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September 19, 2013
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Fresh off a great job as a Navy lieutenant in the admissions office at the U.S. Naval Academy, I was assigned to work as assistant navigator on the first Nimitz class aircraft carrier. There was only one problem: I was a pilot and needed to take a ship handling course to learn how to drive this very sizeable carrier. That course, however, was not included in my training schedule.
I traveled to Norfolk, Va., to ask the officer in charge of aircraft carrier training to enroll me in the necessary class. Walking into his office, I saluted and said hello.
He immediately held his hand up for me to stop talking. Why? Because he was listening to the noon stock market report on the radio. We stood there silently for three or four minutes as the report droned on.
Finally permitted to speak, I asked for a training seat in the course.
“No, we don’t need to change your training schedule,” he said. “I’m not interested in that.”
Naturally, my first day on the aircraft carrier, my commanding officer wanted to know why I hadn’t received the training I needed! From this frustrating experience emerged an important lesson: I would always do my best to listen and understand the other person’s point of view before making a decision.
And these days, the price of poor listening as a leader is steeper – and more immediate – than ever.
As Michael Schrage observed recently on the HBR Blog Network, social media has created an “instant referendum” within companies on everything that leaders do. “The water cooler hasn’t vanished; it’s simply become virtual, transported into the cloud,” Schrage notes. “What’s fundamentally different, of course, is the new speed and scalability of the sentiment.”
So when difficult or controversial decisions are made within organizations, poor internal communications – especially those that fail to accommodate employee feedback – can spark a rapid backlash that jeopardizes the ability to implement even the best ideas.
In this environment, it seems to me, there’s a leadership skill that every leader needs to master: the art of listening – before decisions are made and also afterward when reactions start to come in.
In my own experience, most organizations are uneven in their communications. At the very top, they are many times good. Executives and senior managers grasp the CEO’s vision and buy into the larger strategy. But the deeper you go into the organization, the more muddled things get. Mid-level managers and front-line employees might not know how to connect the work they do each day with the overarching strategy – and often they’re not even sure what the strategy itself is. The occasional all-hands memos we send about “creating synergies” and “adding value” are merely one-way communications that don’t create space for conversation.
Listening creates that space; it helps leaders build buy-in from the ground up. That’s why we need to be Chief Listening Officers in our organizations every moment of the day. And we don’t need to wait for anyone to anoint us with this title. Each of us can seize it on our own right now.
Still, listening well can be a real struggle, accustomed as we are to thinking out loud, tweeting our opinions and figuring out what we’ll say next, before the person in front of us is even done speaking.
The good news: just like anything else, we can get better at listening with effort and practice. My colleague Michael Hoppe, an adjunct faculty member at the Center for Creative Leadership, has worked with hundreds of leaders throughout his career. He’s streamlined his advice for better listening into six helpful steps:
1. Pay attention: Set aside your iPad and maintain steady eye contact. Smile or nod to show you’re fully present. Every time you sneak a peek at a text, you risk killing the conversation. If you’re having a virtual exchange, read e-mails the whole way through at least twice to make sure you’re really getting the message.
2. Suspend judgment. Hold back your own criticisms and the need to show you’re right. Let others explain how they view a situation. You don’t need to agree; just show some empathy.
3. Reflect. In person or on email, as the conversation proceeds, occasionally recap others’ points to make sure you’re really hearing them. Often it turns out that you missed something important.
4. Clarify. When you do speak, ask open-ended questions that encourage people to share more. For example: “What are your thoughts about how we might change our strategy to increase sales in this economy?”
5. Summarize. Briefly restate core themes raised by the person you’re talking with. You’re not agreeing or disagreeing; you’re simply closing the loop.
6. Share. Once you know where that person stands, introduce your own ideas and suggestions. That’s how good conversations get even better.
Make a commitment to practice these six steps in at least one conversation each day, whether it’s in person, on the phone or online. Before long, your work colleagues won’t be the only ones who are grateful. Our family members and friends have probably been waiting patiently for us to become better listeners, too.
Featured on:Leadership & Management
Posted by:John Ryan
