“My mother died.” Those words would normally jolt someone from his or her thoughts and elicit a sympathetic response. But when Jim Hull directed them at someone he was talking to, that person was already formulating his next sentence, and not really listening. Although the statement wasn’t true, Hull had clearly proved his point, and he suggested that they start the conversation over and adjust their listening skills. As founder and chairman of alarm monitoring company Monitronics International Inc., Hull’s honed communication skills helped the company grow to 580 employee and $165 million in revenue last year. Smart Business spoke with Hull about why it’s important to talk less and listen more.
Improve other people’s communication skills.
A guy sometimes reacts out of emotion, and he says something he himself doesn’t really understand or mean. Watch him closely. You can tell if he’s in a selective listening mode — we’re maybe disagreeing on something, you’re already creating an answer, and I’m not even finished talking.
Get him back out of it. Stop, at that point, and ask if he understands, and bring him back into line because people respond emotionally.
Be fully truthful with employees.
Man or woman can handle the truth, no matter how bad it is, as long as it’s factual and he has the whole story.
However, if you lie to him, or he lies to you — if you leave him with half the truth or say it another way, you leave him to his own imagination — he will end up torturing himself. The negative impact that he generates because of how he feels about things is great.
When you tell somebody an unpleasant truth where he may get very upset, many times he comes back and asks you for help because he knows you understand the problem. If you have a reputation of helping the person, then it becomes even better.
The negative impact of disciplining someone with simple truth is minimized.
Hire honest people.
You can modify short-term behavior for a while, but you will not change a person’s personality. You can show them where and how mistakes happen, future ramifications of it.
But you do run into people on the other side of the fence that just refuse to be honest. That’s my basic criteria before I can employ anybody.
I need to be able to trust them. We can make mistakes. We can fix those, but if you lie to me, I have a hard time wanting to fix that.
Mix facts with intuition.
I’m a person who listens a lot to my intuition and not just facts. It’s a study of facts, then sit back and say, ‘OK. Now I understand all the facts, what do I want to do and why?’
It’s important because if you go in nervous, reluctant, in spite of what all the facts are, you don’t have the passion to get the thing accomplished. Without the passion, you will have a difficult time being successful.
No matter what you think you know today, the only thing you really know is tomorrow is going to be different. You have to depend on your previous decisions and your ability to change directions quickly. It’s your intuition that tells you the future. Facts tell you the history.
Get buy-in when making changes.
You can order it done as a last resort, which doesn’t help a lot. You must take the time to explain the reasons for this change to the people that are going to implement these changes. Then take the time to really listen to what they have to say.
Prior to that, you have to generate an environment where you do listen to your employees. If you’ve got that environment, it opens up a fairly easy communication session.
They have a chance to have an opinion, to ask questions. They are now signed up and are part of the decision. It’s important that they feel that they are part of that decision.
Sometimes you don’t have the time to do those things, and you have to fire a shot. You do that, but you also tell them you’ve done that, and you give a reason, but you don’t make that a style. They understand those things have to happen.
Use other people’s methods.
If there are two ways of doing something — your way and my way — and I don’t see any difference in the results, we will do your way every time. That way, I don’t have motivation issues with you. I don’t even have to hardly manage it.
If it’s your idea, then you’re going to lead that. I have 600 people in the company. Most of these people are closer to the problem and solutions, and many times they have a better answer than I do.
A lot of managers don’t realize what is required to happen, and they become frustrated. They try to hang on to things that they do not need to hang on to.
Perfect your listening skills.
Listening is a technique in itself. I’ll keep quiet while you talk, and I will try to stay away from any selective listening. Then you keep quiet while I talk.
My first conversation, I will attempt to do nothing but make you understand I heard you. I will not agree or disagree with you. I have one objective, and that’s to convince you I heard you, so when you tell me that seven plus one equals 10, my first response will not be, ‘No, it’s not.’ My first response will be, ‘Do I understand that you just said that seven plus one equals 10?’ Inevitably, they’ll say, ‘Yeah, but I meant to the base eight.’ OK. I agree. There’s no argument.
If I had said, ‘No, it’s not, you idiot. Seven plus one equals eight,’ you now have a situation where listening becomes difficult. Spend the time and give the person the opportunity to respond. Then clearly convince them you heard them. It removes a lot of arguments.
HOW TO REACH: Monitronics International Inc., www.monitronics.com
