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Leaders need to be listeners.
Listening seems like a simple enough skill, right?
Someone speaks. Your ears pick up the sounds. Your brain fires up and makes sense of the sound waves. Some other brain circuitry signals words to come out of your mouth. Voila – you’re having a conversation.
It’s astonishing how often people are in the same conversation but hear completely different things. The potential for misunderstanding, feeling disrespected and disempowered is huge. Whether you’re leading a team of one (yourself), or a team of hundreds the quality of your listening hugely affects the quality and impact of your leadership.
When you aren’t listening clearly, it’s tough to engage your team to work with you to accomplish the goals at hand or get the best creativity and perspective on the challenges you face. Leaders who listen more to their own pre-conceived ideas and solutions and struggle to clearly listen to others run the risk of disengagement and falling short.
Here are 3 of the biggest mistakes I see time and time again in meetings and conversations – and what you can do to course correct!
Mistake #1 – Knowing the Answers Already
When leaders come to a conversation already knowing the answer, that’s a problem. This is the leader who has already made his or her mind up before the discussion has even started. This leader goes into a meeting listening for evidence and contributions that validate their pre-existing ideas and strategies.
Especially when you are leading a team, there’s that pressure to look smart and a few steps ahead of others. To demonstrate that you don’t know how to solve a problem or what to do next can feel very vulnerable. But when you are closed to ideas that challenge your pre-existing answers it is very discouraging to others. You aren’t going to foster an environment where those around you are motivated or feel encouraged to bring their best thinking and work to the team.
To remedy this one, before your next meeting just remind yourself you do not need to know all the answers. Keeping an open mind and fostering a spirit of collaboration will help generate solutions that you could never conceive of on your own. Harness the synergy and skill of those around you to develop solutions together.
Mistake #2 – Listening to Fix
Listening to others but running it through a filter of what’s wrong or needs your correction is another common mistake. There is a time and a place where it’s important to critique or play the devil’s advocate in a discussion, but when you do this all the time – in brainstorming sessions, in casual or social conversations – it’s a trap.
This is one I’ve struggled with myself in the past. Often “listening to fix” was an asset I needed to bring to my professional work, particularly when I worked in government and even in my early coaching career.
When you have a pre-set agenda of listening in order to fix someone or something else, you’re not present. Frankly, you are scanning and assessing, rather than just plain listening. It’s easy to miss some important subtleties because you’re preparing a response or rebuttal instead of receiving what someone else has to offer.
If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of this kind of a listener (think of any ex-bosses or ex-spouses and that might help!), you know that it can make you feel like a science project being dissected rather than a human being that’s in an engaged, 2-way conversation.
Leaders who are constantly listening to fix, perhaps as a way to exercise their authority or smarts, run the risk of missing out on new perspectives and opportunities to collaborate or co-create something that’s innovative.
Mistake #3 – Being Uncomfortable with Silence
There’s always an ebb and flow in conversations. Sometimes the energy can be very exciting and people are interrupting each other to get their views heard. Sometimes the energy gets more still, as people reflect on what’s been said and see what to offer next. Productive conversations and meetings will have, and need, both ends of the spectrum.
Leaders who are uncomfortable with silence take a lack of verbal participation in their meetings as a sign of their inability to lead the group well. They continue to talk on and on, which can make other participants start to tune out.
Silence can be a powerful part of any conversation. Powerful dialogue requires time and space for the impact of your words to “land” with others. Don’t rush through the silence and fill it up with hearing yourself speak just to get through the discomfort of no one talking. Often being in that quiet moment together can make people feel truly heard like never before.
STEP INTO YOUR BRILLIANCE
Take 10 minutes and do a quick self-assessment of your listening habits. Which of the 3 mistakes have you made recently? Write down 1-2 different choices you could have made instead. If you aren’t falling into some of these pitfalls, congratulations! To anchor that in more deeply, journal for 5 minutes about how that has contributed to your leadership abilities and influence.
