How we’re using SDI to help top sales leads demonstrate active listening

The reality of listening under pressure

In sales environments, active listening is often incredibly difficult. The ever-changing conditions we work in can bring challenging external factors such as tight deadlines, unexpectedly shortened meetings, ambitious targets, and increasingly complex customer demands.

Alongside this, we experience a series of internal pressures, wanting to be seen as the expert, needing to add value quickly, or trying to clearly get our request across so we can move closer to our goal.

Together, these conditions mean that under pressure, even experienced leaders can find themselves listening to respond, solve or close, rather than listening to truly understand.

A familiar challenge for sales leaders

A client recently asked us to design a workshop for their top sales leads focused on active listening. They wanted to equip their people with the skills needed to create rapport, build credibility, and genuinely understand their customers during conversations. In response, we were inspired by a concept grounded in strengths-based psychology.

SDI theory helps explain why this happens. We each have a fixed set of motives that drive how we show up in conversations, and under pressure we instinctively adapt our behaviour in an attempt to return to what feels comfortable or familiar. Alongside this, we each rely on a set of strengths, the behaviours we most often display and become known for by others.

When active listening becomes performative

So how does this link back to active listening?

Many active listening workshops focus on practising visible behaviours, open body language, mirroring, nodding, and repeating back what has been said.

SDI helps us understand that there is more to it than that. Under pressure, our own motivations can easily take over. Without realising it, we start filtering what we hear through our own priorities, which means we respond with solutions, opinions or next steps, even when the other person needs something different. When someone recognises why something matters to us, not just what we have said, trust builds more quickly and conversations move forward more productively.

Listening beneath the words

To truly understand what people need, and to demonstrate that you are actively listening, the focus needs to shift from what is being said to why it matters to them.

This means asking thoughtful, open questions that help uncover what is important beneath the surface of the conversation, such as:

• Whose voice needs to be heard here? Is anyone being undervalued or misunderstood?
• What difference are you hoping to make?
• What do you need to achieve?
• What, in your view, would be a good indicator that progress is being made?

Listening in this way requires paying attention not just to the words being used, but to what the other person seems to care about most. As you listen, you may notice their focus tends to lean in one of three directions. Are they primarily focused on people and relationships (partnership, harmony, fairness), on performance and outcomes (achievement, pace, results), or on process and logic (systems, options, testing and risk)?

When you listen with this awareness, you can respond in a way that aligns with what matters most to them, and that is when people truly feel heard.

Three different ways conversations can be heard

For a People focused motive, when listening, interpret what you hear through the lens of who they are trying to support. Listen for relationships and any impact on others.

For a Performance focused motive, when listening, interpret what you hear through the lens of their ultimate goal or objective. Listen for urgency, task accomplishment and a strong desire to make decisions.

For a Process focused motive, when listening, interpret what you hear through the lens of underlying principles or logic. Listen for thoughtfulness, pauses in conversation for reflection, and practical “what if” questions.

What active listening really asks of us

Active listening isn’t about doing more. It is about noticing more. By understanding both our own motives and those of others, SDI gives sales leaders a practical framework to listen beyond words and respond in ways that truly resonate.

Get in touch if you’d like to explore what this could mean for you.