Leading By Listening

“No one ever listened themselves out of a job” said Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933).
Have you noticed that we seem to devote a lot more time and effort in learning how to talk to people than we do learning how to listen to them? We are taught that we must become powerful orators able to deliver a speech, be heard, be understood, get a point across, persuade, entertain, engage, motivate, and more. If not, we will not be able to compete, in order to win, in order to be effective leaders.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of books have been written on the subject of talking. There may be several times more books published telling you how to talk than there are telling you how to listen. Beyond the books are seminars, workshops, video-taped speech training, and on and on. All of them focused on how to be an effective speaker. Someone once said, “You have two ears and two eyes and only one mouth. Use them in that proportion.” Sage advice indeed. Why then do so many books emphasize exactly the opposite?

We seem to believe that effective leadership is defined as: force of will, delivered powerfully in impressive oratory fashion. Do that well enough and you will lead people anywhere you want to take them. Really? What kind of leadership is that? Do you want a wise leader, or simply a noisy leader? A noisy leader is so intent on dictating the conversation that they never listen. As a result, they never consider the needs and ideas of those being led.

If you want to be an effective speaker, wouldn’t it make sense to know that you are connecting with your audience from their point of view? Henry Ford said, “If there is any great secret of success in life, it lies in the ability to put yourself in the other person’s place and to see things from his point of view - as well as your own.” Doesn’t that imply that you have to spend a great deal of time listening before you talk? Can a leader really learn much about the people they lead if they don’t listen to them?

If you are a noisy leader and feel so compelled to speak, the best advice for you is to learn to change your language. That is, ask questions that serve to clarify intent, misunderstandings, and challenges. Ask questions that lead people to the direction you are proposing. Done right, they may believe they arrived at that conclusion by themselves. Then once you have asked your questions, wait for them to speak and listen to them.

By asking questions – open, non-judgmental questions, that is – you will communicate clearly two things: a) your primary concern is to learn so that you can move the business forward productively, rather than focusing on them individually, b) that you care about their interests and needs and value their insights in helping to guide you and the company forward. People will believe that you care when you ask them questions. If they believe you care, then you will gain their trust in leading them forward. They will most certainly never care how much you know or for how loud you speak.

If you’re not used to this, give it a try sometime. Instead of announcing a decision and making it a surprise for people on your team, ask them what they think first. That conversation could go something like this: “The issue I’m determined to address is blah blah blah. The impact on us of this issue is blah blah blah. My current thoughts about that and ways to address it are blah blah blah. I’d like to hear your thoughts on this issue and how we can solve it.” Then guide that conversation to consensus on: a) clarifying what the issue is; b) the impact of the issue on the business; c) one or more acceptable solutions. Then you are ready to make and announce the decision with their full support and understanding.

What is a good clarifying question? It is any question that encourages an open and insightful answer rather than proposing or leading people to a conclusion. Ask if they agree with your views on the impact of the issue and do they see any other impacts that you have not discussed. Ask what they believe would be preferred outcomes for the business in solving the issue. If they provide an answer that doesn’t seem specific enough simply ask them “why?”, and repeat that until the specifics are clear.

In every case, make sure you give them time to think through the issue. Get them to be comfortable sharing their thoughts and then be patient enough to hear them all. You might just find that the path to empowering your team will be far shorter and stronger this way than by attempting to will them into submission. Why? Getting the team on board and aligned with the issue and the decision to address it up front means that they can immediately go into execution mode when the decision is made.

One final thought on making decisions effective. You must act in accordance with the decision you have announced. It does you no good to talk a lot about something and then to behave a different way. You will fool nobody and you will in fact train them to behave the same way. As Dr Stephen Covey said, “"You can't talk your way out of a situation you behave yourself into."