In ‘Always Split the Difference Unless it Relates to Cake’, or summat, Chris Voss describes active listening as a key principle in any negotiation.

Active listening relates to working to understand the meaning and intention of words you hear in conversation, rather than listening to respond.

I talk about this in my meandering epic ‘Train of Thought’ , where our typical passive listening cycle resembles:

But if you’re always listening to respond, you’ll always miss out on at least part of the message. Especially when the other person may not have articulated meaningfully if caught by the passage of their thoughts.

Voss talks about two principles of active listening:

Through this, we can build empathy and understand how to tackle our negotiations.

There’s only one issue with this, which may, in fairness, only be a Greg problem.

It feels slimy when it’s done to you.

I’ve come across mirroring many times in my career, simply out of the sheer volume of candidate conversations, some of whom are NLP (neurolinguistic programming) practitioners. You can read about their version here: NLP Mirroring.

It’s a technique grounded in relationships - have you ever noticed you sometimes copy the body language of those you are closest to? I always step in sync with those I am with, unconsciously.

Knowing that someone actively mirrors my style makes me immediately think they have an agenda. Of course, they do, given they have applied a negotiation technique for a reason.

The more popular a technique is, the more likely the other party is to know of the technique. Can it therefore backfire?

Nonetheless, my qualms aside, what would you say most long-term jobseekers (those who have felt the most pain from the recruitment system) want most, outside of a job?

From my experience of talking to a few hundred long-term job seekers, they hope for decency, to feel they are heard, for their concerns to be addressed, and for a resolution. This is backed up by all the discussion we see on socials.

Given job seekers have been trained to bear the pain of poor process, they are likely more forgiving than a sceptical passive candidate, who may vote with their feet without us ever knowing.

However if we treat the illness we can see, it has the byproduct of benefitting the least patient too.

So it would seem there is an opportunity to apply the principles of active listening systemically, by listening to Candidate Resentment and providing an experience that does the opposite.

If you accept that a systemic approach to active listening can be effective in dealing with problems, can we do the same in how we appeal to the specific people we want to employ?

At the start of any robust hiring process, two things need to happen:

1/ Confirm that the job description to be hired against is suitably and sufficiently accurate to the needs of the vacancy, team, business and context

2/ Clearly establish what good looks like in our candidates

That second doesn’t just relate to suitability criteria, but also aspirations and psychological fulfilment.

After all, if they don’t want to do the job, it doesn’t matter how good they are, does it?

By doing these two steps we can establish the voice of our candidates.

And if we have proactively and robustly identified what their voice is, we can proactively listen to determine how we attract them.

Through mirroring their situation, context, and minimum viable good.

Through labelling their problems and desires.

That’s called speaking in the language of your audience.

Irrespective of whether it’s in a job advert, an email, a DM or a phone call.

Or whether it’s in an interview confirmation, the interview itself, or any feedback.

Whether it’s offer stage, resignation, preboarding, onboarding or induction.

Everything is negotiation, even when built on empathy.

Proactive listening holds the key to attracting the right people, and ensuring they are retained. By building empathy they may respond advantageously.

And it’s why putting your candidates’ needs above your own, is one of the best ways to achieve the outcomes you want, the crux of an outside in approach to recruitment.

Oh and if you want to negotiate a job offer, you’d do well to actively listen to your desired employee, so that you can give them what they think they want to get you what you need.

Might even help in briefing, consulting, qualifying and interviewing.

Thanks for listening.

Regards,

Greg

p.s. I’m still open to your buying my stuff, but a bit less open than last week, so don’t dither if you need anything

p.p.s. This newsletter is a day early, due to the Easter Break. Have a good one!