​Ernest Hemmingway once said I like to listen. I have learned a good deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
 
Have you ever had the experience of visiting a professional adviser such as a lawyer or an accountant (or even a doctor) and they don’t listen properly so that before you have had the chance to do more than just mention the nature of your problem, your adviser is presenting you with a detailed itemised solution?
 
How can they do this when they have not listened to your exact issues? What they (and we as professionals) are running the risk of doing is assuming what the problem is that their client brings to them. Professional people (me included) should seek to avoid this tendency for three good reasons. First you have not listened to all of the request for advice and may jump to the wrong conclusion. Second the mere expression of a worry and articulation of a problem may help a client to see a solution for themselves. And third it is just common professional courtesy to hear your client out – however busy you may be.
 
Wikipedia eloquently summarises this tendency of jumping to conclusions(officially the jumping conclusion bias, often abbreviated as JTC, and also referred to as the inference-observation confusion) is a psychological term referring to a communication obstacle where one "judge[s] or decide[s] something without having all the facts; to reach unwarranted conclusions". 
 
The same is true for customers seeking services such as IT outsourcing, perhaps for the first time. It is very easy to go into the first dialogue or negotiation with them as an experienced supplier, not listen to them explaining their requirements and instead telling them what they want based on your experience or previous customers. The new customer will expect and want you to have this experience but not have it thrust down their throat. They have to formulate their specific needs if for no other reason than to get internal buy in to and understanding of an important buying decision.
 
Also if you listen properly as this Thomson Reuters articlesuggests you may well find that the immediate “ask” actually masks a deeper underlying issue Are clients coming to you for more than just tax return preparation? Are they asking for counsel on tax-related legislation, business decisions, or strategic planning? Often times, when a client says they want your time, they really need your knowledge.
 
As Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt famously observed The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. You simply won’t do that if you don’t listen properly and carefully to clients expressed needs before pitching in with your “solution”.
 
Epictetus the Greek philosopher sums this up nicely:“We were given two ears but only one mouth, because listening is twice as hard as talking.”

​I was thinking this week about the dangers of assumed knowledge and using words or phrases that seem important and indeed have a serious meaning but get used wrongly and out of context. I am sure this is true of all professions, but in the legal world words or phrases that often fall into this category are “without prejudice”, “subject to contract” and “privileged”. They are used by lawyers for precise purposes but get “adopted” by our clients and used for all manner of purposes on the basis I suppose that they must be important words.
 
It's the same in a way as the catchphrases that annoyingly make their way into so many business conversations in an apparent attempt to convey some enlightening concept. Phrases like crystal ball gazing, brainstorm, and make sure we are all singing from the same hymn-sheet have made their way into the mainstream of business conversations -and if I’m honest we all tend to use them.
 
This articlelists the 50 most annoying office jargon phrases such as “win-win”, “circle back” and “run an idea up the flagpole” while this Daily Telegraph articlesuggests the 10 most scream-inducing business jargon phrases include “blue sky thinking”, “it’s on my radar” and “thinking outside the box”. A Sky News surveyof 2000 UK employees has revealed which pieces of ambiguous corporate jargon are the most annoying such as “touch base”, “game changer” and one I confess I had never heard of “thought shower” (A meeting to freely discuss new ideas in their early stages).
 
Another really unpleasant one I had also never come across is “punch a puppy” which apparently means To do something horrible for the long-term good of the company.
 
It’s really quite disturbing to realise that we all tend to fall into this bad habit of using business jargon I suppose under the impression it makes us seem more effective or creative. George Bernard Shaw said “English is the easiest language speak badly”and he had a point.
 
Language in business should be used positively and exactly and to good effect. As President John F Kennedy said of Winston Churchill “In the dark days and darker nights when England stood alone – and most men save Englishmen despaired of England’s life – he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”
 
We should I propose choose are words with care, maybe as Mahatma Ghandi suggested “Speak only if it improves upon the silence.”   and above all avoid business jargon using words to set out exactly what we mean and not relying on some half understood or inappropriate “power phrase”.

​I remember a rugby player in my year at school who played as full back for the school team. He was very good. He once explained his philosophy to me. He said that if he had two players running towards him, and the try line, with the ball he made sure he at least tackled one of them. As he said he couldn’t then be blamed and it was hardly his fault if his cover defence was nowhere to be seen.
 
In a crisis or other serious situation in a work context actually sometimes all you can do is just get on with your job and do it to the best of your ability.  Some events (like one of the two rugby players passing to the other and scoring) you cannot prevent. 
 
On one deal I worked on recently we were finalising all of the contract paperwork when a last-minute hitch nobody had anticipated cropped up. We were told the contact would not be signed. The person I was with was all for stopping and going home. I refused and insisted we complete at least what we could.
 
And low and behold the crisis eventually got sorted out and a week later the preparation work we had carried out for contract signature proved essential as the deal was indeed concluded.
 
There are more apt sporting analogies for this. The mantra of the American football team the New England Patriots under their coach Bill Belichik is just that “Do your job”. See this articlewhich explains  We all have a simple understanding of that mantra. In a football sense, you have an assignment and you execute that assignment.
 
Any team in a business context depends on the individual members with particular skill sets – sales, architect, legal, finance, delivery – getting on with their particular role no matter what crises may be going on around them – whatever the “score in the game may be”.
 
To return to the sporting theme Phil Jackson the American basketball coach said The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team. More generally and perhaps philosophically he commented Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable. It has its way with you, no matter how hard you try to control it. The trick is to experience each moment with a clear mind and open heart. When you do that, the game - and life - will take care of itself.
 
I think ultimately all we can do in our professional working life, like in top level sport, is the immediate task in front of us to the best of our ability with clear focus and attention, whatever may be happening around us. In that simple way great things can be achieved. As Francis of Assisi said Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

I used to row at school. In my final year we had a good crew but never quite seemed to be able to win at regattas. It was frustrating to lose in semi-finals or finals. Then we had a new coach for a few weeks, a teacher who had been an Olympic weightlifter. I am not sure if he was a top-level rower, but with his experience at the highest level of sport he instilled in us a very positive desire to win – which we duly did triumphing at the last two regattas before school broke up and we all left for university or work.
 
The funny thing was that whilst it was great to win – and we celebrated in traditional style by throwing the cox in the river and drinking (a lot of) beer from the large silver cups we won and the pewter tankers that came with them – there was also, a day or so later, a sense of anti-climax now we had achieved what we had been working towards all year.
 
When you are striving to win in any sport failure is a great motivator – winning can lead to complacency and loss of direction if not managed properly.
 
The same is true in a business transaction. I have just finished a large deal after more than six months of concentrated work with a tight knit team. Completion is a success and vindicates all of the hard work – but it also brings with it as well as a sense of achievement a feeling almost of let-down - a sort of what do you do next.
 
This article sums it up: When it comes to sustaining success, we often believe that once we have achieved success, that we will continue to be successful.
But it doesn’t always work like that, sometimes once we have achieved our goal we lose the hunger, we lose our edge, our eye of the tiger, the drive which made us successful in the first place.
 
While this sporting article entitled Sustaining success! The Coach’s Holy Grail has some ideas on sustaining success.
 
One other useful contribution to this topic is that in a business context it is better to start changing when you are still strong, not when you are already weak. In other words when you have just signed one deal take the experience and the momentum into the next one.
 
As Henry Miller said: “One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.”
 
In a broader context it may also be helpful to recognise that it is not just about the winning and crossing the finishing line first. It is also about the journey and the lessons learned. As the tennis player Arthur Ashe is quoted as saying Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.
​