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Earlier this year I got an advanced lesson in listening – how to listen in order to be heard. I fancy myself a good listener, but I found that I had violated one of the cardinal rules of the speaking/listening dynamic.

In a new project situation, a high-level panel was assembled to assess the project status and prospects. The goal was to combine a number of product components into a single integrated offering, and to do this with a minimum of time and effort.

I felt that I had much to offer, and began to lay out some of the details of my proposed approach. My core insight was that the problem was basically a code management problem, and that an analysis that mapped the current set of subroutines to the desired functionality would show the quickest and cheapest path to a combined solution.

I voiced this approach several times at meetings, with little response and some resistance. I have never lacked the courage of my convictions, and I continued to press my ideas in both conversations and e-mail expositions.

My ideas weren’t picked up, for a number of reasons. My status as an outsider, the dynamics in a project having nothing to do with mine, and underlying business issues all contributed to the situation. I had become increasingly shrill in my proposals, to no avail.

In fact, the feedback that I got from several contacts was that I wasn’t listening. I feel that I’m shouting my head off, and I’m told that I’m not listening. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I reflected on the situation. I had forgotten some key listening concepts.

Concept number one is: Your communication is the message received. I was communicating “I’m not listening”, when I thought I was saying “here is how we should do it”. I was the classic American tourist, repeating his message louder and slower to the natives, and just causing irritation.

Concept number two is: create space in the dialog for you to be heard. Often, when your message is not being heard, it is because the opposite party feels that they are not being heard. Paradoxically, the way to open space for a dialog is to work hard on listening. The other party needs to feel heard before their “ears open” and they can hear your message. The other parties in the project dialog didn’t feel that I was listening to their concerns, and as a result never even heard what I was trying to say. Needless to say, we never got into a dialog about pros and cons of the various approaches.

Concept number three: This is a hard teaching but here it is. Be less attached to the outcome. That’s right, don’t care so much.

Yes, I am aware that this is contrary to everything we know about our “Winner” culture. Winners never quit, winning is the only thing, etc. etc. How can you care less about achieving your goal, and still win?

My experience is that in some situations your attachment to the outcome, especially the solution that you envision, can get in the way of solving the problem. Your passionate commitment can rub up against the commitment of others, and produce frictions that impede progress.

This is a subtle thing and can operate at a subconscious level. Are you so attached to the outcome, or your proposed solution, that you miss other ways to accomplish your goals? Are you committed to the result, or to your solution? If you relaxed your attachment to the situation and your place in it, would this create space for others to contribute, or to accept more of your input?

This is one way to impact an organizational situation with integrity – to back off and create space within yourself for other solutions, and other outcomes. As the internal influences the external, a shift in your own attitude about outcomes can influence the external project situation.

That’s what happened in my project situation. I stopped my shrill expositions about my proposed approach, and listened to others. I used my listening skills to make others feel heard, and paid attention to some of the underlying organizational environment. I sought to create positive interactions, and support the team concept. I let go of the outcome a bit – we don’t have to solve all the problems in this application area right now. In fact, more desirable would be to create a better project dynamic, and set the stage for more effective decision processes in the future.

Not surprisingly, things got better. The organizational environment in which we were working got clearer and cleaner, and tensions eased. In the quiet created by my keeping my mouth shut, there was space for questions to be asked, and dialog to begin. I focused on short term deliverables (Chop wood, carry water), and keeping things moving, with less focus on goal and outcome, and let direction issues arise more naturally.

So, the (recurring) lesson for me is, to be understood, seek first to understand.