There is a nail in their forehead. Whatever you do, don't mention it.

A woman sits on a sofa describing a relentless pressure in her head. It is constant, she says. She can feel it all the time. The camera pulls back and we see the reason: there is a nail in her forehead. Her partner points this out. Quite reasonably, you might think. She gets upset. He tries again, more gently. She gets more upset. At one moment he stops, gives up on the nail and simply listens, and you can see her receive it. And then, because he is a human being and he wants to help, he goes back to the nail.

Most of us watch that film and laugh, because we recognise ourselves in him.

(Note: this is not about gender, either. It could easily be the other way round. This is simply a human being thing.)

The headache can be anything

The nail is not really the point. The headache is.

In our work life, the headache can be something that has been decided: a reorganisation, a pay cut, an acquisition, the loss of the conditions we need to do our job properly. Or it can be something that simply is: a difficult manager, the stupid report we have to fill in every month, the uniform, not selling enough, not speaking up in meetings, never finishing projects on time.

The headache, in other words, is any perceived misery that a person is carrying around with them.

For those of us who lead people, this is the main thing I want to convey: with some of these miseries there is something to be done. The nail can be pulled out. With others there is absolutely nothing to be done, not by them and not by you. The reorganisation is happening. The client has gone. The colleague is not coming back.

The startling thing

The startling thing is that it does not work to say "well, you do have a nail in your forehead".

Not when the person is upset, frustrated, sad, angry, stressed, or reactive in any of the other ways people get. Not when they need to be heard. And not, it turns out, even when you are right.

It does not work when the advice is unsolicited, either, and the person is perfectly calm. And it does not work when they are accusing you, unfairly as far as you can see, of having caused the headache in the first place. Perhaps by saying something they misinterpreted. Perhaps by them hearing something you never actually said.

In all of those situations it works better to listen attentively, even when it seems unfair, and even when it feels utterly stupid not to point out the nail.

Why we cannot help ourselves

We have not learned to listen in this way. To only listen. And we have a long list of things we tell ourselves in the moment, which all sound like good reasons.

If I only listen, then:

- the nail would still be there

- I am not helping

- that is not nice, to just sit there and do nothing

- they will stay in their pain

- I’m not doing my job

- it might look as though I am agreeing with them

- the wrongness of it all would go unchallenged, and surely someone has to say it

Notice that every one of these is about us. Our discomfort. Our need to be useful. Our whole body and soul wanting to help. This is the thing the man in the film could not manage, and it is the thing most of us cannot manage either.

What to have your attention on instead

Here is the shift.

The decisive factor in whether or not you should listen attentively is not the issue. It is the state the person is in and their need to be heard.

So at the outset, the questions to hold are these:

Is this person reactive? Does this person have a strong need to be heard?

Everything to do with the headache and the nail is secondary. This is almost the exact reverse of how most of us manage. We arrive with our attention on the problem, and we treat the person's state as an obstacle to solving it.

There is one exception worth naming. When people are in shock, or in a genuine emergency, it can be helpful to be directive and decisive. But this is a different situation and it calls for something different.

And when someone feels heard

Then, and only then, something opens up.

You can ask whether they would like your help. You can ask whether it would be all right if you said something. You can create a mutual agreement about what happens next, rather than assuming one.

For example:

- "Would you like some advice on how to reduce your headache?"

- "Would you like some feedback, because I think I can see something that might be

  contributing to it?"

- "Would you like some coaching around this?"

All of these require the other person's consent. Which means that if the answer is not a yes, we do not give the advice, we do not give the feedback, and we do not coach. That is harder than it sounds. It is also the whole thing.

In closing

If listening first is the right move even here, in the most absurd case anyone could construct, where the person is complaining about a headache and you can plainly see the nail sticking out of their forehead, then it is fairly safe to assume it is the right move almost everywhere else too.

Most of the headaches you will meet as a manager are not that clear cut. Half of them have no nail to pull out at all.

Listen more attentively anyway. Magical things happen when we do.

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If you would like to practise this with your managers, get in touch to explore how Tuff could support you.