Listening is an act of love

Two chairs, a friendly face and a willingness to listen.

That's all it took for a communications manager with a midwest retailer to change how her company listened and responded to employees.

There's a lovely post about it by marketer Patrick Schaber at Lonely Marketer who describes how Jill (the communications manager) got honest feedback from employees. It's a great story for any manager thinking about how to talk to customers or employees.

Jill (a friend of Patrick's) plopped down two chairs in the heart of the busy corporate campus and put up a sign with a topic of the day. She occupied one chair and waited and waited.

She waited long enough that someone finally sat down and talked. Word spread that she was genuinely interested in what people had to say. Soon people were lining up waiting for the chair.

Taking notes, Jill passed on their feedback anonymously to upper management.

Here's the copy that is used to advertise The Chair:

"The Chair" is designed to spark open, face-to-face, one-on-one conversation with employees in the simplest way possible: by offering employees a topic to talk about, an empty chair to sit on and an Employee Communications team member to listen to them (really listen - without a laptop, cell phone or Blackberry in the way). "The Chair" gives us a pulse-check on employee opinions, thoughts and ideas, while giving employees a place to be heard. "The Chair" is set up every other Wednesday from 10:30 a.m. to noon for corporate employees, with plans to expand it to store employees in the future.

Why did it work? I think for the same reason that the NPR Storycorps' project has become such a success. Since 2003, almost 30,000 people have sat down in little booths to tell strangers their life stories. Each session starts with a simple request, "Tell me about your life."

StoryCorps' Dave Isay says that he realized how many people felt "completely invisible, believe their lives don't matter, and fear they'll someday be forgotten."

He's compiled the stories into a book, "Listening is Act of Love."

You can read more at The Lonely Marketer.

Posted by Internet Marketing Report editor, Julie Power, www.eIMR.blogspot.com 

Comments

[Jann Freed]

I appreciate your comments. I love StoryCorps and I bought the book. Thanks.