One of our pillars at Level 12 is value–we don’t want to waste time and money (either ours or our clients) building the wrong thing. We also want to ensure that what we build is really what the client needs and addresses their core problem.
Often we find that when clients ask for something, something else would give them more value, but they don’t know it yet.
Sometimes, building what a client asks for instead of taking the time to deeply know their business and process is the wrong approach.
We call this client empathy. Client empathy is fleshed out in many different ways in our team, but a major way we demonstrate and pursue client empathy is through active listening.
Client empathy demonstrated through active listening leads to better client value and development team ownership and interaction. Active listening is getting involved in someone else’s story, asking good questions, and fully understanding what they say.
Client Empathy
What is empathy? In its most basic form, empathy is fully identifying with someone else. Empathy is when we link arms with our clients, understand their business from top to bottom, and deliver solutions that address their needs and benefit them.
Client empathy gives better results for the client and the development team. The client gets a better solution that meets their needs and anticipates future growth. The solution is scalable in a technical and business context.
The team better understands the client, which prevents building the wrong thing. The team has enough context to look for unrealized value or push back against things they think won’t be valuable to the client.
Active Listening
Active listening is giving someone your full attention when they’re speaking. It also encompasses preparing to listen, receiving verbal and nonverbal messages, and giving feedback.
Active listening differs from passive listening in that passive listening has a higher chance of miscommunication or unmet expectations. Passive listening doesn’t interpret or clarify the full message, so the speaker can’t confirm or clarify the received message rather than the intended message.
Active listening involves:
- Paraphrasing and reflection
- Asking open-ended questions
- Clarifying what was said
- Limiting distractions or problem-solving in the moment
Active Listening in the Consulting Relationship
Active listening isn’t just limited to client interactions or the project kickoff meeting. Active listening should permeate every aspect of a relationship or project.
Discovery Phase
The discovery phase, requirements gathering, or project kickoff is probably the first project context that you think of when you think about active listening.
While it’s not the only context in which active listening is demonstrated, it is one of the most important. This portion directly affects what is built, when it’s built, and how it affects other aspects or priorities of the project.
Active listening through open-ended questions and clarification is crucial here. Rather than taking an order of desired features, asking questions to probe deeper into processes and desired results can reveal unspoken insights.
You learn not just about processes but values–why they do things, what they want to accomplish, and their goals.
One thing I struggle with is the tension between listening and doing:
- Wanting to preserve and document what I’ve learned, or
- Already designing their solution
Both are good and valuable qualities in the right context. A good consultant should know when to mute those tendencies when interacting with clients.
Solution Design
With the information from the discovery, active listening also affects the solution design.
Insights gleaned from the discovery phase directly affect what we build.
We aren’t going to build the tank that the client requests. We’re going to build the milk truck that they need.
If we design solutions instead of listening to the client, we miss information crucial to building the right thing.
As we build solutions, we have enough information to know if other features would be more valuable or if we could remove things because they’re not valuable or high priority at the time. Vision transfer also comes into play here–the team should be equipped to see the end goal and either drive toward that or raise flags for features that may not be in the client’s best interest.
Stakeholder Management
Active listening helps build trust with clients. It aligns the consultant and the client and shows the client that you’re on the same page, what they say matters, and what they say is valuable.
As trust is built, clients become more open. This builds a stronger relationship between the client and the consultant.
Active listening can also help alleviate resistance to change.
Fundamentally, we as humans want to know that we’re heard and understood. Active listening throughout the entire client relationship builds trust. This trust can propel projects through the friction of change for the benefit of the client.
Clients feel comfortable expressing their concerns. Rather than feeling misheard or misunderstood, they know what they communicate is valuable.
The consultant can then address those concerns and work with the client through issues or challenges, leveraging the partnership to benefit the client.
End User Experience
Leveraging empathy in user training is critical because it should inform the end-user experience.
The users are perhaps the most important people to listen to. They know their jobs best and what would improve or inhibit their workflow.
Active listening ensures that training is received and understood, builds trust with end users, and tells them their perspectives and opinions are valuable.
Empathizing and diving deep into their stories also help make the solution more useful. Iterative feedback is critical in providing value quickly and accurately.
Active Listening Drives Results
From start to finish, active listening is key to developing and maintaining client empathy for software development teams.
Listening through the entire solution lifecycle, from kickoff through user training, helps establish rapport and trust with stakeholders and users, ultimately leading to better-built software.
Active listening:
- Builds trust
- Guards against assumptions
- Helps teams build the right thing
- Avoids scope creep and extra work
Active listening in software development results in happier, more productive clients and software teams.