Leaders that Listen

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Most working professionals have read Stephen Covey's landmark book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It is considered a cornerstone of the knowledge worker's curriculum. However, most leaders neglect Habit 5:

Seek first to understand, than to be understood.

Sounds simple right?

But its not. Based on personal experience and countless first hand accounts, many leaders fail to embrace empathic listening to develop a genuine understanding of their direct reports.

As Covey describes the challenge:

Communication is the most important skill in life. You spend years learning how to read and write, and years learning how to speak. But what about listening? What training have you had that enables you to listen so you really, deeply understand another human being? Probably none, right? 

As you'll witness in this inner monologue, the inherent hierarchy of the relationship compounds the problem:

As a boss I am expected to assess situations, give advice, make decisions, and coach my direct reports. This is my job as a manager.

Why would a manager actually take the time to listen beyond understanding a problem? They don't because they don't have to. They are paid to assess and decide, not listen and reflect.

It is at this crossroads where the good managers are surpassed by great leaders. Recall that leaders lead people. Managers manage tasks. True leadership is built upon character and emotional intelligence to work through people. Managers direct people through work.

As highly-paid task masters, most managers listen autobiographically and then respond in one of four ways: 

• Evaluating: You judge and then either agree or disagree.

• Probing: You ask questions from your own frame of reference.

• Advising: You give counsel, advice, and solutions to problems.

• Interpreting: You analyze others' motives and behaviors based on your own experiences.

This tactical, superficial exchange often leaves the individual contributor feeling misunderstood with an overdose of advice, not to mention the risk of terrible advice due to minimal understanding.

Trust is lost.

Since the immature manager lacks the patience or skill needed to truly listen and understand, they often resort to pontificating which makes them feel important. In fact, immature managers are often so eager to conquer situational challenges that emotions and context becomes casualties of war.

Want to buck the trend? In your next 1:1 with your direct report try the following:

• Put your agenda aside

• Give them 100% of your attention

• Try to identify the emotional underpinning of what they're sharing with you

• Try to identify how they FEEL

• Rephrase how you think they feel back to them, e.g. "It sounds like you're feeling pretty anxious about this renewal coming up next month."

• Be comfortable with long pauses

• Take the time to reflect on what they've shared with you

• Resist the urge to evaluate and judge.

• Resist the urge to probe into the tactical details.

• Resist the urge to give advice.

• Resist the urge to analyze.

Do nothing except talk about how they're feeling. Admittedly, all of this is quite counter-intuitive amidst a hectic workday, but trust me: if you've done this effectively, they will eventually ask you for your perspective: "How do you think we should handle the renewal?"

BINGO.

Since you've taken the time to listen empathically and develop a genuine understanding of their situation, trust has been earned.

You have just taken the first step from being a good manager towards becoming a great leader.

Say it with me: "Trust and Commit"

The awkwardness was palpable. As the meeting droned on, the evidence began to mount: no agenda, lack of focus, petty side arguments, no meeting owner at the helm. . . not even a god-damn notetaker to capture the stream of insanity. It was going from bad, to worse: meeting hell.

Sound familiar?

Welcome to my weekly leadership meeting circa Q3 2015. Yeah, it was that bad, maybe worse.

How is this relevant? In a word: trust, the lack of which manifests itself in many ways much like the meeting I described.

Let's take a step back: great leaders have the ability to run effective meetings and channel energy towards healthy debate and ultimately group decisions. Great leaders are able to stitch together a tapestry of diverse perspectives at the seam of their similarities (or differences) and MOVE FORWARD with decisiveness and clarity. But what could get in the way?

Lack of trust.

And here's the catch: most meetings suck, and most leaders are too frazzled from the last meeting/offsite/marathon to really deliver their best 100% of the time.

Allow me to hit the pause button for a dose of positivity: Big things are accomplished only through the perfection of minor details. Why this quote? Because little improvements to say, meeting structure, can go a LONG way. For example, basic meeting etiquette suggests an agenda with time allocated to each topic, a meeting owner/organizer, and a notetaker. If decisions are to be made based on information, a meeting pre-read should be included. This is basic stuff and helps establish TRUST across meeting attendees.

But trust is much deeper and greater than just meeting etiquette. Its about people. Relationships. And what you need to do to earn/build/foster trust. As Stephen M. R. Covey shares with us in The Speed of Trust:  "We judge ourselves by our intentions, and others by their behavior. Leadership is getting results in a way that inspires trust."

Their are specific behaviors that these leaders embrace:

Remember the scene in Inception where they have to actively increase their consciousness of the dream state in order to offset the skepticism the dream world is imparting? A good leader will call into consciousness the fact that the team lacks trust and get them to focus on it. Bring it front and center and have it about.

Then what?

I've since heard three powerful words that inspired me to write this article: "trust and commit". Say it with me: "trust and commit." One more time, "trust and commit." I can't HEAR YOU !!??

Okay, that's enough.

The point is, these three words reshaped our team's ability to collaborate, discuss, decide and execute. "Trust and commit" became our mantra and a pivotal threshold at which the group would decide to "trust and commit" or not. If trust and commit was achieved, that means the decision was fully-baked and all stakeholders had signed off. More importantly, all stakeholders would be ACCOUNTABLE to the "trust and commit"(ment) they had made.

By simply having a decision-making mantra, our team was able to review and discuss initiatives quicker, make decisions faster, and execute more consistently.

Okay, one more time: "TRUST and COMMIT!!"

[Editor note: Thank you to our readers for all your calls and emails since this post was published.]