We normally think of only two levels of listening: passive and active, but we can carve out a third: asking engaging questions.
Suppose you have a colleague who is bitterly complaining about not being motivated, being overworked and feeling unappreciated or verbally abused. Passive listening is quietly paying attention and taking it all in without interrupting, arguing or dismissing your colleague’s feelings. Active listening is a small step up because you make some comments to show understanding and empathy, such as ‘I see’ or ‘I understand.’ You might say “Tell me more.” Or you could add empathy statements like “I can see why you are upset. Very understandable.” These comments help your colleague feel comfortable being open with you. If you limit yourself to passive listening, your colleague could feel that your silence is judgemental, that you are sitting there with a feeling of disdain for their negativity. Conventional active listening makes them realize that you want to understand their feelings and that you feel some empathy for them rather than disapproval .
A Third Level of Listening: Engaging Questions
Engaging questions are different from analytical questions. Being analytical means asking for information, like: “How often has this happened?” “When did it start?” “What led to these things happening to you?” ‘What did you say to them?”
Engaging questions ask for opinions, feelings or solutions, not facts. There are two very engaging questions: ‘What do you think?’ and ‘What do you want?’ Here are some examples that might apply to your unhappy colleague:
- What would you like to see happen or be different? (What do you want?)
- What do you feel you could do to improve things? (What do you think?)
- Assuming you can’t change other people, what do could you do differently?
- How could you help your boss or colleagues think better of you?
- What developmental support do you think you might need?
- How might this be an opportunity for you to develop yourself?
- How could you apply what you have learned from this negative experience?
- How can you challenge yourself to raise your game to gain more respect?
If your colleague is thinking of leaving the organization, here are some engaging career questions:
Career clarification questions
- What aspects of your current job do you like best? What aspects do you not like?
- What are some of your most positive, memorable experiences in this job?
- What are some kinds of things you would rather be doing?
- What aspects of this organization would you like to learn more about?
- How can you learn more on your own initiative?
- What kinds of colleagues do you relate best to, least to?
- How can working with difficult colleagues be a leadership opportunity for you?
All of these questions involve highly active listening because they ask your colleague to think more deeply about what is important to them, what they really want to do and how they can influence what others think of them.
Listening based on engaging questions is much more active than what we have been calling active listening. From this point of view, conventional active listening is actually quite passive, just a small step up from passive listening. Normal active listening helps people open up more so they can get things off their chest or blow off some steam but it may not take them much further than this. Solutions or steps forward may or may not emerge from conventional active listening.
Engaging Questions to Overcome Negativity
When we are upset, we tend to see only the negative aspects of our experience, thus often overlooking the positives. Helpful questions can probe what positive experiences, fun times, proud moments or achievements that people may overlook or take for granted. Asking people to list such positives is a way of using questions to help people achieve a better balance in their own minds between negatives and positives. This a deeper form of active listening. Although such questions are not engaging in the sense of asking about wants or possible actions to be taken, they are engaging in the sense that they show interest in the person.
Questions of the form ‘What do you think?’ or ‘What do you want?’ also show interest in the person as you are stimulating them to think and talk about themselves, what they want and think they can do. Asking about positive past experiences is engaging in the same way, by showing interest in how someone feels about their past experiences. They may seem like analytical questions but they are asking about feelings rather than hard, cold facts. We ask analytical questions so we can make decisions or recommendations whereas asking about feelings can help people think or feel differently about, and for, themselves.
Positive feeling questions might include:
- What are some times in this job that have been the most fun for you?
- What are your happiest memories of your time working here?
- What have you most enjoyed about some of the colleagues you like?
- What are some things you have done that you feel proud of?
- What are some ways you have helped others improve themselves or their work?
- What are some suggestions you have made that colleagues have appreciated?
- What are some things you have learned that you feel good about?
- What are the main things you like best about your job or the organization?
- What features of your job or the organization make you feel you might like to stay here?
It’s important to encourage them to list only positives; getting diverted into negatives will not create a better balance between positive and negative. It's worth noting that such feeling questions are not engaging in the sense of seeking solutions. They are actually analytical because you are trying to understand their feelings, which is not the same as asking for factual information, such as how long they worked here or where they worked before.
This deeper form of listening is empowering because you are helping people to think for themselves. Try to resist pointing things out to them or drawing your own conclusions. Instead, ask further questions once you have got through most of the above list:
- Now that you have recalled some positives, how has that affected the way you feel about things?
- What do you feel you have learned about yourself and your situation from this conversation?
- What do you see as a way forward for yourself now?
If you want to make a suggestion, try to phrase it as a “What do you think?” or “What do you want?” question:
- How do you feel it would work for you if you did B instead of A? (Rather than “You need to do B.”)
- What do you see as the advantages of either option over the other?
- Which option do you feel best lines up with your preferences?
- How do you see yourself putting this option into practice?
It takes work to become skilled at using this deeper level of listening because we so quickly want to throw in our 2 cents, at which point we stop listening and become paternalistic. As soon as you are tempted to give advice, remind yourself that, in doing so, you are feeding people fish rather than teaching them to fish and this is disempowering. Seeing you as having “the answers” may foster a degree of dependency on you and loss of confidence in your colleague.