The role of listening in collaboration
I have detected a theme in some of our recent Blogs – which is related to collaboration, our core business as a technology vendor in this space, but to some extent addresses the silent partner of collaborative interactions. I refer of course to ‘listening’.
I noticed for example that Hilda in one of her recent posts on Oracle Expert referred to the vocabulary gap between the business users and the IT funded change agents – who often seem to users as from another planet. Informed interaction just doesn’t reach the goal required – in this case relevant and accurate product specifications. The two sides basically cannot listen effectively to each other.
Personally I recently discussed the importance of clarity, as perhaps the most important core value at Claromentis. Clarity comes from observing and listening to your audience – often so diverse – and making sure that communication is founded on understandable concepts that everyone has the vocabulary to absorb at their required level for project success.
Out there in the very much larger world Maureen Chiquet Global CEO of Chanel, recently wrote a short personal article in the Harvard Business Review (November this year) which I found enjoyable and insightful, where she admitted that the emotionally charged and heated advice she received in her early years at Chanel “you’ve gotta learn to listen!” turned out to be one of the most valuable things she ever learned, and that a listening focus now forms a foundation for her success as the CEO.
I was reflecting on the fact that in so many collaboration projects, and with so many client teams, we discuss the importance of user take up, which we tend to default to quantifying as participative content creation. We look at the audit logs to measure how many posts, documents, news items, blogs and just about anything else were created or edited this month as opposed to last.
I am wondering if we are missing something fundamental here.
Ever been to a party and met someone really interesting – then at the end of the evening realized you didn’t learn anything at all about them – they were just great and encouraging listeners? I am sure you have – it is an old analogy.
My point is that there might be a significant user base that is quietly listening and learning from the collaboration hubs, the posting, documents, blogging and general content creation that some types of users are either confident enough – or for whatever reason motivated enough – to participate in.
The fact that they don’t directly participate back to the discussion might not be important for certain types of users – they are absolutely engaged because they are listening.