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Communication is not just about talking but listening to understand the people and effectively convey your thinking. It is a two way street which is about active listening, being curious and empathetic. Most times, people get this wrong because they are too eager to speak. But this can impact your conversation negatively and hurt your process. In this article, we will talk about active listening and how it can improve your leadership skills.

“People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude.”

John C Maxwell

Active Listening

What is active listening? – It is listening attentively to the speaker, with curiosity and an intent to understand. Most times, people listen only to speak. However, active listening takes the extra step to understand and ask key questions about why people think a certain way. This communication helps you understand the issues beyond what’s being said and get to the root cause of many problems. This active listening can be practised in many ways, but it all starts with curiosity and a few basic rules of communication.

Why do you need active listening as a leader?

Leadership is about developing a vision, and exciting people to work on a common goal. Most times, people confuse a leader and a manager. However, the role of the leader has taken an elevated stance which makes active listening very important. Unless you listen to understand the people you’re working with, your job becomes that of a manager of deadlines.

The number of times I have heard a leader say – I hear you, but only to say what they feel makes me sad. This is because listening is a tough act. Not many people know how to communicate well. They think that communication is all about talking. Instead, it is about listening and understanding beyond what people are saying:

Related:

Tips to Improve Client Communication

3 Common Mistakes influencing your Art of Listening

1. Trust as a Leader

Personally, I think it is one of the most important requirements from a leader to generate trust from his/her team. If they are unable to create this, there is no point in staying in the position of a leader.

Of course, it is easier said than done. It does take more than a few communications, good words. It takes a lot of actions which clearly mean trust to the team. It involves understanding the team’s motivations and being transparent with them.

1.1 Treating the team like adults:

A truly bad example of leadership is when the team is not let in for the rationale of decision making. Yes, a leader is a representative of the team, but they are representing a team’s approach and view point. At the same time ,the leader is also representing the business’ vision. Unless there’s a fair balance established between the two, trust is a really difficult goal to achieve.

1.2 Control and Micromanagement:

Often a commonly seen trait in many organisational frameworks. I have unfortunately seen this in specialist leaders where the aim is to prevent an error before it occurs.

It also acts as a severe amount of pressure which we touched upon in our discussion about micromanagement. As much as it is tempting to get things done our way, it is also equally important to trust the team to figure out their way.

To be fair, their way might be way better than the leaders’

1.3 Staying with the bigger picture:

A beautiful part of being a leader is in trying to stay close to the business visions and constantly reiterating them through team goals. If we are cutting corners to achieve small wins and compromising on the vision, we are immediately shooting ourselves in the foot. If we are linking leadership and success together, if it is not linked to long term and sustainable success, leadership quickly starts losing its meaning.

Active Listening in Leadership

This post is a gentle reminder to keep the listener in us alive. It is fascinating to recall the number of times where I have been in conversations where people said – I hear you. The reality was – I need to talk now, you should be listening instead of telling.

I admit that it is really hard to do this. The temptation to interrupt is quite glaring and sometimes it is very hard not to do that. But then again, we will need to come back to the tenet of trust. Are we able to create the necessary trust without actively listening to the team which forms the base of everything we are set out to achieve?

This reminds me of a beautiful ted talk by Celeste Headlee about communication.

Although the message seemed simple, it is in effect extremely impactful which reminds the importance of listening to every leader. Some key reminders to think about:

• Are we constantly ensuring that the team is listened to? Do we have sufficient processes and forums for these communications?
• Are we heading into meetings with pre conceived notions?
• Do we show the faith in the team to fail actively? By this I mean, are we encouraging the team to think outside the box and create a safe environment to nurture new ideas?

In essence, do all of these encourage collaboration and provide an opportunity for the birth of innovation?

Having said all the above, it is really tough to balance these aspects under the daily pressures. It takes quite a bit of strength to keep our head over the water to ensure that we can see the horizon. It is easy to lose ourselves in the small squabbles, but they always come at a cost. And if the cost is an overall vision, we are certainly paying  very high price.

This neatly ties in with the discussion we recently had about tying vision, mission to the plans and goals in an organisation.

“People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude.”

John C Maxwell