The Listening Dial

I’m a huge fan of Johnathan Raymond’s Accountability Dial and have introduced it to many clients. It provides a simple structure for having challenging conversations.

The dial is a tool to help you when you’re frustrated by something, but you don’t say anything because you don’t want to be direct/hurt someone’s feelings/aren’t sure if you have a “right” to be upset. So you keep your mouth shut, the steam builds up, and then you erupt at your colleague and pick apart their project, take over their project, or just “coach them out” because you don’t want to deal with them (even though you never really tried). 

In the wake of Covid-19, I now have a whole new set of clients/colleagues/junior interns: 4 small children. We are now together 24/7 without school, play dates, Tae Kwon Do class, or babysitters. And I realized I wasn’t using a good approach to our challenging conversations. I had a tendency to let the steam build, erupt and take away their one privilege each day (watching a video). 

“Stop hitting your sister or you’ll lose your video.” 

“Stop using your dirty sock to wipe off the table or you’ll lose your video.”

“Stop blowing a whistle during rest time or you’ll lose your video.”

I could go on… really, really, I could go on.

I was going nuclear (not to mention taking away the one thing they could do that actually gives us a break - the four of them watching a video). 

So instead, I sat down with my kids, explained the concept of the accountability dial, and together we came up with our own “Listening Dial:” 

We agreed on some standard expectations for shelter-in-place days (which existed before, but were unspoken… as is often the case for expectations)

• We will all be respectful
• We will all be kind
• We will all do daily chores/tidying to keep our environment livable

If one of us violates the expectations, we follow the listening dial (they chose the degrees of the dial - these “consequences” were their ideas): 

• We will mention it to the person, and ask “are you being kind (respectful, etc) right now?”
• If the person doesn’t listen after the mention, they have to run 5 laps in the back yard
• If they still don’t listen, they have to run 10 laps in the back yard (it was 20 when we started, but collectively we realized that was a bit much)
• If the person still doesn’t listen, they lose their video for the day
• If they still don’t listen, they lose their video for 2 days.  

And it’s worked! I haven’t had to go “nuclear” since we started this. It gives me a chance to catch myself, it gives them a chance to catch themselves, it also has the added benefit of burning off wiggles and steam.

If my 2x4-year-olds, 5-year-old, and 7-year-old can figure this out; the adults in your organization can certainly use it.  

Try out Rebound’s version, or make your own, to get you and your newest coworkers through this!

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