Some folks have previously discussed ways to get rid of people that are interrupting you. But how do you determine when you should interrupt someone else—and how should you interrupt that person? IM? Phone?

I’ve created some guidelines that help me determine if I should barge into someone’s office unannounced, and I thought I would share them with you:

1. Is it a social call? If it is, and you are uninvited, don’t do it. I strongly recommend all managers setup a daily five minutes that can serve as a social call. Co-workers should keep social calls to a minimum—try to reserve them for breaks and lunch. If it is not a social call, ask yourself:
2. Is it something you need to handle? That is, is it something that someone else is responsible for? If so, let the other person handle it; if not, ask yourself:
3. Does it need to be handled right now? Can you continue working without the answer? If so, send an email; if you can, let them know when you’ll need the answer. If the answer directly affects what you are working on right this minute and you cannot do anything else, ask yourself:
4. Is it a question that can be answered relatively easily and quickly? If so, send the person an instant message. IMs are less invasive than walking into someone’s office in that they are less likely to lead to a prolonged conversation. If it’s not something that can be answered easily and quickly, ask yourself:
5. Can it be handled on the phone (or through Skype)? Again, phone conversations are less likely to lead to a prolonged conversation about your kids, your dogs, your weekend, or your significant other. As with IM, the phone is limited in the types of collaboration it can effectively support. If it’s not suitable for a phone call, ask yourself:
6. Is it something I would want to be interrupted about? When considering interrupting someone IRL, this is the most important question. Reverse the roles. Put yourself in their shoes. Is this question so serious that you must interrupt them? If so, interrupt them.

These guidelines might seem to be a bit burdensome, but if you practice them every time you consider interrupting someone, you’ll find yourself answering all of the questions in under a few seconds. Besides, you’ll save your colleagues a lot of your annoying interruptions, and we could all do with fewer annoyances in our lives, right?

Unlike the attending skills I previously discussed, following Skills require more practice to master. They might look familiar, but putting them into practice will take some work. At their core, Following Skills are the activities that you do (and don’t do) to encourage the speaker to, well, speak without getting in their way. In fact, according to Bolton:

One of the primary tasks of a listener is to stay out of the other’s way so the listener can discover how the speaker views his situation.

Unfortunately, listeners don’t always get out of the way. They often ask too many questions, or their questions divert the conversation in directions the speaker didn’t want to go. How many times have you wanted to talk about something, but your listener started asking questions about things that were only peripherally related to your topic?

Following skills include:

• Door Openers. Per Bolton, a door opener is “a noncoercive invitation to talk.” Sometimes it’s as simple as “What’s on your mind?” or “You don’t seem yourself lately.” According to Bolton, door openers have four parts, though not each part is present in every door opener:

  1. Description of the other person’s body language
  2. An invitation to talk or to continue talking
  3. Silence; that is, give the person a chance to respond.
  4. Attending. (All the skills I talked about here.)

  Keep these guidelines in mind when “opening the door on a conversation”:

  1. Do not use roadblocks when you should be using a door opener. More on roadblocks later. For now, know that roadblocks are comments that actually dissuade a person from talking instead of encouraging them to talk.
  2. If the person doesn’t want to talk, don’t force the issue.
  3. Only use door openers when you have time to commit to the conversation. Giving the person an opportunity to talk and then cutting them short will make it that much difficult for them to open up later.
• Minimal Encourages. These are “brief indicators to the other person that you are with them”. They are minimal because the speaker says very little, but they encourage the speaker to continue talking because they communicate that you are interested and are following them. Minimal encourages include nodding your head, saying “mm-hmm”, or offering other short phrases.

• Infrequent Questions. Questions can either help draw the speaker out, or they can direct the conversation away from the real issue the speaker wants to discuss. Using infrequent questions “helps you better understand the speaker without directing the conversation”. However, most people, myself included, ask too many questions. If you find yourself down the rabbit howl of asking too many questions, try turning your next question into a statement; as Bolton says:

  …most questions can be expressed as statements and that doing so generally is far more productive in a conversation than repeated questioning.

• Attentive Silence. One of the best quotes from Bolton’s book starts out his section on Attentive Silence:

  The beginning listener needs to learn the value of silence in freeing the speaker to think, feel, and express himself. “The beginning of wisdom is silence,” said a Hebrew sage. “The second stage is listening.”

  Many of my friends and co-workers are uncomfortable with silence. Any pause I might give to my conversation is often filled with the other person’s voice. Bolton likens these people to the character in Waiting for Godot who said: “Let us try to converse calmly since we are incapable of keeping silent.”

  During silence pauses in a conversation, a good listener does the following:

  1. Attends.
  2. Observes facial expressions, posture, gestures; hears what the speaker’s body is saying.
  3. Thinks about what the other person is communicating, reflecting on both the speaker’s message as well his emotions.

  Like the other following skills, silence can be taken to extremes as well: Too much silence communicates disinterest.

Unlike attending skills, which you probably already knew how to use, following skills will take time to master. Be patient. I’ve been practicing these skills for the past 2 years and am still learning. Don’t let that intimidate you, though. I’ve been talking for nearly 30 years and have become quite proficient at it—just ask my wife! But I’ve only been listening—really listening—for 2 years. You wouldn’t expect a toddler to speak in complete sentences, would you? The important thing is to keep trying, keep practicing. Even as a growing novice, you will see a marked improvement in your conversations and even in the core of your relationships.

I’m certainly no expert on listening. Most of the ideas and all of the quotes come from an amazing book by Robert Bolton: People Skills. IMO, it is the greatest book on how to apply listening skills in your everyday life.

“It only takes once” has become something of a mantra. It’s seemingly a simple phrase: it only takes once. But, the phrase holds two truths:

• The first truth: you only get one chance to do it right; that chance is right now. At it’s core, the first truth is simple: always do your best.
• The second truth: it only takes one “yes”. One great idea. One. Keep trying. A rejection or failure means that you’re one step closer to success.

It’s a simple saying that holds two truths that I occassionally need to remember. You might find it useful, too.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m reading Virtues of War by Steven Pressfield, and as Alexander was one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known, I’ve been thinking a lot about the qualities of a great leader. Great leadership certainly requires many of the personal qualiites that Alexander possessed: bravery, self-confidence, generosity, passion, mercy, vision, and honor.

Great leadership, though, has as much (if not more) to do with the quality of people you lead as with any of these personal qualities. If the people Alexander surrounded himself with can serve as an indicator, the right people for your company, both for startups and large corporations, is a combination of three virtues, listed in order of importance:

1. Trust. Can you trust the person? If you cannot trust the people around you, then you are not able to focus on your job at hand, and you will never create a successful company or product.
2. Passionate persistence. I’ve blogged on this before; passionate persistence is a combination of cardia, “heart”, and dynamis, “the will to fight”. In modern terms, this combination creates someone who is passionate about succeeding at what they do. They may not be the most skilled, but they will get the job done better than any other.
3. Skill. having the right skillset is a no-brainer, but is probably the least important of the three virtues. You can train someone to do a job, but you cannot change a person’s character or instill a sense of passion.

And then, once you have the right people in place,

1. Let them do their jobs. Micromanagement on any level kills passion. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t set performance expectations, but once those expectations are set, respect the boundaries, and let the person do their job.

2. Solve personnel problems quickly. Every leaders run into problems with their employees—even their best employees. In his book, *How to Win Friends and Influence People”, Carnegie details 9 principles for inspiring change in others. They are:

   1. If you must find fault, begin with praise and honesty
   2. Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly
   3. Talk about your own mistakes first
   4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders
   5. Let the other person save face
   6. Praise the slightest improvement and every improvement
   7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to
   8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct
   9. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest

I’m certainly no expert on leadership—merely a student of great leaders. My thoughts, here are nothing new, but I do think they are powerful enough and important enough to warrant re-stating here.

One of the few things I remember from my early childhood is constantly hiding from folks behind my mom’s legs. I did grow out of hiding behind her legs, but I never outgrew being painfully shy. I’ve tried to overcome this irrational shyness over the years, and feel like, lately, I have made some decent strides. My approach has been to

1. read books on the subject
2. get comfortable useing the principles and skills in familiar situations
3. venture out into world to use these principles and skills on strangers

When I set out to create this patch, I didn’t actually plan this approach. It’s just naturally evolved: By reading about how to handle different social situations and how to handle people, I discovered some skills I wanted to try; I tested these skills in situations and on people in which I had an established comfort level. Seeing positive results in these situations, I wanted to—wanted to—venture out into unfamiliar situations and try my growing skillset on strangers.

In a matter of months, I’ve changed from someone terrified of social situations to someone who is actually seeking out social situations in which to network.

Yeah, I know I sound like an infomercial, but my suck is getting patched.

Constant readers will readily recognize the two books that have helped me the most:

• How to Win Friends and Influence People
• People Skills

Back in January of 2005, Merlin Mann wrote about patching your personal suck.

Find the bad code in your system and eliminate the bugs. Find the fastest, easiest, most elegant solution that could possibly work.

So, that’s what I’m trying to do. Patch my suck.

I stumbled upon Virtues of War by Steven Pressfield today. Don’t quite remember how I found it, but I’m glad I did.

The book is a fictional re-telling of Alexander the Great. I have not yet read through the first fifty pages, but already I find inspiration:

What drives the solder is cardia, “heart”, and dynamis, “the will to fight”. Nothing else matters in war. Not weapons or tactics, philosohpy or patriotism. Only this love of glory, which is the seminal imperative of mortal blood, as ineradicable within man as in a wolf or lion, and without which we are nothing.

In this passage, Alexander is describing the perfect soldier, but his description can—and should—be applied much more broadly. Success, in any endeavor, requires a passionate drive to fight and keep fighting. Weapons, skills, tactics, philosophy: these things do matter, but they matter much less than passionate persistence—for what good are they if they are not put to use.

Attending skills are the body language skills of listening. It’s said that 85% of communication is done non-verbally. If true, that means that 85% of our communication relies on our attending skills. Fortunately, most people already have an inuitive understanding of how to apply attending skills—they just rarely apply them.

Attending skills include:

• A posture of involvement. Relaxed alertness. Being relaxed communicates acceptance of what the speaker says and being alert communicates that you are paying attention. A posture of involvement can involve any of these activities:
  • Incline your body toward the speaker. When you are really interested in a topic, you’ll actually sit forward.
  • Face the speaker squarely. Don’t sit or stand at an angle. Face them head on.
  • Maintain an open position. Keep your arms and legs unfolded. Closed arms and/or legs can communicate defensiveness and distance.
  • Give the speaker her personal space. Crowding the speaker only makes her feel uncomfortable, but too much distance means that you are not interested in what she is saying. For Americans, an appropriate distance is three feet. Closeness beyond that communicates an intimacy that is reserved for close friends and loved ones.
• Appropriate Body Motion. Avoid distracting motions and gestures. Fidgeting communicates boredom, but so does complete stillness. Your movements should be in response to the speaker’s movements.
• Eye Contact. Of the attending skills, this is probably the biggest no brainer as well as the most important. Good eye contact communicates interest in what the speaker is saying as well as confidence from the listener. Eye contact also carries with it a level of intimacy that some people may not be comfortable with, so, at times, it will be difficult to use effectively.
• Nondistracting Environment. Another no-brainer. If you’re going to talk with someone, make sure your environment has as few distractions as possible. Turn off the television. Close your office door. Shut down email. Do whatever you need to do to cut down on distractions. (The television kills me every time—something about those pretty pictures and magical sounds draws me to them. When someone is talking to me, and a television is on, I turn it off. If I can’t turn it off, I make sure I can’t see it.)

Attending skills are the building blocks of good listening. The sad part is that even though most of us know how to use these attending skills, we don’t.

Make a conscious effort at some point during the next few days to actively practice your attending skills. It will seem artificial at first. And by “at first”, I mean the first few minutes of a conversation because actively attending to what the other person is saying stirs your interest in the conversation. It won’t turn a dreadful conversation into an interesting one, but it will make those marginally interesting topics even more bearable. And you might even learn something from the interaction—at the very least, you’ll hone your attending skills.

I’ve talked a bit about the power of reflecting listening and why we listen, but have not talked much about how to listen. Let me remedy that.

First, though, the difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is the physical act of listening; hearing begins the moment the auditory signal enters the ear and ends when the brain receives the notification that a sound has been heard.

Listening involves “interpreting and understanding the significance” of what you heard.

Listening involves twelve skills:

• Attending Skills
  • A posture of involvement
  • Appropriate Body Motion
  • Eye Contact
  • Non-distracting environment
• Following Skills
  • Door openers
  • Minimal encourages
  • Infrequent Questions
  • Attentive Silence
• Reflecting Skills
  • Paraphrasing
  • Relfecting Feelings
  • Reflecting Meanings
  • Summative Reflections

Seems daunting. Fortunately, you already know most of the skills—at least, you know about most of the skills. If you’re like most people, you’re not actively nurturing them. Most of us spent much of our childhood learning how to speak and not much time learning how to listen. (The most I got from my parents and teachers was “Pay attention!” But what does it mean to “pay attention”?)

Over the next few days, I’ll review each of the listening skills. If you’re really anxious to learn about listening, you can purchase People Skills by Robert Bolton, which is where I learned my listening techniques, and where much (if not all) of this information comes from.

I picked up a gem of a book this weekend called Everyday Speech: How to say what you mean by Bess Sondel. It was published in 1950 and has some interesting insights into the art of speaking (both public and one-to-one) and listening.

I haven’t finished reading the book, but wanted to share some of its insights on listening.

Listening is active and involves three operations.

1. We listen to understand. If we don’t understand, we cannot proceed intelligently to the next two operations. When do we understand? Only when we can sum up in ONE sentence (or less) what the other fellow is driving at…

I would add that to fully understand the speaker’s meaning, you must not only understand what he says, but also the emotions behind the words. And you do this through reflective listening; once you have accurately reflected the speaker’s meaning, you can then move on to the second and third parts of listening, which are

2. We listen in order to judge.

3. We listen to make use of the material.

My favorite quote from his discussion on listening:

Listen for controlling ideas, but remember ideas are conveyed by words. Don’t slide over words—even familiar words. The meaning of a word must be found in its context.

And, again, reflective listening comes into play here. By paraphrasing the speaker’s words, you ensure that your understanding of the words and the speaker’s understanding of their words are in-line.

Pick up the book. It’s well worth the $1.00 cost.

1. Do less. “Be content with quite a little. Allow for accidents. Allow for human nature, especially your own.” Take your time. There are a lot of things to do, so choose one or two things you want to do and focus on those. You’re much more likely to accomplish your goals if you focus on one or two things than if you were to spread your energy over four or five. (How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett)
2. Sleep. It’s a blessing and a curse. As humans, we spend so much of our lives sleeping. Imagine what we could do if we didn’t have to sleep. On the flip side, letting your head fall back into your pillow after a long day (or several long days, as the case may be) feels so damned good. Staying awake for long periods of time exhausts your body and mind. You lose focus and perspective, your goals become pipe dreams, and your stamina fades. A good night’s sleep provides not only a much needed perspective, but the strength to continue.
3. Keep trying. Don’t give up when you fail. Look at every failure as a pre-requisite to success, and keep going. Life is a test of endurance. The more you apply what you’ve learned from your failures, the more likely you are to succeed. (Summarized from a recent post by Jason Womack.)
4. Curb your optimism.Be Realistic. Play to win every day, but remember the Stockdale Paradox: “…maintain unwavering faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” (As summarized in Good to Great by Jim Collins)