Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of executive coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you want to be perceived.

I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach,

and today we're talking about listening without an agenda.

At 31, with her MBA under her belt, Patricia was doing well.

In the male-dominated world of warehouse management, she was leading large-scale systems

installations. She also had some challenges. She was

barely five foot four and she looked like a high school cheerleader. The first time we

met she said, people always call me Perky and I hate it. That's why I went from Patty to Patricia,

but it doesn't matter. I still get treated like a little girl. Patricia had worked hard to be

taken seriously. She had learned to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, the fastest person with an answer, the smartest mind in the room.

All this compensating had made Patricia a dynamic expert, but she'd also developed some behaviors that were

ticking people off, which is why I was working with her.

When Patricia spoke, she was usually crisp and concise, and she stayed on track.

Her problem wasn't when she was speaking.

It was when she wasn't.

Here's an example.

I had just begun to tell her that I'd like to work with her on a behavior I call

Listen without an agenda when she jumped in and said she knew she was a bad

listener that it had always been tough for her that it had gotten worse in grad school

and besides she wasn't sure it was really

possible for anyone to truly listen without an agenda. Well if I had needed

proof that she had trouble listening that was it. Most of us have trouble listening.

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