Listening is a Leadership Superpower
The Magic of Listening
Listening is a superpower. It’s underrated. It’s one of the simplest tweaks you can make as a leader that will have the GREATEST impact. It’s a tool that you can apply everywhere, that you take with you everywhere as you have it within you.
At its foundation, listening is the act of mindfully hearing and attempting to understand the meaning of the words spoken by another person. But listening is also the most important ingredient for building strong leadership, healthy relationships, and thriving organizations. If you need proof, just think of a recent time when you felt like no one was listening. How did that make you feel? Did your engagement increase or decrease?
Active listening is a specific communication skill, which involves giving free and undivided attention to the speaker. It is also the most effective agent for individual change and group development.
People just want to be seen and heard
Really nothing could be simpler: Ask questions and listen to the answers.
Purdue psychological sciences researcher Dr. Kipling Williams has studied ostracism -being ignored and excluded--and how it affects individuals and groups. His conclusions are that the effects of being ignored and excluded reveal an unsurprising truth: being ignored physically hurts, and it instigates behavior (often anti-social) that’s meant to recover your existence. In other words there is no greater obligation that we have as leaders, than to see those around us. Not just glance their way but give them the experience of being fully seen. This, Kipling’s research suggests, leads “to social attentiveness and pro-social behaviors.”
3 Types of Listening
Effective listening is not something that just happens by chance. It takes a lot of practice to develop, and truthfully no other skill will serve you better in life. Effective listening is at the heart of everything we do as leaders. Whether we are giving feedback at work or trying to get a message to our teens at home, our ability to listen effectively gives us an advantage in just about every situation.
Contemporary literature typically defines three levels of listening:
· Level 1: Internal Listening — Listening to your inner voice.
When we engage in internal listening, we are focusing on our own inner voice. This means we are only considering our thoughts, feelings, opinions, and conclusions.
· Level 2: Focused Listening — Listening intently to another person.
Focused listening involves keeping an intense focus on the person in front of you . This type of listening involves not only taking in their words, but also paying attention to their expressions, emotions, values, and what they are not saying. Focused listening revolves around them and helps you determine the impact of their responses.
· Level 3: Global Listening — Listening to others in the context of their entire surroundings.
Whole body listening, much like focused listening, revolves around the person in front of you AND is much more in depth. This is the level of listening that experienced coaches reach. On top of listening, you must also learn to pay attention to their language patterns to hear what really motivates them, observing their body language and listening to your intuition. A good way to describe whole body listening is that you are “listening at 360 degrees.” This type of listening will have the greatest impact.
But let’s not overcomplicate things, many times, just by hearing what they say, listening with compassion and showing a genuine interest in what’s concerning them, you’ll have given them exactly what they need. Taking this approach starts by:
· Acknowledging that you’ve heard what they are saying, and that this issue matters to them
· Asking clarifying questions so you can demonstrate that you are actively listening
· Asking questions with curiosity and no judgement
· Seeking to discover what, if anything, they need from you
· Accepting that your role is often not to ‘solve’ the issue for them, but to create space so they can ‘solve’ the issue themselves
Stephen Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People states the importance of listening: “seek first to listen, then to be understood”.
Typically two behaviors help maintain good will and a collaborative culture and they are to create silence and allow the other person to fill it, and to resist suggesting solutions and spending more time exploring the problem.
What are the steps required to build this leadership superpower?
1. Be Present
2. Listen for meaning and emotion
3. Let them speak and avoid interrupting
4. Ask questions for understanding and not judgement
Listening is a leadership superpower. Effective listening is the building block of many leadership activities and will yield significant benefits. While there are different context and modes of listening the four steps outlined above will make you a significantly better listener and leader.
Try it, stay with the silence, and see the magic that happens!