How can active listening help you address communication challenges in M&A?

As my professor said: "We have one mouth and two ears. What does that tell us?" Active listening means - undivided attention - interest in the other person - and above all, taking the time. That means listening for the sake of listening, not to respond.

Help employees share discomfort, distress and dreams Once a merger and acquisition has been announced, there is an opportunity to use listening to help create connection. First, understand why the merger/acquisition happened in the first place. Leaders will highlight some great reasons from national or global expansion, complimentary services or competitive environments. Make sure you understand the intention in order to explain WHY to employees in a manner that considers their needs. We then have the opportunity to answer employee question and get ahead of the rumour mill to create trust. Through listening, we can help employees share their concerns and also articulate their hopes and dreams for the organization. It helps connect.

Active listening is important because it creates trust. During times of uncertainty, such as M&A, employees look to leadership for cues about their stability. They are actively listening to you because they are trying to predict their future based on your words, body language, and emotions. Candid conversations about what is known and can be shared are critical to retaining employees during the turmoil and maintaining morale and productivity. If there is silence from the leadership, employees will create their own scenarios. If they feel heard and trust their leadership, even if they don't have all of the information, they will accept that they are being well-represented in the process.

Most people focus on active listening while in fact the structure that creates a forum is far more significant. I have managed 4 mergers and one acquisition in all cases having clear programs that support my stakeholders was the most important thing. If your information flow is not in place rumors will take over and all your active listening is of little use .

While face-to-face communication may be challenging when the target and acquiring companies are separated geographically, it is important to have key conversations in person. There is no better way to effectively perceive body language and other nonverbal cues. Virtual conversations will be more productive once you have established trust.

Active listening lets you get your information straight from the source - your employees. With M&A it's really easy for rumors and assumptions to take hold of your teams, so having some open one-on-one or small group conversations can help you determine what your employees are discussing with each other so you can stop misinformation in its tracks. Using active listening as a tool to keep misinformation at bay, you can quickly rebuild trust with your employees and help put them at ease so they can focus on their work.

It is difficult to have active listening in merger situations often there is lack of clarity and lack of information. Because the whole company is affected in some way or the cascade of information needs to be handled carefully. Support materials for managers will be subject to individualistic interpretations and therefore centralized messaging in complementarity are essential. Experience has proven that people gravitate to factual references persons for info and friends for empathy. Having a person in place who is capable if listening to concerns is essential in the process but it is important to recognize that you cannot couch someone to become an active listener

With the launch of software like CoPilot, it’s now easier than ever to take notes from virtual conversations. Compare your version to the CoPilot generated version, and see how much you captured. This could also work with a transcript in companies without CoPilot, or even with notes from other people on the calls.