Why leaders need to be sure they’re being heard
Do people actually listen to and understand what you say? Research suggests that most people remember between 25 and 50 percent of what they hear, so if you want to lead effectively, you need to find a way to help people actively listen so that they take in more information.
How one leader used REPLAY to deliver a difficult message
Here’s an example: I’d been talking with a client about how she was going to break some difficult news to her team. She’d planned a meeting to go through the rationale, explain why it was happening, the wider context, the uncertainty.
The question, she asked me, is how to ensure that everyone both listens, and hears the same thing?
This is the process we come up with:
Step 1: Break people into small groups
We split her group of fifteen people into groups of three, and asked them to replay to each other what she had just said.
Step 2: Ask each group to reflect and share back
When they’d all had five to ten minutes to talk about what she had said, each group of people would play it back to the room, and we would see how much consensus there was.
What they heard wasn’t always the same
What we discovered is that within each group of three, they all heard different things.
Most people had been listening and had mostly got it, but three key members of staff had got it completely wrong.
What was interesting was that the group self-corrected and helped each other work out what had been said.
Through doing the exercise everyone learned something about listening, and about how people perceive things differently.
This technique short-circuited the problems of people not hearing what you say.
At the end of the Replay exercise, everyone was really clear, and they could all move forward knowing they were on the same page.
Try the REPLAY technique in your own team
It’s simple to run a Replay exercise yourself. To run your own REPLAY exercise:
- Share your message or plan clearly
- Ask people to break into small groups of say 3
- Give them 5–10 minutes to discuss what they heard
- Have each group share their understanding back
- Clarify any misunderstandings as a team
How ThenSomehow can help
If you’d like help devising ways to improve your own leadership, please get in touch.
At ThenSomehow we help you and your team build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that is messy and feels stuck.