By Priscilla Luzader Pipho
Leadership Focus
We like to think we are great communicators. In fact, we are really good at getting our points across, breaking down complex problems into component parts, and giving a good accounting of our successes. We are good at telling our own story. But being good at communicating and being a good communicator are two very different things.
The difference is how we listen.
We know that leaders who are perceived as good listeners are rated more highly by subordinates. We also know that employees often jump at the chance to give feedback if they believe managers are listening. Further, employee satisfaction surveys consistently rate “communication” as a construct that most people want to see improved. And yet listening is rarely the focus of executive communication.
Let’s unpack this a little. With communication we have two activities: sending and receiving messages. How effective the communication is depends on a number of different factors or filters within both sender and receiver. The goal with communication is to get a match between what is sent and received. What we hear is not always what was said, for a variety of reasons – our type and temperament, culture and context, even our age and affect. Communication is tricky and has been taught for years in business schools and the C-Suite to create more effective leaders.
Most business curriculum on communication, however, revolves around getting your point across or being persuasive when faced with competing priorities. We learn how to develop communications campaigns, killer web and social media content, we join Toastmasters or Dale Carnegie to be more influential. A recent review of both MIT Executive Education and Stanford Business courses on communication skills reveals weeks of classes on communicating without a mention of listening.
Listening is what we introvert. Talking is done on the outside and listening is on the inside, so it’s a harder skill to teach and an easy one to fake. Active listening training teaches techniques and tips for listening which can be effective tools but can also be used to manipulate. For example, I can train you in how to ask really good questions when listening and how to use mirroring and body language to display active listening behaviors. And you can exhibit the behaviors and not really be listening. Truly listening is much more difficult for leaders than we like to admit. And the most important and the hardest part of listening cannot be faked: being present, setting aside one’s agenda and listening for understanding.
Listening is rarely taught as a strategic skill for growing a business, and yet the authors of a recent article in Harvard Business Review make a case for just that.
The March/April 2021 Issue of HBR article by Adam Bryant and Kevin Sharer Are You Really Listening? (https://hbr.org/2021/03/are-you-really-listening) provides a wonderful example of how to use a campaign of listening to turn a culture, and a CEO, to a more successful track. They describe the art of listening as having two components: listening without distraction or judgment and creating systems that sustain a culture of active listening.
The successful leader drives results, and so we tend to expect leaders to be clear, decisive, articulate, persuasive, and visionary. Recent studies, however, show us that the truly successful executives are also humble, reflective, generous, and great listeners. Listening is a skill worth developing in leaders and in organizations. Employees can be more engaged, customers more satisfied, and performance improved.
Balanced Culture Consulting will be teaching an online class through the Wizard Academy this month that includes a component on listening. I hope you can join us for Creating Happy, Hungry, and Hyper-productive Teams on May 22.