I am currently running two businesses. One is Santa Lucia, a business that serves people with developmental disabilities in New Mexico, and Xpress, and start up in pharmaceutical promotion. On the surface the businesses can appear to be very different, but at the core their goal is much the same; to understand what our stakeholders need and make that thing reality.

This week I had multiple conversations with a stakeholder at Santa Lucia who was clearly unhappy about a situation and kept returning to the same issues in our talks. On Friday afternoon, during our third conversation about the same thing, I said, “Have I heard everything you needed me hear?” Her response finally brought us to where we needed to be. She acknowledged the things I’d heard and validated, and brought several more issues to the fore that I had not heard.

I am not sure if she’d articulated those issues to me previously or not, but I certainly had not heard them. If I’d stopped trying to resolve the issue and just focused on hearing her in the first conversation I could have spared us both a lot of frustration.

I woke up this morning wondering how I could ask the same question in an effective way using the Xpress platform, which is largely digital.

I believe that wanting the answer to ‘Have I heard you?’ is the key.

We can use the tried, true, and often annoying, active listening techniques, or develop something more suited to whatever communication platform we employ. It’s not the technique or exact words that matter, it’s the intention. Have I really heard you? Am I providing what you really need? Is my business providing a real solution? Am I making your world better? Are we making every part of the larger world we touch better? Does this work?

Things I am grateful for today – Fall, the Humans of New York(HONY) Facebook page, YouTube videos that crack me up, and 4th grade teachers who totally commit to their role of Zombie Crossbow Target at the school Halloween Carnival.