Top tips to improve this critical leadership skill…

My adoptive Dad used to quote the saying in the photo when I was a kid to try to get teenage me to “think twice before you speak once”, and it’s stuck with me over the years as it really is ‘wise old owl’ advice🦉 

Teenage me didn’t really understand that advice other than quickly learning to keep my mouth shut and not back-chat to my Dad, for fear of retribution.¹ However, over the years I’ve come to understand how important that advice is - professionally and personally.

Dad thought he was a great listener…However, from Mum’s regular, frustrated “for Pete’s sake² Bill - listen!” I don’t think my Mum agreed 😅 

That scenario plays out a lot in workplaces everywhere – especially in today’s frenetic, demanding, always-on workplaces – and listening is probably the single most under-rated leadership and emotional intelligence skill. 

While managers generally believe they’re great at active listening, their teams often rank it as one of their most glaring weaknesses. 

Surveys and workplace studies consistently reveal a significant perception gap between how leaders rate their listening skills and how their employees experience them. And generally the more senior leaders are, the bigger the gap.

One of our own Southern Cross Coaching surveys showed 74% of leaders think they’re great listeners - while only 26% of staff thought their manager was a great listener.

An Accenture survey quoted 96% of people believe they are good or very good listeners. However, behavioural research showed that only about 25% of individuals actually possess adequate listening skills in practice. 

A recent LinkedIn survey of over 14,000 people found only 8% of people thought mid and senior-level leaders are practicing listening "very well”. 

Illusory superiority biases³ at their finest☝️

In the annual NSW Government People Matters Employment Survey results, the response to the statement “I feel senior managers listen to employees” (or a variant  of that depending on the year), is nearly always one of the lowest scoring questions.

So often, we tend to think that the biggest part of communication is talking - but that’s only a glimpse of the corner of the overall communication picture.

And only having that brief glimpse causes a lot of the conflict and misunderstandings that happen – in and out of work.

As George Bernard Shaw said:

“the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”

When we’re stressed and busy i.e. nearly all the time!, listening can feel like a luxury we don’t have time for. 

Which is a big problem, because truly listening is THE most critical skill underpinning Emotional Intelligence, Coaching Leadership, Adaptive Leadership…practically every type of leadership - except Autocratic or Directional Leadership of course, like my Dad, where listening was optional at best!

In some of our leadership programs we take people through a simple but incredibly powerful listening experience that demonstrates how powerful listening is in leadership – and as a human.

I ran the exercise recently at an interactive keynote I gave at a conference in Malaysia, where it was sometimes deeply challenging for people culturally when an elder or more senior person had to listen to someone more junior in status, age or position.

However, even in that culturally challenged environment, then, and every single time I run this experience, people are regularly astonished, and often deeply emotionally moved by it. 

People are regularly in tears (in Australia as well as overseas) – often because, sad as it may be, this is sometimes one of, if not the first time they’ve felt someone has actually, truly and unconditionally listened to them. 

They feel seen. They feel heard. They feel they have a voice. They feel someone’s interested in them. They feel valued. They feel someone cares. They feel validated. They feel engaged. 

And they feel human - not just a ‘human resource.’

The other side of the coin, when people don’t feel listened to:

Innovation stops:                        “No-one listens to my ideas, why bother!” 

Critical Thinking stops:              “I’ve said what the risks are, but no-one’s listening so what’s the point!”

Groupthink proliferates:            “I never get listened to! I’ll just agree, it’s easier than banging my head against a brick wall!”

‘AI slop’ abounds:                      “My manager never listens to me anyway, might as well make my life easy”

Useful feedback stops:              “You don’t listen and just do what you want anyway, I’ll just step back and let you get on with it!”

Collaboration wanes:                 “Why should I help you, you never listen to what I have to offer!”

Of course, listening is a 2-way street: leader, direct report, peer, customer, executive, partner, father, mother - all parties have a responsibility to listen and make sure what’s been said is what’s been heard.

So much misunderstanding and conflict comes from people not listening, and not hearing and properly understanding what’s actually been said. 

How many times have you been in a conversation or argument where you or others think communication as occurred when it actually hasn’t, and you’ve said or heard: “ah, that’s what you meant! Sorry, I thought you said…”

Meanwhile we’ve spent hours working on something on the basis of what we thought was said and meant, and have wasted our precious time and energy doing the wrong thing…no wonder we get annoyed and conflict erupts!

“I can’t tell you what you said, I can only tell you what I heard…”

“…and that’s what my brain acted on…”

Our brains are very good at making things fit in with what we think is the reality, based on our filters and view of the world. The more under stress we are, the more we try to shortcut and fill in the gaps without stopping to properly listen, clarify, and ask questions.

We think we’ve understood but we actually don’t have the full picture - or worse, we’re trying to solve completely the wrong problem with the wrong information and understanding.

And this is another big problem with AI. One reason ‘AI slop’ proliferates and why AI doesn’t give us the answers we need is because we often don’t take the time to give it that clarity and make sure it understands. 

AI doesn’t listen to understand, or to question then listen to understand. AI takes what we say at face value and does exactly what it thinks it’s heard in the context of what the AI thinks is correct - which is often not what we need. The hallmarks of miscommunication.
 

Simple behaviour change massively boosts the quality and perception of your listening:

When you give information or instructions to someone, or brief them on something, instead of dashing off straight afterwards assuming they’re heard, or asking a closed question like “so, do you understand?”, ask the person what they’ve understood from what you’ve said. 

This also well with teenagers (& kids in general) – try it!

In the workplace, when someone tells you something, or when you ask someone a question and they answer, don’t sit there thinking of your next question or working out how to defend your position…

Be like the wise old owl in the oak 🦉 Close mouth, open ears, and really listen!

Put down your phone.                            And put it face down or in a bag/ drawer/ pocket.

Face the person you’re talking to.        Turn away from your screen(s) if face to face and look at them – see them.

Take your air-pods out of your ears!    I used to tell my 15-year-old son this… Every. Single. Day. 🤦‍♂️ Since he’s started working part-time he’s now slowly getting it…

If virtual, turn on your camera.             Put the Teams/Zoom meeting directly under your camera so you look directly at the person and really see them.

Stop multi-tasking!                                Stop typing. Stop scrolling and clicking. Step away from the laptop if you can’t help yourself. 

You cannot listen properly when you’re distracted. No, you actually cannot – a plethora of research consistently proves it! ⁴

Plus, people can subconsciously feel when you’re distracted - and they can often consciously hear your mouse clicking and you tapping the keyboard – that annoys the cr@p out of me, as I’m sure it does many of us!

All the above applies when you’re listening to information or instructions. Listen and clarify - paraphrase/summarise back what you’ve understood - whether your boss asks you or not. 

That way you’re more likely to get clarity on what you need to do and be better able to execute it – a lot of procrastination comes from not really understanding what you actually have to do.

Whatever position you have, remember – and be - the wise old owl sat in the oak 🦉

Being the wise old owl🦉is something we incorporate into our:

Giving and Receiving Feedback and Difficult Conversations programs

Leader as a Coach: T.O.A.D.™ Coaching Leadership program 
 (accredited with the International Coach Federation for 8 continuing coaching education units).

It’s also something our coaches take people through in our multi-award-winning

Roadmap to Leadership Success Program

For information on any of the above☝️programs 

GET IN TOUCH – CLICK HERE 

All our in-house programs are tailored to each group and organisation’s specific requirements and challenges.

 For more information on our multi-award-winning, Emotional Intelligence-based, Roadmap to Leadership Success Program (for executives and leaders at all levels - individuals and groups), get in touch. 
 
 Of course, if you want to talk directly to a human, call us:

📱📞 +61 (0)2 7901 5618 7901 

Or if you prefer to email us direct then contact us on: 

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¹ Dad was a hard, tough nut of a man – on the outside at least. Dad was a Prison Officer working at one of the highest security prisons in the UK housing some of the worst murderers and hardened criminals, and he ruled with an iron fist, and command and control was his default. 

² I never heard my Mum swear – her version of ‘FFS’ was “for Pete’s sake…!” Although Dad was a hard nut to crack, Mum more than held her own in the family.

³  Illusory Superiority is a cognitive bias wherein people overestimate their own qualities and abilities compared to others.

⁴ Only a miniscule, microscopic percentage of people can truly multi-task effectively - but most of us are like the majority in the listening surveys who think they do it well when the reality is they most definitely do not!