Listening is THE most important leadership skill you should master.  

Actually, everyone should learn to master listening as it at the core of all communication, and if you miss this critical first step everything else falls apart.

Yet I promise you that if I asked 100 people if they believed they listened to others they would all say yes.  The reality is something very different though. We confuse hearing and listening. It isn’t true that just because you can repeat what someone said verbatim that you were listening.  You heard the words and you missed so much because you weren’t listening.

Listening requires you to be paying attention, watching for non-verbal clues or listening for clues and putting aside whatever you are thinking at the moment.  Boy, that’s tough in today’s fast-paced business environment. We are thinking about the next meeting we have to attend, a task to handle, a phone call to return and maybe even the fight you had with your SO or kids earlier in the day.

And how can you ‘listen’ when so much communication happens via text or email.  Isn’t listening only something that happens when people are speaking?

I’ve been working with a senior executive for several months.  Everyone who interacts with him tells me the same thing…he doesn’t listen.  Of course, when I mention that to him he argues and explains how they (they meaning everyone who interacts with him) needs to learn his shorthand version of communication, and if THEY listened there would be no problems.

Recently I had an exchange with him that demonstrates what everyone is complaining about.

• He sends me a text asking me if I had time for a short call as he had something he needed to discuss.  Included were two times he was available.
• I responded neither of the times worked for me and offered alternatives.
• His next text confirms a time, that I had already indicated wasn’t available for me and at the same time I receive an email with a calendar invite for that time.
• I decide to call him rather than the back and forth as clearly he wasn’t reading my texts and paying attention.  We scheduled a time to connect.

The conversation he wanted to have was for me to explain why no one in his company was accountable.  After five minutes of him explaining his frustration, I asked him what accountability meant to him. What would tell him that people were accountable?  His response…doing their damn job!

Then I asked him what wasn’t happening that made him feel they aren’t accountable.  Do they miss deadlines or the quality isn’t what he is expecting…what’s the problem.  He totally ignored the question and said “Linda, why can’t they just do what I tell them to do?”

What was my response?  “I can tell you are really frustrated, and I want to help.  What I need to know though is what isn’t working, how you are defining accountability, or lack thereof so I can help you diagnose the specific problem and begin to define possible solutions.”  

At that point, he stopped and said to me, “Linda, you don’t seem to be getting it.  The problem is they aren’t accountable and don’t do what I tell them to do. I don’t need to define accountability, I know it when it happens or doesn’t.”

Clearly, we weren’t in synch on this so I took another direction.  I asked him for an example of where someone wasn’t accountable. His example was a team member who turned something in a day late.  I asked if he was upset because it was late or for some other reason. I didn’t get a response to this question, he simply stated that he has repeatedly had an issue with this particular individual turning in work late.  

He told me he had talked to them several times but nothing improved.  Then he goes on to tell me how this team member told him the deadline wasn’t doable or how she had other priorities and needed help moving something off her plate in order to accommodate his deadline. What he took from those conversations was…. she wasn’t listening and was only making excuses in advance as to why she was going to turn in work late!

Can you see where he didn’t listen?

• He didn’t listen in our text exchange.
• He didn’t listen to the questions I asked…he simply ignored them.
• He chose to ignore his employee’s pleas for help or discussion around realistic deadlines.

It’s no wonder that he is constantly upset and frustrated, as is everyone around him.

I believe part of my role is to help clients see what they can’t see about themselves.  They may not like what I say, they may even choose to disagree. One of my favorite quotes is by Tom Landry.  

“A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.”

What did I do?  I shared with him my experience…how he didn’t listen to me and my observations about how he didn’t listen to this staff member.  I gave him specific examples of where he missed listening. We discussed the extra time he spent with me to get a call arranged that could have been avoided.  

We talked about his problem employee and while she may not have communicated effectively, she was trying to let him know her concerns.  What he heard as excuses might have been real challenges that had he stopped and listened, and asked questions may have changed the end result.  

And yes I mentioned that he ignored several of my questions.  Maybe he consciously chose to ignore them, and maybe he wasn’t listening.  There was about 30 seconds of silence and then he said he actually hadn’t heard me ask those questions.  He was so focused on his frustration that he wasn’t paying attention. That realization for him was a huge step towards him being willing to consider his own listening skills as a problem.

I often tell clients that what I experience with them is what I’m certain others do.  I’m not hypersensitive and yet I can say that had I been someone who worked for him I wouldn’t have hung in so long.  He came across as dismissive, self-righteous, treating others as if their time and they personally were less important than him.  

That doesn’t build loyalty.  It doesn’t build trust. And it certainly doesn’t endear him to others.  It isn’t what a leader should strive for. So many bad things happen when people around you don’t feel appreciated, heard and listened to and that they matter.  This starts with listening. Listen to what they are saying but also what they aren’t saying. What are they trying to share or explain?

There is no greater human need than to feel heard and understood.  If you aren’t listening you will never hear, and then you’ll totally miss understanding.