respect.

After a lot of effort to heed their own advice, both Matt and Stephanie have become strategic partners with high value in their organizations.  Matt’s been invited to join the executive committee, and Stephanie’s project was funded for another year.