Are Leaders incapable of listening or don’t they care to listen? Why do we place such an emphasis on it in the first place? How do you define a good listener? Where does being a good listener sit in the hierarchy of being a successful Leader?
A common refrain about the characteristics of a successful Leader/Entrepreneur is they have “passion, are resourceful, willing to improvise and listen to others and have a strong determination to succeed”. Do these characteristics make them an effective listener? I have worked with a significant number of successful owners, CEO’s and Presidents and they ALL fit the profile except for the listening part.
To illustrate this look at the examples of business Leaders past and present that are so frequently held up as successful leaders, Henry Ford, Estee Lauder, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk. If you read their biographies, you won’t find a lot written about how effective a listener they were. Look around the marketplace and Human Resource departments that offer communication courses. What’s the impact? A LinkedIn survey of 14,000 workers found that only 8 percent considered their leaders great listeners and communicators. Do you think anyone lost their job, a promotion wasn’t given or something catastrophic happened to the 92% of poor listener/communicators?
In another life my business partner and I had a meeting with the CEO of a major company whom she had worked with in another time. Prior to walking into the meeting my partner told me “now this guy will probably be working through our entire meeting. He’s really smart and can hold a conversation and work at the same time effectively.” True to her word he kept his head down and worked through the entire meeting. As we walked out his office I looked and her and said “you have to be kidding me. I wouldn’t care if he stood on his head and recited chapter and verse from a book, I won’t work with him”.
Leaders can ‘get by’ without mastering certain skills however, when the ‘hoo-ha’ hits the fan listening skills rise to the top. When problems arise Leaders need to quickly understand the problem in order to apply the correct solution. Here are examples of how I have seen Leaders shutdown a conversation and project that they are not listening before it even starts. It usually begins by the Leader saying something like “tell me what you think” or “what do you think the problem is”. They may also say something like: “Here’s the problem, here’s what I think… What do you think?” Or “Before you go into that, let me just say one thing first…” Or “I understand where you’re coming from, but I think…”
When I say Leaders can’t listen, I mean they can’t listen as Covey defines it, ‘listening to understand before being understood’. Leaders too often ‘listen to respond’ first and foremost. Most successful Leaders have mastered the training ‘techniques’ for being an effective listener/communicator especially if they participated in any communications course. Over the years I have talked with a significant number of employees in a multitude of companies trying to get a handle on the problem I was hired to resolve. A reoccurring theme in these conversations is the inability of Leaders to ‘listen’. When I have tried to understand what these employees meant by someone ‘not being a good listener’ I thought of Stephen Covey’s Habits of Highly Effective People, ‘Seek first to understand, then to be understood’.
Why do I say Leaders can’t listen because they haven’t learned the skill. Being a good communicator usually is defined as speaking not listening. What do most communication skills workshop teach you, ‘look them in the eyes when you talk, empathetic listening, rephrasing what the person just said and on and on. None of this has anything to do with listening to other people to understand what they are trying to say. If I hear a person say, “so what you are saying is….” are they trying to understand what is behind my statement or have they just had a Improving your Communication Skills class?
When i was a member of a consulting company I started a process to help develop listening skills. When we had a consulting project that involved two or more people, we established a procedure for closing out a project called a ‘project autopsy’. The team on the project met and reviewed how the project goals were accomplished or not and what went well and not so good. The project manager could only ‘listen’ and ask questions to ‘clarify’ what someone said. A major part of this evaluation was of how effectively the Project Manager lead the project. Again the PM could only ask questions to clarify points made by team members and not defend any actions taken. As a project Leader you learned what it meant to listen to understand rather than to respond and too overcome being defensive.
Why can’t Leaders listen? They haven’t learned how to listen to understand rather than respond. Think about how you listen. Is it to achieve a deeper understanding of what the other individual is telling you or are you listening to quickly respond to their statement. Try it sometime, it’s hard. When you are listening to understand your conversation is driven by asking questions of the other person in order to achieve a richer understanding of what they are talking about. You can even practice the skill in a social setting. Try holding a conversation with someone for five minutes where your only responses are asking questions of the other person. You have to be especially careful in the workplace because people are not used to Leaders trying to understand them therefore they may think you have ulterior motive.
For Leaders to develop listening skills and especially in trying to understand a difficult situation, employees need to be comfortable that you are really trying to understand rather than finding where to place blame. Remember Colonel Jessup in ‘A Few Good Men’, “You can’t handle the truth”. In my experience if you are listening to understand most of the time you don’t know where it will lead when you begin the conversation.