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HOW TO BE AN INSPIRING LISTENER
No leader can be effective without being a good listener. But, good listening isn’t just about understanding what’s being said… and that’s the trap most of us fall into.
We’ve all been in the situation where we feel the person who we’re with is not really interested in what we have to say. That leaves a powerful emotional impact, and it isn’t positive; if that person is our boss, we go away frustrated and belittled, and our motivation and sense of engagement are going to drop dramatically. Our feelings of responsibility, control and importance have taken a heavy hit. In the gap between doing only what we have to do and going the extra mile lies the difference between acceptable and exceptional performance. It’s in that gap that listening leadership pays dividends.
Inspiring leaders are intent on connecting with people and giving them the gift of their undivided attention. It is a skill, for we all have to work hard to overcome our natural inclinations, which make us bad listeners. What are they?
We get easily distracted. We want to have our say, so we interrupt. If we don’t interrupt, we concentrate on what we want to say and wait for a gap, rather than focusing on what’s being said. We make judgements about the speaker, which blocks our ability to hear what they’re really trying to say.
Perhaps we do listen, but we become more interested in content than in feelings. We don’t try to observe body language, so we stare into space while listening – or perhaps we listen without any facial expressions, remaining silent throughout. Then we leap in with solutions and don’t bother to show that we have comprehended what we have been told. We certainly don’t acknowledge how the other person might be feeling.
We are bad listeners without realising it. Yet, the simple act of listening well is inspirational in itself: by listening, leaders can remove barriers, pick up good ideas, and create an environment where people can speak up without fear of repercussions. They feel that they’ve been listened to. You may not agree with them, but if they feel you’ve really understood them, they’ll be more likely to listen to why you’re not going to act on what they’ve suggested. In turn, you earn the right to be heard.
The listening contract
First: I have to listen and understand before I can speak and be understood. It is when leaders do not follow this contract that they create ill feelings among employees.
Ironically, most leaders rate themselves highly for listening skills, while their employees inevitably rate them poorly. Why is that? The answer is all about whether the employee feels that they have been listened to. It isn’t about whether the leader has comprehended what they have to say, which is how most leaders judge their listening skills. This is why they will often quickly and correctly understand what is being told to them. So, they interrupt. They provide solutions, not coaching. They do not judge themselves on whether they have made the speaker feel like they have been given a darn good listening to. Yet, that’s exactly what the employee wants.
So, the first thing to do, in order to become a better listener, is to understand that employees want to feel that they’ve been listened to, that their views have been heard and respected.
To do this, inspiring leaders connect empathetically. Why? Because they know that empathy is the glue that holds relationships together. Empathy enables you to know whether you have managed to influence the people you need to influence. It enables you to understand their perspectives and how to deal with them. Without empathy you can’t build a team, you can’t build trust and you can’t make people feel validated.
To be empathetic means to be able to detect the other person’s emotions and understand their perspective. You can’t be a good listener if you lack empathy. Being empathetic promotes trust and that leads to open and honest communication, and that leads to the ability to resolve conflicts, to promote constructive change and to innovate.
The direct link between empathy and commercial success
There is a direct link between empathy and commercial success. Leaders who treat their staff well do so because they are tuned in to their needs and respond in appropriate ways. That leads to high levels of engagement, and that leads to high performance.
Being a good listener means paying attention actively. You have to remember that listening is not about you, so you have to focus on what’s being said. Stop worrying about what you’re going to say. Remember that judging someone is not listening, and as soon as you show that you’re judging, you will ruin your attempt to listen. Show that you’re listening by nodding, smiling and using other facial expressions. Watch for signals in the speaker’s body language, which will be sending you as many messages as the words they are using. Lean forward, nod often and recognize that your face will be sending signals back to the speaker.
Show that you recognize the emotion behind what they are saying. ‘I can see you’re excited about this idea.’ Or ‘I can see you are upset about what happened.’ Relate to them by expressing how you might feel if you were in their shoes. If you are not clear on the emotion behind the sentiment, ask: ‘How did you feel about that?’ Try to ask open-ended questions or questions to clarify. Ask questions that further discovery and enable better insight. Reflect back to them what you have heard but avoid parroting back exactly what they’ve said. This gives them a chance to agree, expand or refute your understanding.
Remember that empathetic listening is all about showing people that you have understood not only the idea or issue they are raising, but the emotional content behind it as well. Always summarize what you have understood and thank people for taking the time to share with you. As a leader your job is to build relationships and trust, so when you thank them for speaking, even if you don’t think there is value in what they have to say, you will make them feel respected and valued – and that’s the point.
We often think that communication is all about standing up and telling people what they need to know. The big mistake is to assume that they’ve understood what we mean. Skilful communicators always check what has been understood as part of the process of communicating.
Poor listening cuts a leader adrift
Poor listening is destructive to team dynamics and cuts a leader off from the information they need to truly understand what’s going on and manage the business effectively. This is why it is essential that leaders understand how toxic it is when they display displeasure at bad news. Do that, and it’s likely you’ll never get bad news from that individual again. Change your mindset and be a bad news junkie. Show people how much you want to get bad news. The faster it gets to you the faster you can take action.
Good listening isn’t only about one-on-one listening. It’s about encouraging members of the team to be good listeners. It’s about listening to customers, listening to colleagues and, especially, listening to your team. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an introvert or extrovert; either way you will still have to work on your listening skills. Introverts tend to listen well but don’t share their own views as much during a conversation. Extroverts like to share their views too much and need to work hard to ensure they don’t dominate the conversation.
No leader can be affective without listening. Listening is part of the process of decision-making, of developing and maintaining relationships, of problem-solving, of influencing, of driving change and of so many other aspects of leadership. Good listeners are charismatic, because they make people feel important and valued. When employees feel important and valued, they deliver high performance.
The good listener’s checklist
When listening, do you:
- interrupt?
- get distracted?
- listen with half your attention?
- think about what you want to say and wait for the chance to say it?
- get impatient and show it?
- stare into space?
- have an impassive face?
- fail to observe body language?
- fail to listen for the emotions behind what is being said?
Do people tell you that you are a good listener? If not, why not? If you don’t know, ask them!
- Do ensure people feel you’ve actively listened?
- Do you listen with empathy?
- Do you show both positive and negative empathy?
- Do you summarize what you’ve heard?
- Do you act on what you’ve heard, and then tell people what you’ve done?
- If you haven’t acted, do you explain to people why not?
- Do you encourage all around you to be good listeners?
Always make sure you give people a dam good listening to.
AFTER A CRISIS, EMPLOYEES NEED A SENSE OF PURPOSE MORE THAN EVER.
Because of the huge changes wrought on society and business by the pandemic, and by the war in Ukraine and the global consequences thereof, companies and managers need to revisit their purpose and their vision statements in order to make sure that what they had before these crises is still valid. If not, because their situations have changed so radically and their customers have changed, too, they may need to re-articulate their purpose and spend considerable time aligning their teams to it.
Here is an article I wrote for the Chartered Management Institute on some clear behaviours that will – and won’t – unite your team as we phase back into offices and workplaces.
8 COLD WAYS YOU UNINTENTIONALLY KILL MOTIVATION
Cold and aloof managers may be unwittingly exhibiting some behaviours that are highly destructive to motivation, because they make people feel like they are not valued or respected.
You only have to show that you have lost interest by looking at your smartphone, or letting your eyes glaze over, to make people feel like they don’t matter. If you don’t smile when greeting them, you send powerful signals of coldness and aloofness. If you don’t connect with employees on the issues that concern them, you display disinterest, and they are not going to like you very much at all. It is so easy to have a negative presence and too many leaders are completely unaware of the destruction they leave behind them after these sorts of bad encounters.
Making other people feel good is easy with just a little practice. When you are warm and approachable, people are more likely to embrace your ideas.
Everybody wants to feel important, and everybody wants to feel a valued member of a team. However, there are some behaviours managers unwittingly exhibit that are highly destructive to motivation, because they simply make people feel like they are not valued or respected. Here’s the checklist to avoid at all costs:https://bit.ly/3cFLJ86
THE THINGS WE UNWITTINGLY DO THAT CAUSE EMPLOYEES TO SAY WE ARE A BAD MANAGER
Because of bad bosses, we find it really hard to get motivated. We turn up for work and do the bare minimum to stay in the job. We get little in the way of constructive feedback or recognition, so we don’t feel great about ourselves. We don’t feel like we are a member of a team, which in any case feels dysfunctional and competitive – distinctly NOT a team! We really don’t feel we know our manager or why they want us to do what they ask of us. They feel ineffectual when in front of us and, worst of all, seem to have no idea how their behaviours affect us.
This kind of manager makes us want to leave. It’s a great company, and we love what this company does, but anything would be better than this job – and so we polish up our CVs, read the job sites, speak to headhunters, and before long, we move somewhere else. (There is a horrible HR truth that haunts most companies and it is this: employees who rate their direct manager’s performance poorly, are FOUR TIMES as likely to be job hunting.)
Do you recognise this state of affairs? How do you rate your manager? If you are a manager, what chance might this be you? Sadly, the odds are quite high* that the answer is yes to both questions. By my reckoning, more than 50%, I’m afraid.
There are people who are appropriately charismatic, but who lack the ability to problem-solve or develop a strategy, or don’t know enough about the technical aspects of the job that their team is required to do. Lacking these skills may negatively impact on their effectiveness as a leader. However, with the right charismatic skills, such a leader would still be able to draw on the knowledge and expertise of others to cover those shortfalls. Those who lack many of the skills of charisma, may be making some dreadful mistakes, often unintentionally, but nevertheless with the same devastating consequences.
On the basis that knowing what NOT to do can be just as helpful as knowing what’s right, I offer the following checklist to help you be more aware of the bad behaviours which will make you disliked, ineffective and possibly even likely soon to be fired. There are some leaders who simply don’t care about others and it is this level of disregard that leads them to be really bad bosses. They create truly toxic places to work, and so long as they get done what they want done, nothing else matters.
On the other hand, there are also managers who are well intentioned, and far greater in number, who do care about people, but simply lack the skills to do a better job of encouraging discretionary effort. A lack of awareness about what really matters to people, leads them to be bad bosses to work for, even though they are likely to be far less toxic and also likely to want to improve.
Let’s look at trust-destroying things that you might be doing that will hinder your ability to create a high-performing team. As you read this list of bad behaviours, reflect for a moment on each point and consider whether you may be guilty of this sin, to some degree or other. Be tough on yourself, because your employees most certainly will be. Examine whether you may be unmindful of any of these sins and may therefore inadvertently be guilty of bad behaviour.
Five behaviours that destroy authenticity and trust
1. Lack of integrity
The very worst kind of boss to work for is one who lacks integrity or displays it inconsistently. Those with integrity stay true to their values and are prepared to make tough choices about what’s right rather than what’s convenient. When you get to a place where integrity plays no part in your management, no one can trust you. Without a moral compass and ethics, or even just a sense of what’s fair, the team will quickly dissolve into bad behaviours and poor performance, based on a lack of trust of their leader. This trust deficit floods into their daily working life and infects their relationships with all of their teammates. Even when leaders do have integrity, their employees often see it differently. This is because their employees will observe inconsistent behaviours from their bosses, which while simply thoughtless, will lead them to make judgements about the character of their boss. Equally, such inconsistencies, or even the want of speaking up on issues, can make a boss seem insincere and dishonest. Leadership is an act of courage and being courageous often means standing up for the things you truly believe in, even in the most difficult of circumstances. Those without integrity will stand up for very little, and hypocrisy quickly follows.
2. Bad bosses discriminate amongst members of their team
They have favourites, whom they shield from the effects of doing shoddy work, or with whom they favour good assignments or great working hours and shifts. They will expect loyalty but won’t be loyal themselves. They divide and conquer, and set up discord in the team, by favouring the opinion of some over others. Members of the team will quickly notice this and then distrust; disengagement and demotivation quickly follow.
3. Bosses who trust no-one are toxic
Distrustful managers will tend to micromanage others, check everything that people are doing, or disbelieve people unless they can conclusively prove their point of view. This lack of trust will lead to massive bottlenecks. Bottlenecks lead to a loss of productivity. A micromanager will seldom delegate. They ask to be copied in on every email, will want to go to every meeting and will make every decision and solve every problem. They will then make a really big deal out of working 80 hours a week. They care little that team members feel disenchanted and disempowered. In fact, this actually creates a vicious circle, because if they do sense that this disengagement, they will be even less likely to delegate.
4. Leaders who keep themselves to themselves can be very damaging to team morale
Those who never speak up for the values they believe in and make it very difficult for people to read them, set up a wariness among their employees, which also leads to a lack of trust. Any employee who finds their boss aloof and doesn’t really know where their boss is coming from, will regard them as dangerous and unpredictable.
5. Managers who lack self-awareness or humility are damaging
When leaders think they are, for example, a great communicator, and members of the team think otherwise, credibility suffers. On the other hand, leaders who show vulnerability are often perceived to be more effective as leaders, because they show more of their human side. As tough as it is to admit mistakes, humility is one of the most powerful attributes of managers and is a great accelerator of building trust.
*According to CMI research, as many as four out of five managers in the UK are accidental managers – those promoted to their role without adequate training. In the UK alone, that’s an estimated 2.4 million bosses. Imagine how many employees that affects? According to one estimate, less than half of all employees are satisfied with their manager. The World Bank estimates there are 3.4 billion workers around the world. How many of them are feeling disengaged and demotivated? This brings with it a massive cost in lost productivity. Find out more about the productivity gap and what you can do about it in our exclusive research with the Institute of Directors.
