5.1: Social Awareness - A Core Skill

Active Listening

Active Listening: It is the practice of listening with an intent to understand and remember a conversation with a person. It takes undivided attention to the words, the tone, and body language of the person. Learning to listen to our conversational partner, team member, customer, supplier, or supervisor is an important part of business communication. Too often, instead of listening to the other person, we mentally start planning or rehearsing what we want to say next. That typically leads to missing much of what the speaker shared.

Communication involves the sharing and understanding of both the words and the intent that are being communicated. We need to be fully present, paying attention to the actual words, tone of voice, body language, or, if it is written, the writing style. Remember, we hear with our ears but listen with our brains, and sometimes it is all too easy to tune out the messenger or their message with our brains. To actively listen, our ears, eyes, and brain need to work together. Choosing to listen attentively takes effort. People communicate with words, expressions, and even through silence, and our attention to them will allow us to communicate and collaborate better. By not listening, we are essentially communicating the messages of disrespect and 'I don't care' to the speaker.

With active listening, we can increase our capacity to support, influence, motivate, develop, or serve people effectively.

Empathy

Empathy: It is our ability to understand how the people around us think and feel. When someone is feeling down, positive words seldom do anything good for them. On the other hand, emotionally connecting with that person and making them feel they are not alone in the emotional state they are in helps.

Genuine empathy is heartfelt and helps us to build stronger relationships. We must think about how we would feel if we were in the other person's shoes. When trying to empathize, we cannot let our biases influence us. The acronym, CONNECT (Rae) is a tool to use:

• C - Create open body language
• O - Observe nonverbal cues
• N - Notice what our gut tells us
• N - Nurture the conversation
• E - Engage with eye contact
• C - Convey warmth with our voice
• T - Talk less, allow others to talk more

Organizational Awareness

A project could involve multiple organizations. Organizations could be both internal and external. Finance, sales, or marketing are examples of the internal organizations. Examples of external organizations are vendors, customers, and industry associations who are either beneficiaries of or contributors to the project. A project manager needs to gain sufficient awareness of the organizations he or she is dealing with to maximize the value for the project. What does that entail? It is about understanding an organization's structure, leadership, and power dynamics. In other words, it is about knowing who is influential, how decisions are made, and how to navigate the organization's social landscape for a win-win outcome. Why does it matter?

• Enhances the ability to influence the power players in the organization.
• Improve the collaboration within the organization.
• Better navigate the internal politics.
• Improves our odds of success.

Next, we will review the types of organizational information needed and why it matters to a PM.

Table \(\PageIndex{1}) shows the four categories of information, the actual information, and the benefits to a project manager. The left column shows the four categories, which are, organizational structures and power dynamics, political landscape, stakeholders, and cultural practices. The middle column lists the key information related to the core element. The right column lists the respective benefits to a project manager.

The Scenario

As a vendor relations manager, Bob had to obtain a certification of "sign-off" from multiple semiconductor vendors for his company's software products. At one vendor, during the certification discussion, Rich, the design manager, stated that since they had already certified a competitor’s product, there was no reason for his team to do the work to certify Bob's product. Rich also stated that since none of his customers or his design center engineers were asking him to certify Bob's product, he saw no reason to embark on that project. Bob thanked Rich for that information and left saying that he did not want to waste Rich's time anymore. 

Yes, it was a tough meeting for Bob. However, he walked out with a critical piece of information—what it takes to get Rich to certify a product was to get a mutual customer or Rich's design center engineers to request the certification. Bob came up with a win-all (for him, mutual customers, design center engineers, and my sales manager) outcome.

With a strategy on hand, Bob sought the help of his sales manager working with customers where the vendor's design center was located. Bob explained his strategy of getting the vendor's design center engineers excited with the product Bob was promoting. Bob enticed the sales manager with the list of customers and the potential dollar value of the booking if the sales manager could help Bob's plan. The sales manager agreed to help. On Bob's request, without using Bob's name, the sales manager arranged a free "Lunch and Learn" event for the design center engineers and provided the two time-limited (30-day) licenses of the product for the design center engineers to use. Bob's expectation (Bob knew the product was faster and more accurate than the competitor's product that the vendor was using) was that after using the product, the design center engineers will ask for renewal of licenses. 

Twenty-eight days after the lunch and learn, Bob got a call from Rich asking for a 30-day license renewal and a presentation about our product. He mentioned that his design center engineers were asking him to "sign off" on our product. Bob enabled the right resources on his side to help Rich complete the sign-off project as quickly as possible.

Outcome

• Rich, the vendor manager, looked like a hero to his management by completing the signoff in record time.
• As promised, the sales manager started getting calls from the customers for the purchase of the sign-off certified product.
• Customers were happy to eliminate several iterations between them and the design center, saving several weeks of design time.  
• Bob's management was happy with the certification from the vendor because it increased the sales of the product.

Last but not least, it helped Bob close a key objective and obtain his bonus. It was a total win-all outcome for everyone involved.

Analysis

• What enabled Bob to come up with a strategy?
  • The critical piece of information Rich said in his discussion with Bob: "Not a single request from a mutual customer or his design center engineers."
• What core skill helped Bob get the critical information?
  • Active listening.
• Was the outcome a win-all outcome?
  • Certainly, yes!

The Scenario

A customer applications project manager (PM) was working at the design center with multiple customers on their projects. One of them was a defense contractor. The customer was an extremely amiable person. The chip that he was developing was small but used some proprietary design blocks that even the PM had no visibility into. Hence, the PM had to rely on the customer’s words to offer any support or determine the status of the design. At the start of each month, the PM was required to forecast the number and the specific designs that would get into manufacturing process flow by the end of that month. A design of that size typically took two months to get it into the manufacturing flow. Not having access to the design data, the PM had to rely on the customer for the status. After two months, the customer was still in the simulation phase, which was unusually slow. The customer’s reason was that he was thoroughly testing the design. At that point, the PM told his manager that he cannot forecast the customer’s design because it was taking too long and he had no visibility into it. After a few more weeks of simulation, the customer told the PM that he had forgotten to add a piece of circuitry and was going to add it. After some discussion, the PM realized it was a sizable chunk of circuitry, and the customer should have noticed it right away and not after three months of simulation. The PM communicated this episode to his manager but did not know how to break into the issue. The customer was amiable but would neither ask for help nor share any details of why it was taking him that long.

After 3 months, the design was far from complete, and the customer failed to come into the design center to finish the design. The PM could not reach the customer by phone or email. That is when the GM called the PM into his office to discuss the customer situation. The GM started the discussion, saying, “John (the PM), I have a concern, and I am not sure how to lay it out. I will be frank. This customer’s management told me that they believe the support they have received is substandard, and I was shocked. What I expected from you was just the opposite. Are you overloaded with customers? Why is this happening?”

The PM showed the detailed documentation of every discussion he had with the customer. That included the episode where the customer found out that he forgot to add a large piece of circuit after simulating the design for two months. That specific detail and the complete documentation of every conversation with the designer were enough for the GM to work with. The GM mentioned the call from the customer’s management accusing the PM of providing poor customer support. The GM thanked the PM for the detailed documentation and not to worry about the customer. Next, he was going to share the details with the customer’s management. 

Outcome

• The designer's management handed the design over to another designer to complete the design. Since the new designer had successfully completed his design using a competitor’s technology, the design was transferred to the competitor. In other words, it was lost!

Analysis

• The customer was most likely not comfortable using the design tools to develop his design. He likely felt shameful to ask for help. In fact, he refused help every time the PM offered.

• Not knowing that the PM had documented every discussion, the customer probably thought he could get away by blaming the PM for poor support.