Listening & Mediation - 2

Here the intent was to understand the other, dive deep into who they are as people, The teams were given clear instructions to understand the other through dialogue. The same listening tools were shared, but here I added questioning/asking as a skill. Just the word question itself seems daunting/authoritative. Along with the listening introduction, I talked about asking questions that de-layer rather than investigate. We arrived as a group as to what are two principles in mind as we engaged:

1. minimise self-projection, build questions from what they are saying.

2. display equality, they know just as much as you do but about different things

Visual notes of the session:

Many of them fell into the pattern they were used to, instead of understanding they started selling! Incidentally they were all sales guys who had moved to category creation (huge leap).

I used the session to highlight the difficulty in breaking any habit, as we all like to operate from an area on expertise and comfort. In in situation the questions were so focused on selling, this guy was promising a cell phone with 48 hours battery if they bought it! And this company doesn't even sell phones.

My reflection as a facilitator:

A tool only goes so far, telling someone only goes so far (actually not as far as the tool cause no one likes to be told), and when I am engaging with people for those two days how I bring about that awareness that they will take with them is and has been my challenge as a facilitator. Conceptually they understood the tool/framework/construct and it seemed like they could relate to it too - how do they internalise it, especially when they do not see the value in listening as much as they see in sharing?