How to listen to colleagues — even when you disagree

Hello and welcome to Working It.

I wanted to share a great tip from the experts who have just guided me through recording the audio version of my forthcoming book, The Future-Proof Career: eating a crunchy green apple magically helps to preserve and enhance your voice 🍏. Next time you are in a Green Room before delivering the keynote, you should definitely attack the fruit bowl.

Read on for some insights into why listening is so darned hard — and how to get better at it — and in Office Therapy we advise someone with a paranoid team member 😮.

We can hear each other — but are we listening? 👂

Last week I participated in an inspiring executive leadership course run by Aspen UK, a charity that helps leaders to build a better society. Our group came from diverse sectors — including tech start-ups, government, the NHS and charities. Led by expert moderators, we sat around a big table and chewed over questions of values: personal, societal and institutional.

I was expecting to learn a lot from the other participants’ experiences, and I did 🙇. More surprisingly, the sessions revealed unpalatable truths about myself. I am, it turns out, impatient and find it hard to focus for long periods on what others are saying, especially when it’s complex and involved. “Active listening” may be something we aim for as managers and leaders but many of us struggle to do it.

I noted how Ruth Girardet, the head moderator, took in everything that the participants said, processed it — and asked penetrating follow-up questions. Ruth is a former Tesco executive who moderates Aspen executive leadership programmes across Europe and works as a leadership coach. Why, I asked her, is listening so hard? And how does she do it so well?

Ruth told me that “we spend much of our time hearing rather than listening: hearing is a physiological process, while listening is a conscious and intentional act that involves making sense of the information received. It requires attention and effort, and a focus on someone else’s experience rather than our own, something that we tend to find hard.”

“Listening is hard because we believe, rightly or wrongly, that much of our economic value depends on either being able to add value, or on being right. As a result, rather than listening to someone, we spend our time finishing their sentences in our head and formulating our response to what we think they are going to say.”

That resonated with me. It doesn’t help that I’ve spent decades in journalism, a deadline-driven sector where we are expected to convey information quickly and decisively. True listening — as I discovered in the Aspen seminar — demands that we slow down 🐌.

Ruth shared her tips on how anyone can become a better listener: “I take a lot of notes in meetings. It’s not ideal in terms of body language, but it forces me to pay attention to what is actually being said rather than living in my own head.

“Asking questions of understanding is immensely helpful, especially asking people to clarify their understanding of common terms. I’m constantly amazed at how people make assumptions of shared understanding about common terms like ‘urgency’ or ‘violence’, when they have very different definitions. At the other end of the scale, I have learned not to be embarrassed to ask people to explain difficult or technical terms.”

Finally, part of good listening is how you process and respond to what’s being said. That includes holding back judgment and resisting the urge to create hierarchies (“the most important thing you said is . . .”).

If you can do that, and initially treat everything you hear as having equal value, then you are on the way to a true understanding of others’ perspectives, and, let’s hope, more considered leadership decisions.

Are you a good listener? How have you managed to become better at listening? How much does it matter at work? I’d love to hear your views and experiences: many of us are works in progress! I am at isabel.berwick@ft.com.

This week on the Working It podcast

Why do bosses keep trying to get staff to return to the office full-time? What should the office of the future look like? And what will we do when we get there?

All these questions — and many more — are answered on this week’s Working It episode, expertly guest-hosted by my colleagues Andrew Hill and Rana Foroohar and featuring expert comment from PwC senior partner for the UK, Kevin Ellis, as well as interviews with Jeremy Myerson and Philip Ross, authors of Unworking: The Reinvention of the Modern Office.

Whatever the future of the office, I hope it comes with free food. It’s the best 🥕 for getting people back in. (I keep saying this in the hope that FT bosses will introduce it.)

Office Therapy

The problem: I manage a successful marketing team. My issue is a long-standing staff member (they predate me in the organisation) who thinks I’m constantly trying to erase their job and status. When I give feedback, including positive comments, they refuse to believe me and make accusations of malign long-term intent. Anything negative induces storming off, veiled threats of going to HR etc. It’s impossible to be “normal” with this person. Their work is mostly fine but I’m weary. Any ideas?

Isabel’s advice: What you have here is an “irrational actor”. We can be as process-driven and fair as we like at work, but one person like this could undermine it all. Once they have it in their head that you are on a mission to get rid of them/eliminate their job, it’s going to be impossible to convince them otherwise — and by the time you have spent months/years with them, you will ACTUALLY want them to disappear 🫠 .

To avoid that, here’s some supremely rational advice from Michael Skapinker, FT contributing editor and a counsellor to senior leaders: “I would suggest a low-key conversation, perhaps over coffee, where you ask how they are finding the job. Ask some open questions along the lines of ‘what would make your work easier?’ Then you could introduce the subject: ‘I’ve noticed you sometimes find our conversations difficult’ — and see what comes out. It may lead to a discovery of an underlying difficulty or insecurity that could be addressed.”

Got a question, problem or dilemma for Office Therapy? Think you have better advice for our readers? Send it to me: isabel.berwick@ft.com or via a voice note. We anonymise everything. Your boss, colleagues or underlings will never know.

Five top stories from the world of work

What the voices of female executives reveal in investor calls: A troubling and revealing column from Anjli Raval, summarising the results of several pieces of research into how senior women are perceived: they are interrupted, and penalised for “uptalking” in their intonation. It’s pretty depressing.
Can AI make brainstorming less mind-numbing? A tempting prospect of AI creating summaries of ideas and strategies — rather than endless Post-it notes and summaries — from Andrew Hill. (Comes with some warnings, though.)
How to make workplaces run better: Every organisation comes with inefficiencies and useless processes — the trick is to decide what is useful “friction” and what needs to be eliminated. Andrew Hill talks to Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao, authors of The Friction Project, on how to do that.
Thank goodness we have reached peak MBA: The massive cost and time commitment required for traditional MBA courses seems to be contributing to them losing some of their allure. Pilita Clark surveys the landscape.
The women getting into modelling in their 50s and 60s: I enjoyed this style piece about older models — a new career option that reflects (thankfully) changing views of ageing and the economic power of older women.

One more thing . . .

If you haven’t heard of Wellness, the big new novel from US author Nathan Hill, then you soon will. I reckon this book will be a spring word-of-mouth hit that gets readers and book clubs excited. It’s been very well-reviewed: a “bewitching, sophisticated book” said the FT, and I agree: it’s a gripping read, the best sort of immersive fiction experience.

Hill offers an examination of a long marriage — Jack and Elizabeth are in their 40s but first met as students in Chicago — and also a very smart observation on the modern “wellness” phenomenon that promises us a better life that somehow always seems out of reach. (Elizabeth works as a researcher in the field.) If you read it, let me know what you think 💭.

A word from the Working It community

Bethan Staton wrote a great newsletter while I was away last week and her thoughts on meditation and mindfulness sparked lots of interesting reader replies. Here’s Tim Cain:

“I’ve reorganised my life around mindfulness after a career in media with all its excitement, fun, stress, highs and lows, and then finding myself with a serious illness, now thankfully overcome.

“Mindfulness has shifted my perspective to more positivity and self-responsibility, it’s the handbrake that makes you reflect on your position in the world, take responsibility and accept that we do have a choice in almost everything we do. When you can see better what’s around you, and how you can affect your outlook more than you might have believed, your consciousness is raised and it can bring a certain peace and acceptance.

Personally for me that’s a positive mandate, a strategy for living a better life, in business and privately. I guess “mindfulness” is a bit of a catch-all term, I like to think of it including reflection, contemplation and crucially awareness, both of self and beyond. I think the trick is moving from finding a time for mindfulness to it becoming inherent, a natural check and balance, and something that’s second nature. Just takes a bit of time!”