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Intentful listening for building trust.

I invited my niece for a cup of coffee and explained to her what we are going to do, and how to do it.

We sat down on the beach and picked up a stone instead of a stick (talking stick). Then I explained the rules of the experiment. The person who doesn’t hold the stone has to listen carefully without interrupting. They can only talk to ask for clarification and to acknowledge they understand the point.

She started listening while holding the stone. At first, she was interrupting whenever I said something clashes with her and her actions and thoughts. It felt annoying that she didn’t wait to fully understand my point of view before interrupting. Slowly, she became better at it and just asked necessary questions to clarify her understanding. I noticed that by nodding and smiling when she to convey that she is listening, this helped me trust her, which in turn let me keep talking freely.

When my turn came to hold the stone and listen, I realized how hard it is not to interrupt other people, especially when their thoughts don’t align with mine. I also noticed that holding the stone with both hands, sometimes squeezing it, helped me to remember that my role now is to listen carefully without interrupting. Second, looking into the talker’s eye forced me to focus on their words and thus listen intently.

During this process, whether I was talking or listening, it felt excellent when the other party tried their best to understand the other, confirmed their comprehension by paraphrasing it, and avoided blaming by not using asking why questions. Paraphrasing the idea showed that the other party is really listening to every single word, or at least trying their best to understand the point of view, which in turn built trust. Using open-ended questions like what, when, and how, not only conveyed care and empathy, but also encouraged the speaker to continue articulating and elaborating their thoughts.

In future leadership opportunities, I will incorporate the intentful listening techniques such as body language, total sensory engagement and open questions and finally paraphrasing to convey my understanding and care. This should encourage the speaker to trust me and talk openly, which will help build a successful team, for an essential feature of good teams is trust and respect among team members.

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Leadership real life example

During the pandemic the jewellery store, where I work at, helps customers online, through the phone and curbside pickup. Most sales happen when customers call asking for a desired piece of jewellery and the sales rep who answer the call consider the sale theirs. Last week, a colleague got a request to bring an item from a certain brand, which we didn’t have in the store at that time. The colleague emailed the brand rep on Friday evening asking if we can get that piece. Of course, the rep won’t be back till Monday, thus the colleague left a note for whoever can follow up before she returns next Wednesday. On Saturday another colleague started following up and instead of waiting till Monday to get the response, she called the client to confirm that we had the right design number to begin with and could provide the item on the requested due date. Then she called the brand rep to get the response, and she communicated back and forth with the customer and the rep until, finally, at the end of the day, she confirmed the order and made the sale under her name.

To make a long story short, the original sales rep was furious at the other rep that she put the sale under her name.

 I noticed that the two colleagues in conflict were never friendly, but both respected a third colleague. The manager trusted me, a senior colleague, to resolve the situation.  I asked the third colleague to help me resolve this since he had some influence over the other two in conflict. My plan was to meet with them and for the third colleague to join as if he had overheard the conversation. Then he would resolve the tension with a light-hearted comment: “Oh, come on guys! We are family here and it was teamwork. We all contributed, even me, thought I wasn’t here last week”. That was the plan. During the meeting, I explained to both sales reps that they made the sale since the first person answered the phone and initiated the work, and without this initiative, the client would have purchased the item somewhere else. I also explained that the quick follow up done by the second colleague finalized the sale in a timely manner, and this was important, because these days it is easy to lose impatient customers. I linked this example of teamwork to the family concept by explaining that we help our family members all the time without noticing it. A daughter helps her mom prepare food and the brother helps his dad gardening, and no one argues about who did the work. My plan succeeded as I’d hope, and thus things returned to normal.

  This experience taught me that I appreciate family. I also learned that building family-like relationships among team members will strengthen the team’s ability to survive and to accomplish goals. Thirdly, the experience taught me that understanding team members and their relationships helps me build connections and resolve conflicts. Finally, and without doubt, I will apply this knowledge, strengthened by my last experience, to any future opportunities.

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High Performing Team

In my project management course, I was once in a team consisting of seven people. My team and I were classmates in different classes and had some experiences with each other. The team goal was to study a potentially important and profitable project and report to the management and board of directors.

The team members had different skills and diverse talents; some were very good at organizing skills which helped us set priorities and strategic processes, while others had excellent communication skills, which facilitated and built connection among team members and thus helped establish trust and commitment among the team. Our leader was chosen by the team, unlike other leaders who were chosen by the instructor. Picking our leader democratically had double benefits. First, since he/she was chosen by the team, the leader was extra careful to stay focused on the goal, to support and meet the team’s expectations, to facilitate each member by listening to and understanding their needs, and, finally, to put and fit all their work together. Second, because our leader was elected, the team increased its degree of commitments to accomplish their tasks and be accountable for their work. The leader was very smart about the timing of the meetings; they were on a weekly basis, or when urgency required a meeting, or whenever we reached a milestone. Meetings were held on the college premises, and we were provided with everything we needed to present our ideas and thoughts. Whenever we had urgent matters to discuss, we used WhatsApp group chat. In my opinion, all these aspects demonstrate that my team was a high performing team.

Actually, I had two roles in the team. Besides my assigned role in the team, I assisted the leader in the facilitating process. I also gave advice and tips for other members. Additionally, I discussed each member’s work and ideas during every meeting, making sure every member was heard and asking whoever hadn’t participated for their opinion, however minor it might be. Finally, I helped the leader with linking and putting the work together.

In retrospect, I should have prioritized the deliverables. More effort should have been given to high priority deliverables. Perhaps a special timetable should have been used to motivate us to accomplish the important tasks and deliverables on time. When we had group decision-making, we used the nominal group technique. Every member worked on ideas and then presented it to the rest for discussion. We struggled to give time to every member to present their ideas before we moved on to the next task. I think this method is great in general, but it took time to go through each participating members’ ideas. In the future, when we are pressed for time, I would choose the consensus decision-making method. It involves having members work on the solution for the problem at the same time. It is a spontaneous process where ideas are shared and discussed instantly.

To manage conflicts, I always emphasized the compromising style. After negotiations, I also reminded everyone about our shared vision and strategic goals. I always treated the other parties’ opinion and ideas as equally legitimate as mine, even if I didn’t think it was so. It wasn’t too bad to compromise your ideas with others to avoid conflict and keep the work going. In the future, I will use the collaborating style and treat every viewpoint as important. Teams need to collaborate to build a final decision that respects everyone’s ideas.

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My Commitment for becoming an effective follower

As a person with strong learner talent, I will use it to build knowledge, which is a personal power of a follower. Being an achiever is another personal power that I will use to complete anything I put my mind to. Having the inner fire of competence will energize me and all my other talents. Finally, I will focus my effort on being courageous and accountable for my actions. This means I will promote honesty and build trust with management.

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My Top Five Leadership Strength

I have not heard of the Clifton strengths assessment before, but I have tried other ones to determine my life career and who I really am. I was introduced to the Clifton strengths assessment by Professor Fortunato Pitaro for the first time in his class Leadership Development.

Before getting the Clifton strength finder exercise, I knew some of my strengths and acknowledged some of my weaknesses through life experience and reflections. I admit that my knowledge and awareness of my strengths were most of the time vague rather than clear and lacked a sense of ownership and honesty.

My five dominant strengths, according to the Clifton Assessment, are context, deliberative, achiever, learner, and competition.

Context means having a retrospective viewpoint, where looking back into the past is the key to understanding the present and preparing for the future. Whenever I look back, in whatever situation or experience I had, I almost always find answers in the past. For example, last year my cousin was consulting me about her daughter’s schoolwork and future career. She was wondering why her daughter is interested in being an actress instead of a dentist, and why the girl cannot study long hours. I explained to her that her situation is not surprising since she, since early childhood, used to take her daughter to friends and social gatherings and did not promote reading habits. On the contrary, they only used to watch shows and TV series. So, looking back into the past helps explain the present and reveal the future.

Deliberative means taking extra caution when making decisions, regardless of how much time is involved in following our preferred option. I always tend to be cautious when I take decisions. For example, at my job, as a jeweller, I facilitate the process of choosing, designing, and ordering custom-made jewellery for customers. Once I was helping design a family ring with several coloured stones and diamonds that represented the birthstones of each family member. In this case there were five stones, two diamonds, and one sapphire, aquamarine, and emerald. To get the perfect outcome for the customer, I facilitated communication between the workshop and the customer. Before submitting the final design to the workshop, I had another appointment with the customer to discuss the position of each stone, because I noticed that the customer wears other rings on fingers next to the family ring finger. I explained to the customer that due to differences in the hardness of each stone, some stones need to be protected more than others. The customer’s original order placed the emerald and aquamarine stones at the two sides, which would expose them to harder stones on the adjacent rings. So, I suggested we move these two soft stones to the middle and top of the ring and put the two diamonds on the two sides, since diamonds are rarely scratched. Thus, my vigilant thinking and solution prevented the soft stones from being scratched or broken.

Achiever means that I always want to complete tasks, and when I lack tasks and goals, I feel something burning inside me. As a jeweller, I always had many slow days with nothing much to do except wait for customers. On such days, I always created a team to-do list such as doing a cycle count for a section or a brand, reorganizing jewellery pieces in the windows and showcases, and making sure that we posted an interesting story on social media. Every day, I make sure to complete the highest priority task first and check it off when it is done. Then I have a small meeting with my team to discuss what we achieved and what is left and how much time we need to complete the work. This way I ensure that I achieve something regularly and in a timely manner.

Learner is a strength I know I possess. I always like to learn something new, whether it is related to my job or not. I like the process of learning as much as I like the knowledge, I get from it. All the knowledge I acquired in the jewellery business was based on the practical experience and self-learning and research I have had done. Last year, I enrolled in two GIA (Gemological Institute of America) courses and finished them, although my work does not require me to attain such certificates. Presently I am learning to improve my writing skills with a professional writing tutor.

Competition is the inner flame that fuels my motivation to win. In the last year of elementary school, I was the top student, but when I moved to high school, during my first year I ranked way down the list, maybe the tenth or eleventh. Although it was very hard for me to compete at the time, I did not give up. To improve my rank, I studied double or triple the time my peers spent studying. Despite getting second place, which was a significant improvement, I still did not feel satisfied, and I knew that burning fire inside me would not settle till I won and outperformed every single student.

Today, on Saturday, June 05th, 2021, while I was working as a bank teller and depositing a cheque made by the customer’s employer, I had to check to see if the name of the payee matches the customer profile in our system, if the amount of the cheque is reasonable, if the date of the cheque is not postdated or more than 6 months old.  Then I noticed that the date of the cheque read Dec 08, 2020, which meant it was almost six months old. So, I went to ask my manager if the 6-month limit is counted as a number of months or a number of days. This is a great example of how my deliberative talent avoids problems.

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Leadership Situation

As a jeweller and assistant manager, I have many duties and responsibilities. I open and close the store, serve customers and help salespersons with their sales.

One day the manager asked me to reorganize the store and arrange items to improve flow for browsing customers.  

The task was not that simple since the store has at least five international brands, not to mention items from local jewellers. At first, it felt overwhelming, but I did not let it to discourage me and put me in a negative mind state.

My first step was taking time analyzing and thinking of the whole process and then organizing my thoughts and writing them down on paper, which I believe it is one of my strongest skills.

Second, as I am an open and amiable manager, I knew my team members’ skills and strengths, which helped me pick the right persons for the right tasks. So, I capitalized on each member’s personal strengths and skills.

I believe in helping each team member grow and advance in their roles so that they benefit the team and the organization as a whole. So, I helped each member with any difficulty they faced and facilitated their development to the best of my ability.

I am a good listener and because I engage staff in conversation I gained their trust and made them feel comfortable sharing their personal and daily stories to me. So, they realized they can talk to me about any issues they have at work.

However, what contributed most to my success leading this team is that I welcomed each member’s ideas and thoughts about how to enhance the process, and I considered their criticisms not only of the current process but also of anything, whether it was related to work or not.

Finally, I would like to develop my ability to coach, improve my mindfulness and build on my awareness of my inner self.