A picture may be worth a
thousand words, but
Chris Hudson would much rather hear the thousand words.
“If you have a story that illustrates the point, they’ll remember the story far longer than
they will remember the picture
of a nice building you showed
them,” Hudson says.
And Hudson, president and
CEO of Morris Architects,
doesn’t want any of his
employees to be at a loss for
words when they are asked a
question about the firm.
“I explain to everyone the
damage that, that kind of
response would do is immeasurable,” Hudson says. “Shame
on us if we haven’t explained
it to them well enough for
them to understand.”
By committing his 215 employees to becoming good listeners
and, as a result, always having
good answers, Morris Architects
achieved 2007 revenue of
$48.8 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Hudson about how to listen
and the role stories play in the
growth of a business.
Q. What is the key to being a
good listener?
There is a difference
between what someone tells
you and what they are really
telling you. I try to look for an
understanding of what is the
person saying.
Where are they coming
from? Why are they saying it?
That gives me the ability to not
only see through things but
help understand what people
are really trying to communicate to me.
I don’t immediately jump to a
conclusion. I don’t just immediately assume that someone
is telling me the whole story.
I usually assume they are
just telling me the side of the
story that they want me to
hear, and then I probe a little
bit more and try to help them.
‘If you were in the other person’s shoes, would that make
sense to you?’ Try to interact
in the conversation.
I try to take the same technique that I’m speaking of and
say, ‘Well, Joe, if you were in
Susan’s shoes, do you see why
she might be challenging you
on this?’ Literally walk
someone through. Ask a
lot of questions.
I try not to approach a
discussion by just immediately saying, ‘Nope,
you’re wrong. This is
what you need to do. Let’s
move on.’ If I think it’s
a situation that requires
some thoughtful discussion, I use a lot of
questions.
Q.Why is listening so
important?
Many times, people
come to the leader of a
company and they are
talking about one issue,
but they are not revealing the underlying source of a
concern. When someone is
nearing the end of a project
and has anxiety about, ‘What
am I going to work on next;
what am I going to do?’ it will
manifest itself in odd ways.
Someone will start talking
about how the copier isn’t
good enough or they need a
different computer.
It will come up in some way
that they are pointing out an
issue or problem in the firm
when the real issue is they are
nervous about what their next
assignment is going to be. An
important trait of any leader is
to be able to see through the
real issue, and not ignore the
superficial issue, but understand what is causing that.