Leaders as Listeners. Who Dares, Listens

Arguably the most critical skill you can have as a leader is to be an impactful listener. The intention of this post is to introduce 4 powerful leadership listening insights and offerings that go beyond the standard advice to listen more and to listen with more empathy.

Before jumping right into listening for leaders, allow me to share a brief story – it brings to life some of the challenges we can all face with our listening.

The story is about a conversation I had with my mother, Jean Mary Foster, over a decade ago. We were sitting at the back of my house, about  a year before she passed away. I recall describing to her a few things I did as a leadership consultant.

We were having a conversation about effective leadership. Throughout the discussion I noticed she would reply to my comments by using  the words “I should”.

For example, when I mentioned how good leaders always focus on the future she said “I should do that”.

When I talked about leaders taking a strong stand for their vision she said “I should focus more on the future”.

This went on for quite a while and at some point I started to count how many times she said “I should”.

And then once I had finished my leader descriptions I asked if I could share an observation

I said “ I heard you say the words ‘I should’ about 15 times during our conversation.”

It felt to me like she was beating herself up so when I gave her this information I thought that she had got it and I think she did.

Then she looked at me and after a few seconds, she replied “You’re right!

I should stop saying that” 

I turned towards her as we sat there on the lounge. Our eyes met and we both burst into laughter!

It turned out to be an enjoyable and informative conversation.

To me Jean had always been a good listener, she always took time to listen and she was never judgemental to me. I noticed on this occasion though that she exhibited what many of us are hardwired to do when we listen – we use the filter of our own life experience to inform our listening. It is our default way of listening. I guess it proves we are all human and we all have something to work on.

It seems that our brains are hardwired to be self-serving by making things easy for us - always listening in ways that benefits us. For example, taking short cuts by anticipating where the conversation is going or preparing what we will say next is common in our listening. When listening we are constantly comparing what is being said against our life story just as Jean was doing in the story above, to determine what is right and wrong for us.

Very often this can also include our life story about the person speaking. That is we make assumptions about what people are saying before they even speak. A recent study suggests that 80% of the assumptions we make about other people when in conversation are in some way erroneous. Geez! when I saw this I thought well even if this is only half right then I, like everyone else, am in trouble. For a more in-depth description about assumptions follow this link.

The assumptions above apply to everyone but what can leaders (and we are all leaders really) do to be better listeners? Here are few insights and offerings leaders can review and adopt to be the best listeners that they can be:

1.     Listening is a Choice

We all know that we can choose to listen or not listen – That’s a given. A life changing insight for me came years ago when I discovered that I can choose how to listen – how we listen is a choice….  really! For example, we can listen to a song and choose to listen to the instruments or the background singer or just the tune – we can make that choice. It follows that at any given time we can listen and choose to look for positives or for negatives in any conversation – we can choose perspective. Often though our default listening will focus on what needs to be fixed rather than what is working well – we have a ‘fix it’ perspective or glass half empty thinking, if you like.

I recall seeing a movie about a championship boxer (James Braddock the Cinderella Man – see below) in the corner of the ring, talking with his trainer between bouts. He had just taken a beating in the previous round. His trainer said to him. 

“You have got to stop some of those lefts.”

Braddock looked up and replied

“Did you see any get past my head?”

 Funny yes, and it is also a great example of choosing, against the grain, to make a positive choice when it was quite evident that his trainer was focusing on the negative. What we now know is that focusing on what is working well is always a good foundation for correction and improvement.

And here is the kicker. The research cited declares that there is a desirable positive to negative ratio in the way that you listen and respond - it is 5 positives to 1 negative. This is a hint at what is required in your listening to be a more influential leader. Read more about the fine balance – the magic of a healthy relationship.

2.     Listening with Purpose

 Leaders aspiring to be the best that they can be will listen with purpose. They realise that there is no such thing as one leadership conversation but in fact there are many conversations that have different purposes and that the listening perspective for each purpose is different. A short selection of purposeful  leadership conversations are listed below: Listening for….

o   Connection and Relationship

o   Commitment

o   New Possibility

o   Breakdowns

o   Opportunities to Learn

o   Opportunities for Action

 For more information about how to listen at work.

 3.    Listening can Hook You

Have you ever been in a conversation that involves the toing and froing of points of view; who is right and who is wrong? This type of listening most often gets you nowhere and also degrades your relationship with the other party. A fellow consultant once said to me

“the person who gets unhooked first is the most powerful person in the room.”

And while it may not be 100% right, to me it’s not too far off the mark.

 4.      Listening is Measurable

I want to propose that you can actually observe and notice your own as well as others listening. And so if you can observe it you can measure it. You can observe an example of measuring others in the discussion I had with Jean Mary earlier in this article.

But just as importantly you can measure your own listening. One option is to approximate how much time you spend listening versus speaking in any given conversation. For me, if I exceed 50% of the time talking, I know I have not been at my best. Other such measures of listening have to do with observing the quality and the impact of your conversation.

These are just 4 observations that a leader can take on with their listening; choosing what to listen for, purposeful listening, unhooking your listening and measuring the quality of your listening.

So how do you shape up as a listening leader?

What is one listening habit that you could start working on today?

Share your thoughts in the comments!

That’s all for now.